Note: This is only a short posting as the information will be old quickly and is country-specific.
How are mobile media used? And why?
At least in Germany we still see a difference between ages. Children and adolescents do almost always own a cellphone (98% with girls, 94 with boys, according to the JIM, 2011), with about 22% of the girls and 27% of the boys owning a smartphone. Cellphone and Internet play an important daily role for most of the children and adolescents. Cellphones are usually used to send SMS or do calls, followed by listening to music and taking photos. Even children and adolescents use cellphones or smartphones to check their eMails, although only about 12% of them.
Using the BITKOM 2011 study which assesses all ages, it becomes clear that a large part of the 65+ year olds (73%) still don’t use the Internet, only 2% of them use it on their mobile phone, while 23% of 14-29, 19% of the 30-49, and 17% of the 50-64 year old use the Internet on their mobiles.
Mobiles are an important part — still mostly for the younger and middle aged people — most of them carry a mobile when they leave the house and would not want to live without it.
However, what is interesting regarding the use of mobiles, online or offline, is that few people mention using the mobile for learning. They are usually used to communicate (with a person or a community), seek information, entertainment (incl. controlling one’s mood), or self-actualization and self-expression.
The question is why.
During the 20s of the last century, researchers looked at media primarily as means to influence people (think propaganda). The question was “What do the media do with people?” This view has changed over time as it became clear that the recipient of media is not passive, but (also) actively selects (“What do people do with media?”). While the uses-and-gratification approach has its difficulties (e.g., habitual media usage), it takes the recipient seriously as a subject who can act. In its extremes it moves from the omnipotent media to the omnipotent recipients, but it is useful nonetheless, especially the later revised versions that include needs, expectations, and differentiates between gratifications sought vs. obtained.
Taking this model as basis it seems that mobile media not only fulfill these needs, but they do so reliably. This does not seem true for using mobiles for learning.
We come back to this later when we look at self-determined learning.
Literature
JIM 2011 Jugend, Information, (Multi-)Media Basisstudie zum Medienumgang 12- bis 19-Jähriger in Deutschland. Medienpädagogischer Forschungsverbund Südwest.
Bitkom (2011). Netzgesellschaft — Eine repräsentative Untersuchung zur Mediennutzung und dem Informationsverhalten der Gesellschaft in Deutschland. http://www.bitkom.org/de/markt_statistik/64026_68888.aspx
