Keitai

The European comission for Information Society and Media has released a very comprehensive report on the habits of European youth.

In a pan-European qualitative study covering 29 European countries, children of 9-10 and 12-14 years old were interviewed in-depth about their use of online technologies, like the Internet and mobile phones, and how they see and deal with risks…This study covers 29 countries (the 27 Member States, as well as Iceland and Norway) and it involves children of 9-10 and 12-14 years.

There is a seperate report available for each EU member country with a seperate section in each on mobile habits including download preferences, content acquisition habits, safety and digital literacy, mobile web use and the percentage of students with and without a mobile or computer access.

Findings in the overal European study include:

• More than three-quarters of girls and boys aged 9 to 10 have one.
• Nine out of ten girls and boys aged 12 to 14 have one.
• More often than not the mobile phone was received as a present (from parents, uncles or aunts, grandparents).
• Those who have a mobile phone show themselves to be very satisfied, and even “proud” to own one. This is clearly a form of valuation, a kind of “rite of passage”, the clear “sign” of access to a state of relative “maturity” and of belonging to a new group.
• Among the youngest children, keeping in permanent contact with their parents is advanced by a majority.
• Sending/receiving text messages is the favourite and intense activity of children, in particular, as we have just stressed, of the older children (aged 12 to 14). Apart from the fact that text messages are “cheaper” than voice calls, sending and receiving text messages is part and parcel of a specific “culture” in these age categories. This very evidently involves a language of their own, which is “coded” and differentiated, attesting to a mutual recognition and the sense of belonging to a group. In a nutshell: “you phone your parents but you text your friends”.
• Connecting to the Internet by mobile phone is a very marginal use, deemed by a very large number to be pointless when you have a computer at home, but above all too expensive, complicated and also risky, since it potentially generates viruses.

Some of the country specific reports are in English so it’s worth downloading a bunch to compare attitudes in different countries!