Restaurateurs, hairstylists, and friends and family of the unpunctual have suspected it for several years. Now research is providing some evidence: as cellphones have become more prevalent, with more than half of Americans wireless, so too has lateness. Phones have enabled more people to fall behind schedule and have provided a new crutch for the chronically tardy.

[...]

Researchers who study the effect of cellphones on society talk of a nation living in "soft time" -- a bubble in which expectations of where and when to meet shift constantly because people expect others to be constantly reachable. Eight-thirty is still 8 o'clock as long as your voice arrives on time -- or even a few minutes after -- to advise that you will not be wherever you are supposed to be at the appointed hour.

[...]

James E. Katz, a professor of communication at Rutgers University, has studied the behavior of thousands of cellphone users in surveys, in focus groups and in observational research, and he argues in two recent books, "Perpetual Contact" and "Machines That Become Us," that the cellphone has changed the nature of time and relationships. "It has erased the meaning of late," he said. "Just by calling and changing the plan, you're able to change being late to being on time."

[...]

Carol Page, who is the founder of Callmanners.com, a cellphone etiquette site, described an e-mail message she received from a 16-year old boy whose mother had called him from her cellphone to say she would be late picking him up from soccer practice. Was there some emergency? A flat tire? No: she stopped along the way to look at some pottery.

"It's become 'Since I have a cellphone, I can dawdle more," Ms. Page said.

Dr. Katz said the subjects of his observations never considered themselves late if they called to alert the people they were meeting. They say they are being considerate of the other person by asking permission to be late," he said.

But ultimately, researchers say, being late is a way of exercising power.

"You think you're doing a good thing." Dr. [Robbie] Blinkhoff [, the principle anthropologist at Context-Based Research Group, which has studied the habits of cellphone users] said. "But in reality you're saying, 'I'm more important than you -- my time is more important than yours is.' There's this sense that if you're late, you must be really busy, and if you're really busy, you must be a really important person."

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Ironically, the effects of cellphones are different elsewhere:

The investigators at Context-Based Research Group concluded that the United States has become more like Brazil, where time has been spongy for generations. (In Brazil, on the other hand, people who used to just arrive late now complain that they have to call and explain.)

Ultimately, when behavioral shifts like this occur, counter-shifting occurs to being the system into whatever equilibrium is normal for the particular culture or sub-culture. In this case:

Some day care centers are beginning to charge steep fees when parents arrive late to claim their children. Restaurants are increasingly refusing to seat people who are waiting for stragglers, or not taking reservations at all.

I have a hard time believing, however, that any substantial number of people are simply getting rid of their cellphones. I myself resisted getting a cell for quite a long time, giving in only when I was rehearsing one show in a place which had no incoming telephone easily available, while running another show in the evenings, and I had to be reachable in case any crisis came up at one production while I was working on the other. That was the summer of 2001, and I rarely regret having given in, despite the occasional annoyance of being reachable when I don't particularly want to be.