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Mobile culture among children and adolescents

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Mobile communication culture among
children and adolescents1
Rich Ling
Troels Bertel

Abstract
The mobile phone has become an important and taken for granted part of children’s and adolescents’ lives.
In many countries the vast majority of children and teens have a mobile phone and use it to coordinate, as
a safety link and to weave their social networks and interact with their parents. In addition, the mobile
phone has also been associated with less positive behaviors such as sexting, bullying and distracted driving.

Author bios
Rich Ling is a Professor at the IT University of Copenhagen. He has focused on the analysis of the mobile
communication and its consequences for society.
Troels Fibæk Bertel is a PhD candidate at the IT-University of Copenhagen. His research is focused on the
social uses of convergent mobile media among youth.
Mobile phones, Texting, SMS, sexting, distracted driving,

Introduction
In the developed world, and increasingly in the developing world, children and teens have grown up with
ready access to mobile phones. The mobile phone has become de rigueur in teens’ and increasingly
childrens’ lives. It has changed the way that they experience youth compared to previous generations. This
essay summarizes research on mobile phone use among children and teens. In this article we will focus on
how teens and children use mobile communication in their daily lives. Though mobile phones are
increasingly multi-dimensional devices that allow for not only communication but also portable gaming,
music and a variety of other functions, we will largely focus on mobile telephones in their role as
communication devices.
Children and teens are both similar and different, a fact that is reflected in their mobile communication
practices. Castells, Fernández-Ardèvol, Linchuan, & Sey (2007, p. 128) thus argue that children and teens
share “a common culture of communication with various emphases in its manifestation depending on age.”
While there are undoubtedly similarities between the groups it is clear that they are also different in
important areas as regards mobile communication. At the most basic level, texting, a distinctive feature of

1 The correct citation for this article is: Ling, Rich, and Troels Bertel. “Mobile Culture among Children and Adolescents.” In The
Routledge Handbook of Children, Adolescents and Media, edited by Dafna Lemish, 127–33. New York: Routledge, 2013.

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the mobile phone, requires the user to master writing. This limits the use of this aspect of the mobile phone
for the youngest children. There are also differences in adoption between the groups. While ownership
among teens has been very widespread in many developed countries, ownership among younger children
has been less common. The tendency, however, seems to be that the mobile phone is steadily being
adopted at earlier ages. In 2004 in the UK, Davie, Panting and Charlton (2004) found that 45% of 10 to 11
year olds had a mobile phone. In the same year in the US only 18% of 12-year-olds had a mobile phone. In
2005 in Norway over 80% of 10-year-olds owned one (Vaage, 2010). By 2009 US mobile phone ownership
among 12-year-olds was up to 58%.
When compared with children, teens in general enjoy greater autonomy. They have more independence
from parents and develop more elaborate peer cultures (Fine, 2004; Ito, Baumer, et al., 2010, p. 8). Their
mobile communication is directed towards peers to a higher degree than children’s which is primarily
oriented towards the family (Haddon & Green, 2010, p. 98). Indeed teens text and use voice calls more
than any other age group (Ling, Bertel, & Sundsøy, in press). In addition, they use the internet on the
mobile phone more than younger children The teen period is also characterized by negotiations of identity
that is less common among children (Fine, 2004; Ito, Baumer, et al., 2010, p. 8). Teens, because of their
different life situation, use mobile media to manage social life to a higher degree than do children. For
these reasons most research about mobile culture to date has focused on teens while explicit research on
young children’s use remains less common. This fact will be reflected in the material reviewed in this essay.

Review of Research on Mobile Telephony Use among Youth

The study of social uses of mobile communication is relatively new and before the year 2000 there was
little research. Since then there has been considerable and growing interest in the field (Haddon & Green,
2010, p. 1). Geographically, European research has been predominant although significant early
contributions were also made in Asia and in the US (Haddon & Green, 2010, p. 10). Today, the study of the
social uses of the mobile phone has become a much more widespread endeavor.
Teen use was among the first issues to be investigated (Ling, 2001) in works from Norway (Johnsen, 2003;
Ling & Yttri, 2002), Hong Kong (Leung & Wei, 1999), Finland (Kasesniemi & Rautiainen, 2002; Oksman &
Rautianen, 2003), the UK ( Green & Smith, 2002; Grinter & Eldridge, 2001) and Japan (Ito, 2001). More
recently the Pew Internet and American Life project has been active in examining teens and mobile
telephony.
Teens are central in these works because they were early, and unexpected, adopters of mobile telephony.
They helped drive the mass adoption of the technology and shape its use (Ling, 2004). They remain the
most active users today, a point consistently found by research (see for instance Ling et al., in press). The
mobile phone with voice calls and particularly texting has become a central medium for teen interaction. It
is a device used extensively for interaction with same gendered friends (Lenhart et al. 2010a). In
addition, it has been shown to be a tool for developing and maintain romantic relationships. In
some cases this is seen with forbearance by parents, but in societies where interaction between the
genders is more controlled, the mobile phone has posed a threat to this system of authority (Ellwood-
Clayton, 2003; Hijazi-Omari & Ribak, 2008).
The majority of research on mobile phone use among children and youth focuses on texting (SMS) and
voice calls. It is clear that with the rise of smart phones, the mobile internet and other advanced mobile

