Mobile phones in young people everyday life: case study with Portuguese and Brazilian students

Abstract

Mobile phones have become commonplace everyday objects in almost all societies regardless of their development stage. The presence of these devices has become a constant on any latitude, as shown by the penetration rate figures for 2018: 65.9%. These numbers, already surprising on their own, reach even higher values among young people. Thus, this paper studies the use of mobile phones, in particular smartphones, by young Portuguese and Brazilian university students. For this purpose, an app that registered all the uses made by the youngsters in their mobile devices, was employed. This methodology allows data collection in a daily context without the participants feeling controlled. A total of 317,938 interactions, registered in the participants devices, shows that the main use given to these devices is as a platform for access to social networks, followed by the sending of messages and the variable “second uses” of the device (watch, calendar, camera, calendar and calculator). Although this is a study in progress, at this stage it is safe to state that the data confirm previous studies (FORTUNATI; TAIPALE, 2014) in which smartphones assert themselves as a verbal written communication platform in opposition to their genesis based on orality.

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