Monday, August 21, 2006

Kids with mobile phones

Lately there hasn't been that much public discussion about children/youth and use of mobile phones. Instead Internet services, Habbo Hotel and IRC-gallery have often been in the headlines. It does not mean there's nothing happening in the mobile cultures. Quite the opposite. Finally package deals have been adopted in Finland. The point is to get brand new phone plus mobile telephone subscription with fixed price. That's good news for mobile service developers.

Also youth are one the move. According to Pelastakaa Lapset report 'Kännykamera käy!' (2005) (and yes, it's in Finnish) 84 % of 7 - 9 year olds have their own mobile phones. Almost every 10+ year old has a mobile phone or even two.

To the question: 'for what purposes did you use your mobile phone yesterday': It is no surprise that talking (F 80 /M 86 %) and SMS (F 75 /M 66%) were the most popular services for 7 - 15 year olds. The interesting (and news for me) thing was that according to the study 47 % of 7 - 9 year olds used their phone to play games. Compared to the older age groups (10 - 12, 13-15 year olds) that is quite a lot as the older respondents did not use a mobile phone for gaming as much (=24,5 %) as 'kids'. Also photography was popular amongst the youth (average F 19 /M 25 %) .

Other than media use there has been some talks about SMS bullying, mobile creativity, novel services, the success of TV-SMS services and mobile tv. Other than services, I also waiting for Nuorisotutkimusverkosto (Finnish Youth Research Network) to finish their comparative report on mobile phones & youth in South Korea, Japan and Finland.

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