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media, mobile communication is increasingly melding into broader forms of mediated interaction. Activities
that were formerly restricted to personal computers (such as the use of social network sites, e.g. Facebook)
are now increasingly available on mobile phones, tablets etc. In addition, new mobile technologies (such as
location based services) are becoming available. The research about these phenomena, however, is still
sparse.

Social Functions of the Mobile Phone

The use of the mobile phone in many countries today is near ubiquitous among teens and growing among
younger children. This raises the question of why it is important for children and teens to have a mobile
phone. In considering this, several distinctive functions of the mobile phone emerge including coordination,
expressive uses, safety, texting and multimedia uses.
Coordination. Perhaps more than anything else, the mobile phone facilitates coordination (Elliott & Urry,
2010; Ling & Yttri, 2002) providing users with the ability to make and re-make agreements on the fly. This
has changed the way that youth sort out the logistics of daily life and has led to a type of iterative planning
that is particularly common among teens where agreements can be made and adjusted as needed. This
provides mobile phone users with temporal and spatial flexibility (Haddon, 2000).
Expressive uses. Among teens a main motivation for having a mobile phone is often simply to have social
access to peers (; Kakuko Miyata, Boase, & Wellman, 2008; Ling, 2009). Indeed, analysis done by Lenhart et
al. indicates that this is perhaps the dominant motivation (Lenhart et al., 2010). These “expressive”
exchanges include important emotional discussions as well as simple idle chat. While sometimes appearing
superficial or even meaningless, the exchange of texts and calls is an important way for youth to build
cohesion with their peers (Matsuda, 2005). These expressive messages constitute a large part of the total
volume of teen texting (Ling, 2005).
Safety. The mobile telephone is seen as a safety link (Ling, 2007; Palfrey, 2008). Youth often describe an
imagined or actual quasi-serious episode (i.e. missing a bus, running out of gas, etc.), as the triggering event
for getting a phone. The latent ability to use it in the case of an actual emergency is an important
justification for having a mobile phone for both parents and children (Cohen, Lemish, & Schejter, 2007;
Ling, 2012).
Texting. Any discussion of mobile phones needs to take special note of texting, the exchange of short text
messages between mobile phones. A main attraction of texting is that it functions “under the radar”
providing a channel where friends can gossip, make agreements, flirt and generally communicate while also
engaged in other activities. It is also a venue where youth can develop creative linguistic flourishes and
styles through which they can show their membership in a particular group (Baron, 2008; Ling, 2008).
Despite the fears of some, texting does not seem to result in poor language skills (Plester, Wood, & Bell,
2008). Rather the research shows that it encourages written communication.
Multimedia and internet uses. Recently, mobile phones have evolved into highly capable multimedia
devices. so-called smart phones (e.g. the iPhone, Android phones) now come equipped with a camera for
snapping photos or recording videos, applications for music and video playback, mobile games and an
internet browser similar in capability to the those found on the personal computer. Different networked
apps (built-in or user added) provide youth with tools for social interaction and sharing of multimedia

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content, e.g. Facebook, Skype, and Twitter. While the multimedia and internet uses is undoubtedly a main
motivation for the rapid rise of smart phones, little research has yet been published on the topic.

The Social Effects of Mobile Telephony

The social uses of the mobile phone among children and particularly teens are also associated with broader
social issues, the most important of which we list here.
Social cohesion. The mobile phone facilitates adolescents’ contact with one another, through both
instrumental and expressive uses. The sum of these many small communications is to form and strengthen
the links in their social networks (Licoppe, 2004; Ling, 2008; Miyata, 2006). The circle of friends with whom
teens text and call, however, is rather small. Half of all calls and texts go to a select group of only 5–8
persons (Ling et al., in press).
Social exclusion. The flipside of the connectivity and social cohesion afforded by the mobile phone is that
its use may be a source of social exclusion of those who do not master the technology or cannot afford it.
As the mobile phone has become ubiquitous to the point of being a taken-for-granted social fact in the lives
of the majority of the world’s cultures , lack of access to the technology may become a serious social
handicap (Castells, Fernandez-Ardevol, Qiu, & Sey, 2007).
Emancipation. The mobile phone has changed the way that teens become emancipated from their parents.
The mobile phone allows teens a freedom from their parents’ surveillance and privacy in making and
receiving calls and texts. It is a conditional freedom however (Haddon, 2000), since parents can call their
child via the mobile phone whenever there is a need to, for example to remind them of an unfinished chore
(Ling, 2007). Thus, the mobile phone is an arena for the negotiation of dependence and independence
between youth and their parents.

