Young People And The Smartphone

In recent years, smartphones and digital platforms have become essential to our lives and are now inextricably interwoven into the everyday practices of millions, especially young people. Focusing on smartphone practices and experiences of youth today, this volume is the result of empirical research based on focus groups and in-depth interviews with young people aged 18-30. Grounded in media theory and analyzed through a blended lens of media and science and technology studies, the book offers detailed and fascinating insights into the everyday use of smartphones. Topics covered include the role of the smartphone as material technology, its use in interpersonal relationships, photographic practices, music and consumer practices, along with the deconstruction of the notion of smartphone ‘addiction’.

The smartphone is often literally right in front of our nose, so you would think we would know what it is. But do we? To find out, 11 anthropologists each spent 16 months living in communities in Africa, Asia, Europe and South America, focusing on the take up of smartphones by older people. Their research reveals that smartphones are technology for everyone, not just for the young. The Global Smartphone presents a series of original perspectives deriving from this global and comparative research project. Smartphones have become as much a place within which we live as a device we use to provide ‘perpetual opportunism’, as they are always with us. The authors show how the smartphone is more than an ‘app device’ and explore differences between what people say about smartphones and how they use them. The smartphone is unprecedented in the degree to which we can transform it. As a result, it quickly assimilates personal values. In order to comprehend it, we must take into consideration a range of national and cultural nuances, such as visual communication in China and Japan, mobile money in Cameroon and Uganda, and access to health information in Chile and Ireland – all alongside diverse trajectories of ageing in Al Quds, Brazil and Italy. Only then can we know what a smartphone is and understand its consequences for people’s lives around the world.

‘Young People and Social Media: Contemporary Children’s Digital Culture’ explores the practices, relationships, consequences, benefits, and outcomes of children’s experiences with, on, and through social media by bringing together a vast array of different ideas about childhood, youth, and young people’s lives. These ideas are drawn from scholars working in a variety of disciplines, and rather than just describing the social construction of childhood or an understanding of children’s lives, this collection seeks to encapsulate not only how young people exist on social media but also how their physical lives are impacted by their presence on social media. One of the aims of this volume in exploring youth interaction with social media is to unpack the structuring of digital technologies in terms of how young people access the technology to use it as a means of communication, a platform for identification, and a tool for participation in their larger social world. During longstanding and continued experience in the broad field of youth and digital culture, we have come to realize that not only is the subject matter increasing in importance at an immeasurable rate, but the amount of textbooks and/or edited collections has lagged behind considerably. There is a lack of sources that fully encapsulate the canon of texts for the discipline or the rich diversity and complexity of overlapping subject areas that create the fertile ground for studying young people’s lives and culture. The editors hope that this text will occupy some of that void and act as a catalyst for future interdisciplinary collections. ‘Young People and Social Media: Contemporary Children’s Digital Culture’ will appeal to undergraduate students studying Child and Youth Studies and—given the interdisciplinary nature of the collection— scholars, researchers and students at all levels working in anthropology, psychology, sociology, communication studies, cultural studies, media studies, education, and human rights, among others. Practitioners in these fields will also find this collection of particular interest.

The essays in this volume are written by clinicians, psychologists, sociologists, educators, parents and de-transitioners. Contributors demonstrate how ‘transgender children and young people’ are invented in different medical, social and political contexts: from specialist gender identity development services to lobby groups and their school resources, gender guides and workbooks; from the world of the YouTube vlogger to the consulting rooms of psychiatrists; from the pharmaceutical industry to television documentaries; and from the developmental models of psychologists to the complexities of intersex medicine. Far from just investigating how they are invented the authors demonstrate the considerable psychological and physical harms perpetrated on children and young people by transgender ideology, and offer tangible examples of where and how adults should intervene to protect them.

There are not many books about how people get younger. It doesn’t happen very often. But Ageing with Smartphones in Ireland documents a radical change in the experience of ageing. Based on two ethnographies, one within Dublin and the other from the Dublin region, the book shows that people, rather than seeing themselves as old, focus on crafting a new life in retirement. Our research participants apply new ideals of sustainability both to themselves and to their environment. They go for long walks, play bridge, do yoga and keep as healthy as possible. As part of Ireland’s mainstream middle class, they may have more time than the young to embrace green ideals and more money to move to energy-efficient homes, throw out household detritus and protect their environment. The smartphone has become integral to this new trajectory. For some it is an intimidating burden linked to being on the wrong side of a new digital divide. But for most, however, it has brought back the extended family and old friends, and helped resolve intergenerational conflicts though facilitating new forms of grandparenting. It has also become central to health issues, whether by Googling information or looking after frail parents. The smartphone enables this sense of getting younger as people download the music of their youth and develop new interests. This is a book about acknowledging late middle age in contemporary Ireland. How do older people in Ireland experience life today? Praise for Ageing with Smartphones in Ireland 'An innovative and thorough description and analysis of how one small piece of technology has changed the way Irish people live their lives.' Tom Inglis, Professor Emeritus of Sociology in University College Dublin

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed proceedings of the 9th International Conference on e-Infrastructure and e-Services for Developing Countries, AFRICOMM 2017, held in Lagos, Nigeria, in December 2017. The 19 full papers, 12 short papers and 5 workshop papers were carefully selected from 81 submissions. The papers were presented in eight sessions: e-government, network and load management, digital inclusion, knowledge extraction, representation and sharing, networks and communications, ICT applications for development, decision support, e-business and e-services, internet measurement.