Use of mobiles by South African youth

October 22nd, 2008
Africa, Uncategorized, hybrid media, m-internet

While at MobileActive 2008, I met Tino Kreutzer, an MA student in the Centre for Film and Media Studies at the University of Cape Town.  He is in the midst of gathering some really interesting data on patterns of mobile/mobile internet use among low-income teens in urban Cape Town.  Preliminary results are up on his website.

The pilot suggests that the majority of urban South Africans in this age group can and do access the Internet via their phones (83% were found to so on a typical day). The popularity of instant messaging and other Internet applications within this group suggests that their use of the Internet differs from those whose access is primarily via desktop devices. This finding has significant implications for mobile media and learning applications, as does the fact that a majority of students also reported gaming on their phones on a typical day (53%).

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