Are you struggling?
Trying to keep up with kids today? Its a mad mad world!
Among college, high school and middle school girls who own keitai, keitai e-mail use is effectively 100 percent. Boys are not far behind with 88 percent in the middle school and high school group and 96 percent among college students. This contrasts to the lower numbers of adults over the age of 20, where usage hovers in the 70 and 80 percent range. The more striking contrast is in the volume of text messages, where teenage usage (averaging about 70 messages per week) is double that of the next age category -- twentysomething users. For instance, 69.9 percent or teens and 59 percent of twentysomethings use the mobile Web in contrast to only 24.7 percent of fortysomethings. The changing dynamics of meeting-making are only the tip of the iceberg in the changes that mobile media bring to how we coordinate, communicate, and share information. The older generation complains that keitai are linked to bad manners, particularly when people use them on public transportation or during meals. Parents worry that they can’t keep track of their children’s friends anymore, since the home phone is no longer a site of incidental intergenerational contact. Yet even those who complain about keitai are usually keitai users themselves, and are participating in the social negotiations defining and regulating their use.