Mobile phones are more important than ever in the daily lives of students, b ut how they use them has changed greatly in the past six years. While phones are still widely use for commun ication, a recent study has found that most students think talking on mobile phones is now old-fashioned.
London University researchers surveyed 1055 young people aged 13 to 18 abo ut their mobile phone habits. The researchers divided mobile phone use into “communication” and “entertainment”. Communication included talking on the phone and writing messages using texting (短信) or chatting software. Entertainment was made up of playing games, watching movies, listening to music and surfing the Internet. The findings were then compared to a 2008 study, to see what changed. The results are shown below:
Perhaps most surprising is how little time students spend talking on the ir phones these days. Six years ago the average student spent 36% of their mobile phone time making or receiving calls. In 2014, only 10% of time was used for talking. When students use their phones to communicate, more and more often it is done by using chat software like qq or wechat.
“Communication is still an important function of mobile phones. But now mobile phones are being used more for entertainment than for communication,” said Dr Harry Lectre, the research leader.