Jane Gould is the voice of DearSmartphone and today, BeMobileSmart. She got her first cellphone on Easter Sunday in 2002 but only after her middle son, then in high school, threatened to leave home if they did not get a family plan. She recalls this day as the entry point to distracted driving and distracted parenting.
Jane began her career as a journalist but went on to get a doctoral degree from the Annenberg School of Communications. Her initial research was on young children and the impact of heavy television viewing. However, her interest in new technology and mobility led her to work for AT&T, and later, to do trending research on this topic for over twenty years. It was only after the “invention” of the mobile phone that she was able to put together her work in these two areas- media impacts and mobility.
With academic colleagues at the London Business School and the University of California-Irvine and UCLA she has consulted, taught, and published numerous studies on future mobility, teleshopping (using the phone to shop from home) and telework. When not shopping from home, she wrote a well-acclaimed book called “Aging in Suburbia” available on Amazon.
In 2015 she began teaching seniors how to use their smartphones for better mobility and access. She was also working on a campaign to reach distracted teen drivers and pedestrians who were looking down, not up. These projects made it evident that mobile phones were changing our personal lives and relationships, and not always for the better. The research morphed into a larger pursuit on smartphones, partial attention, and multitasking. All of these are issues at the core of digital literacy.
Jane serves on several transportation boards. She also offers classes at The College of Marin on electric vehicle transportation and on digital habits and mindfulness. She is curious, and seeks to communicate, how in less than ten years, mobile devices have changed parenting, attention spans, free time and play.
She is married to the same husband for over thirty years, had a beloved wire fox terrier, and is mom to three grown sons. She splits her time between Marin County and Cambridge, Mass. Her boys insist they use their smartphones…responsibly!
Email to: jane@bemobilesmart.com
