Teenagers' Use Of Mobile Media As Practices Of Social Inequality

Mobile media have become a fundamental part of adolescents’ everyday lives. Serving as “permanent digital companions” and taken for granted by its users, mobile phones and internet capable smartphones are deeply embedded in peer interactions. Mobile media usage encompasses both mediatized interactions and face-to-face-interactions related to media, creating different technosocial situations in which specific social rules and interaction orders are generated.

In the context of qualitative research (group discussions, interviews and media diaries), respondents (aged 12-18) gave valuable insights about such situations, focusing on interactional routines and conflicts as well as social expectations towards media (related) interactions. When looking at new media sociologically it is firstly necessary to question the associated social norms being negotiated by users and its implications for interaction orders. Secondly, it is instructive to scrutinize to what extent media (related) practices produce and reproduce social inequalities.

Deriving from the respondents’ narratives, it is argued that mobile media on one hand facilitate new forms of pairing and bonding within peer groups, but on the other hand reveal and amplify processes of social exclusion. Finding them faced with certain constraints, expectations and obligations with regard to mobile media, it becomes apparent that the young actors handle certain situations in various ways which are highly specific to their social background and gender. This is remarkable as teenage peers are often seen as rather inclusive collectives operating in their own logic beyond institutional or political belongings and an “unequal world” – especially when we look at studies on adolescent media usage. Indeed all respondents happened to own a mobile phone and participate in corresponding practices. Nevertheless their distinct use of mobile media mirrors social polarization within juvenile groups as they steadily (re)produce inequalities through interactions.