Xen Mendelsohn from Xellular Identity has a very interesting interview with Nick Wright from Mobile Youth Trends. Nick is co-author of the mobileYouth 2006 report. Some of the good stuff:
- Young people don’t use their mobile phones ‘just for fun’ but also for serious matters: to say something about themselves and their relationships with other young people (self-expression).
- Branded goods play an important role in this self-expression.
- Texting is "a reaffirmation and a reminder that “I’m with you�."
- Many young people feel depressed after a whole day without SMS. Some young people even go to rehab clinics for being "text-addicts"!
- The mobile phone has taken over the former position of cigarettes in offering a private space for unsupervised private communication. (And some studies suggest young people are smoking less and less because their money now goes to phone bills - MdL)
- Texting is attractive because the language can be deformed so that no adult can understand it. (This is also pointed out by Mitzuko Ito in an article (in Ling & Pedersen: 2005) about how traditional institutions like family and the classroom are being challenged by the mobile phone - MdL).
- The phone itself allow for personalization (wallpapers, ringtones, etc.) and enables young people to express themselves and "advertise their identity as part of their peer group." (> Interesting notion "advertizing identity" - we are all designing and branding ourselves to some extend).
- The basic social needs of young people are: "Social Networking, Communication, Status display, Personalisation and acting as a Behavioural Platform."
- Mobile operators realize too little of these characteristics of young people’s interaction with the mobile phone.
Read the whole interview here!
The Interesting interview with Nick Wright from Mobile Youth Trends by 'Playful Identities' research blog, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Netherlands License.