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Research Report, 01.03.09
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The Young Adults Revealed study shows massive mobile penetration amongst young adults worldwide, with 92 per cent owning a handset. At $26.3 a week, the mobile phone bill is the second largest item of expenditure in their lives, and the mobile phone is one of the subjects on which they feel most informed and most influential: 31 per cent of 18-24 year-olds say that their opinions about mobiles influence those of others.
The mobile as entertainment device
Those opinions will increasingly be built around more than just talking: phone calls and texts remain the most frequent mobile activities, but around half of young adults listen to music or take photographs on their phones; a third regularly access the internet and record and watch video clips. In some countries the mobile is becoming a key entertainment device: 68 per cent of young adults in Saudi Arabia watch video clips, as do 58 per cent of those in South Africa and Morocco and 52 per cent of those in China. In Russia, 53 per cent of young adults access the internet on their phone. As access costs come down, it’s likely that mobiles will take a still more prominent role in online access and entertainment. Microsoft’s ‘Three Screens’ qualitative study demonstrates how the portability of video content gives the mobile a growing role as a device for intimate viewing of familiar films and short clips.
Personal communication
The mobile phone continues to be young adults’ favoured channel for more personal conversations: about worries, schoolwork and gossip. It is also the technology that defines young adults’ experience of socialising giving them far greater flexibility when it comes to arrangements and used by many as a means of defining their identity. Although it does not yet fulfil the same range of cross-platform functions as the PC, the mobile is already the most intimate and ubiquitous device in young adult lives.
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