Cell phones are extremely popular among young people across the world. Cross-cultural research has revealed interesting similarities and differences regarding cell phone usage by young people from different countries. In this post, I report on a study on cell phone usage by college students in USA.

Aoki & Downes (2003) investigated cell phone usage among American college students from a behavioral and psychological perspective. Their objectives were to (a) find out why college students acquired a cell phone and (b) to determine the relationship between cell phone usage behavior and intrinsic motivations about usage.

They used mixed - methods - both qualitative (focus groups) and quantitative (surveys) to collect data. They conducted four focus groups (32 students) and administered a survey to 137 students.

Their results from focus groups indicated that there were nine motivational themes for which college students acquired a cell phone. These were - personal safety, financial incentive, information access, social interaction, parental contacts, time management/coordination, dependency, image and privacy management.

With regard to the behavioral characteristics - most respondents obtained a cell phone when they entered college; the majority made five or fewer calls per day; majority of calls were made from “on the street” followed by “at home” and “at school”; most often the cell phones were used to call “friends and relatives”, “boyfriends or girlfriends”, and “immediate family members”; majority made calls from their cell phones at night and more than half the respondents said that their parents were paying their phone bills.

By performing a Q factor analysis, they identified five groups of cell phone users -

1. Group 1 - “Cost conscious” - This was the largest group and believed that cell phone is the cheaper way to make calls. They spend a lot of time receiving calls and talking on cell phones but did not make most of the calls.

2. Group 2 - “Security/Safety conscious” - This group felt that having a cell phone makes them feel safer. They used cell phones very minimally.

3. Group 3 - “Dependent” - The students in this group felt lost without their cell phones and they used the cell phones frequently.

4. Group 4 - “Sophisticated” - For this group, owning a cell phone equaled to having a style statement. They were the early adopters among the group and also tend to make the most number of calls.

5. Group 5 - “Practical users” - This group used the cell phone because it made sense. They did not care about the style or believed it was a necessity. They used the cell phones moderately when they needed to use it.

This study showed that even within a homogeneous group such as college students there could be distinct groups of users. It would be interesting to see if these groups would have similar characteristics in other cultures as well.

Downloading is an important aspect of cyberculture especially music downloads. Like the text messaging culture, downloading to me is also user generated culture. It was the prevalence of illegal downloading that led Apple to launch itunes and legalize downloading. However, that didn’t stop illegal downloading, it still continues. Despite several attempts, the music industry has yet to find a way to stop illegal downloading of music.

Downloading of content remains one of the top activities among college students. In this study, Kinnally, Lacayo, McClung & Saplosky 2008 examine the motivations of college students for downloading music. How motivations for downloading are linked to music affinity? and whether there is a relation between motivations for music downloading, music affinity and post-downloading activities such as filesharing, no. of songs downloaded, building a library of music, and CD burning.

They used the “uses and gratifications” approach and conducted a survey on around 500 students in a US university. The results of the study showed that entertainment/ pass time was the top most factor, followed by convenience/ economic utility and surveillance/ information seeking, for downloading music by college students. Other reasons were storage utility factor / ease of storing and social utility factor, that is, the downloading experience providing a topic of conversation among peers.

However, the relation between music affinity and downloading indicated that music fans download for fun, to learn about music and talk about the experience with friends. Cost and convenience are not an important factor for them. They also found that file sharing and downloading activity were not particularly related and perhaps the motives for both these activities would be very different. Males were more likely to download music, build a music library and burn CDs.

Towards the end, the researchers raise an important question that in future studies the distinction should be made between those who just download music and those who do it for participating in file-sharing networks.

I think this study once again highlights the importance of social nature of activities on internet. Although not quite like text messaging where social interaction is the primary activity or blogging which allows for exhange of ideas, downloading and sharing allows young people to participate in a cultural exchange that makes them more connected to the social world they belong.