Mizuko Ito

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Mizuko Ito

• Japanese Youth
• and the Mobile Internet

Annenberg Center for Communication, USC Keio
University Shonan Fujisawa Campus
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Presentation Overview

• Overview of Japanese youth and keitai (mobile
  phones)
• Particularities of youth demographic
• Ethnographic examples of new social patterns and
  norms in keitai usage
• Focus on mobile email/messaging

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Statistical Overview

• Keitai ownership
• Students (12 years and up) 75.7
• Overall 73.7
• Subscribe to mobile internet service
• Student mobile phone users 94.3
• All mobile phone users 81
• Source Video Research Survey July 2002
• Keitai average monthly payments
• Students 7186 (59)
• Overall 5613 (46)
• Source IPSe Marketing Inc. Survey December 2002

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Mobile Email Summary

• Short message/email users
• Students 95.4
• Overall 75.2
• Over 5 messages/day
• Students 91.7
• Overall 68.1
• Teens send 2X more emails than twenty somethings
• Views message immediately
• Students 92.3
• Overall 68.1
• Source Video Research Survey July 2002

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Ethnographic Study

• Interviews with 24 high-school and college
  students in winter 2000
• Communication diary research with 17 users (8
  high school and college students) in 2002
• Focus on keitai as someplace, somewhere
  technologies

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Youth and Politics of Place

• Home context
• Freedom of action
• Spatially distanced from peers
• School context
• Limitations to social contact
• Spatially co-present
• Public Transportation and Street
• Freedom of motion
• Prohibition against voice calls on public
  transport and many restaurants

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Messaging and Mobile Email

• Used in particular places for particular kinds of
  communication
• For lightweight contact
• When unsure if recipient is available for
  communication (eg. Late night)
• When there are limits to voice calls
• Classroom, public transportation, restaurants
• Akin to note-passing, paging

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Mobile Email Peer Spaces

• Youths generally keep open channel with 2-5
  intimate friends
• Couples, in particular, maintain ongoing
  exchanges when apart
• Expectation that these friends/partners are
  always available
• Text-messaging creates virtual place of
  continuous connectivity and background awareness

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Peripheral Awareness

• Are you up?
• Im walking up the hill now
• Good night
• The TV show was awful wasnt it
• I was out drinking until 2 and just woke up

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Enhancing Co-presence

• Augmented co-presence
• This lesson is a pain
• Where are you standing?
• Try asking so and so
• Check what time the train leaves
• Extensions of co-presence
• Thanks for the lift
• I forgot to give you back the CD

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I am constantly checking my mail with the hopeful
expectation that somebody has sent me a message.
I always reply right away. With short text
messages I reply quickly so that the conversation
doesnt stall.