Problematic issues
It is possible to adopt a generally positive gloss associated with the use of mobile communication. This,
however, is not the whole story. Mobile telephony has also contributed to different nefarious activities.
Mobile phones in the public sphere. At the broadest, and perhaps the most innocent level mobile phone
use is often linked with disruption of the public sphere (Ling, 1997). It can ring at inopportune moments
and the person receiving the call can be guilty of discussing inappropriate, private or perhaps trivial themes
for all to hear (L. Haddon, 2000; Monk, Carroll, Parker, & Blythe, 2004a).
Money use. Another issue that can be difficult and a potential cause for conflict in the family is teens’ use
of money for mobile telephony. Many children and teens have either a set number of minutes or texts they
can use or they have a pre-paid subscription that prevents them from overusing their phones (Lenhart et
al.,, 2010). The cost of sending and receiving data (and the cost of buying a smart phone) also limits the use
of the mobile internet.
Sexual uses and sexting. The diffusion of camera phones has led to the practice of sexting (a portmanteau
of sex and texting). Sexting is the practice of using the mobile phone to send sexually suggestive materials
such as nude or partially nude photos or video. Sexting has, in some cases, become a part of teen
dating/courting (Lenhart et al., 2010). Lenhart in a study of sexting among 12-17 year old teens in the US

4
found that 15% had received such “sexts” while 4% admitted to sending them (2009). Livingstone et al. in a
pan-European study using a broader definition of sexting (where sexting can occur on other platforms than
the mobile phone, can be text rather than images and video, and is not necessarily self-produced) found
that 15% of 11-16 year olds have received material from their peers that was seen as sexual using this
definition (Livingstone et al., 2011, p. 7). The same study found that 3% of the 9-16 year olds had seen
sexual images on their mobile phone in past 12 months (Livingstone et al., 2011, p. 50).
The taking and exchange of sexually suggestive pictures can be the source of trouble. If there is improper
pressure or if the trust between partners is broken and the sexting material is shared with outsiders to the
relationship, sexting becomes a problem. The individual can lose control over the circulation of the material
and, in some cases, can be publically shamed. A related issue is that teens who record sexual behavior on
their mobile phones showing themselves or others under the age of majority, may be considered producers
of child pornography with severe legal problems as a consequence (Xiaolu, 2010).
Much of the media attention towards sexting has focused on the negative aspects of the practice in a
“burgeoning moral panic” (Chalfen, 2010, p. 350). However, recent research has pointed to mobile phones
and their content also being just another venue for youth to use in developing a gendered (and sexual)
identity (Bond, 2010; Schulz, 2012).
Mobile bullying. For children and teens who become the object of bullying, the direct access provided by
the mobile phone can become an intractable problem. The child or teen who is bullied via the mobile
phone is never outside the reach of his or her tormenters who can call and send messages at any time
(Smith & Slonje, 2010). Livingstone et al. in a pan-European study found that 1% of the 9-10-year-olds, 2%
of the 11-12-year-olds, 3% of the 13-14-year-olds and 6% of the 15-16-year-olds had been bullied by
“mobile phone calls, texts or image/video texts” in the past 12 months (2011, p. 62).
Distracted Driving. Many teens pride themselves on the ability to multitask (Foehr, 2006). Research has
shown, however, that multi-tasking can negatively affect the efficiency of carrying out individual tasks
(Blakemore & Choudhury, 2006). While some teenage drivers may feel that they can command a motor
vehicle adequately while texting at the same time, this is a grave misconception. Indeed, distracted driving
as a result of texting is perhaps one of the most dangerous dimensions of mobile communication (Strayer,
Drews, & Crouch, 2006).
Radiation. Though we do not discuss it here, there is a major, and largely inconclusive discussion regarding
the effects of electromagnetic radiation from mobile phones. This is a medical discussion that is beyond the
limits of this article.

The future of mobile communication

Since the mid 1990’s the mobile phone has developed a well established place in children’s and teens’ lives
in many countries. The technology, however, has not stood still. Mobile devices have gained functionality
including cameras, music and video players, internet browsers, terminals for social network sites such as
Facebook and a host of other functions. Increasingly, the mobile internet and special purpose apps are
opening up other functionality. Cloud computing, access to social network sites and the like mean that the
role of the personal computer is being challenged by the highly portable mobile phone. In this guise, the
individual can upload a photo of their new boy/girl friend to their Facebook account only seconds after

5
their first kiss. Likewise they can tell their circle of friends about the break-up just as quickly. Beyond this,
newer mobile computing devices such as tablets are changing the way that young people consume news,
watch television, interact with friends, and consume a wide variety of goods and services.

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