Children and Mobile Phones

Sydney.
The second keynote this evening at Mobile Media 2007 is by Leslie Haddon, who shifts our focus to children's uses of mobile technologies. His research focussed on 11-16-year-olds, and looked at as well as beyond their communicatory practices - including also uses of mobiles as cameras, music players, content transfer devices, games consoles, Internet and television platforms. Some of the teens involved in this study obtained their first mobiles at age 8-10, and many had already owned more than one phone in their lives (often traded down from parents and siblings). Gradually, they had acquired more and more functionality, and they therefore have an understanding of the history of fashionable phone features and uses over the past years; upgrades were motivated in part by fashion, but also by the wearing out of existing phones.

Phones were used mainly to communicate with peers and parents, and usage patterns shifted gradually from a focus on parents to a focus on peers as kids grew older; the main constraint on such communication was cost (often managed through parental allowances of 5-10 pounds), and this was managed through communicating less or through stop-go plans (asking peers to switch to instant messaging as credit was running out) - this could also lead to some kids becoming almost unreachable as their credit ran out, however. As kids grew older, their patterns of communication, and of mobility, began to change further; other communications methods (like instant messaging and social networking sites) also became more available to kids and began to compete with mobile phone calls and texting.

Camera phones and digital cameras were prevalent in this age group, too; MMS was rarely used because of its cost, and the most common practice for photosharing was still to show images on the mobile itself to friends. Only some enthusiasts were involved in transferring images between digital cameras, mobiles, and PCs, and editing these images on their PCs. Similar observations also applied to videosharing, which was even less common, but growing in use (and videos were often posted on YouTube, to the point of giving some schools a bad name if what was posted were videos of school fights and similar real or staged events. What arises from this are questions around permissions to photograph, requests to take own photos, and what constitutes embarrassing photos to individual kids.

Audio functions were also used, but many kids also had stand-alone MP3 players. Audio functions on mobile phones had the advantage of easier sharability - they could play songs aloud during lunch breaks and thereby enabled the social sharing of musical tastes (also to be shared using Bluetooth). Showing what music was stored on one's mobile was a form equivalent to sharing photo albums or showing one's record collection, and overall, showing the content of one's mobile (including text messages) to others has recently become a more common activity.

Internet access through mobile phones was generally possible, but not used much for reasons of cost; indeed, there were frequent complaints about accidental Internet use if the phoen buttons had not been locked properly. For some kids, Internet access was largely a means to use instant messaging systems to get involved in further forms of peer communication (also in order to be further away from parent supervision). If costs were to come down, such usage may change; kids certainly identified some potential uses for leisure- or school-related activities.

What is striking in this context is that the equipment used by this age group is rather diverse, of course. Some kids were using relatively old phones, and the affordances of this technology also crucially influenced the possible uses available to the kids. Additionally, the kids' technical skills were also diverse; there was an even spread of basic mobile phone skills across users of both genders (strikingly different from home computer skill distributions in the 1980s, for example), but more advanced skills and skill ranges by age were less evenly distributed. Similarly, the degree to which mobile technologies were integrated into kids' lives varied considerably, along with the degree to which they communicated with one another using various means of communication; indeed, the rise of other communications technologies such as instant messaging was in part displacing mobile communication for some users. Kids digital options, choices, and decisions have expanded in a more technologically saturated environment, and there are various levels of diversity amongst youth which can be identified, well beyond differences determined by demographics.

Technorati : Mobile Media 2007, children, communication, mobile, phone
Del.icio.us : Mobile Media 2007, children, communication, mobile, phone