Changing values

One thing that can be understood from these findings is that it is often a choice for people to move away from their families and hometowns. This is especially the case among young people in developed countries (www.s1ngletown.org,15.01.09). These choices are often guided by the current day values promoted in educational opportunities, employment trends, social policies, technological innovations, media representations, and new ideas about human rights or personal entitlements (ibid).

These changed values have promoted individual rights along with less regulation of the private lives of individuals by the larger community. Diversity is valued, in living arrangements and in family forms (ibid).

On top of this, when people are asked where they would like to live at the end of their life, for some, staying with their children and family is not desired: their priority is to maintain independence, and there is a significant preference for remaining in their own homes (ibid).

This being said, the human need for attachment to other people and places is widely referenced in the psychological field (http://drvanecke.com/publications, 12.05.09). Attachment theory involves the emotional connection between people to people and people to places from cradle to grave. Psychologist Dr. van Ecke states in the paper Immigration from an Attachment Perspective, that there is the possibility for long term implications in relation to the immigration experience. These implications may include increased vulnerability to attachment trauma. A major inhibitor associated with attachment trauma for immigrants is to reinforce the immigrants need for social support, as well as, the reinforcement of a sense of belonging to both their new and old environments (ibid).

What these findings suggest in the design of a long distance communication tool is that there could be a design insight in how a tool can reinforce a sense of belonging and emotional attachment to both the place of current abode as well as the origin of a distant hometown.