Telephony and “i-Relation”: Screening Teen Talk

The services of health and social telephony offer assistance at a distance, mediated by techniques, and run by volunteers and professionals. Their tasks, financed by the authorities, include informing, listening, preventing and orientating. As for the service which is the object of this study, the teen health hotline (« Filsantejeunes »), also has a role as an « observatory of the teenagers problems in the area of health ». Based on research done on telephone calls and the exchange of e-mails between teenagers and professionals, we question the meaning and the issues of health and social telerelations. Our aim is to understand how the helping relationship is led to adapt itself to technical constraints which derealize and decontextualize the encounter, as well as the economic, political and administrative powers which put the service in the field of generalized public prevention.