Mobile Me and You — Instant Messaging Apps: Southern Europe Edition (Part 6)
We live in a society where mobile phones have won a permanent place in our lives. Nowadays, they seem to have become a necessity for most people and especially for millennials. Thus, it has been a very interesting task for us to explore the “relationship” that young people have with their mobile phones, in the framework of New Consuming Trends course of Panteion University, taught by our professor Mrs Betty Tsakarestou. During this course our team participated on a research project called Mobile Me and You concerning mobile collaborative consumption and sharing economy that are now on the rise. My team specifically chose to focus our part of the research on the use of instant messaging apps.
The best thing to do, was to have interviews with university students around Europe and Latin America, so as to find out their mobile habits and thoughts. In this article, we will see the “Mobile Me & You” stories of three students from South Europe, Julie, Beatrice and Emma.
Julie is a 20 year old university student from Greece, who studies Mathematics. She uses her mobile about 4–5 hours per day, and she grabs it the moment she wakes up, to answer messages. During the day, she uses her phone a lot to speak with her parents and her friends that are living in other cities. If we took her phone away, she could live without it and claims that “it makes our lives easier, but it’s not vital”. It’s not like oxygen for her and she is sure that she can make it without it.She also doesn’t get the people that their mobile is a part of their hand, but she jokes that when she plays a game on her phone, it feels very vital for her!
Scheduling apps aren’t a thing for Julie, because she says that she just remember things and for college she prefers taking notes in the classroom, than keeping or searching something through her phone. She doesn’t use, in particular, any complementary gadgets, only hands-free, because she listens to music all the time. For sure she prefers her mobile over other devices, she doesn’t own a tablet and she feels “useless” with her computer, so she says “I can use my computer very easily, to do something, but with my computer, we’re like strangers!”
She likes to share stuff with others, especially photos, videos and thoughts and wants to exchange opinions through them. She uses Facebook, mostly and Instagram: “Everybody has Instagram, so I don’t have a choice”. Her opinion is, that “if you want to communicate with a lot of people, you have to follow their way”. She likes Instagram for stories, although she finds them stupid in a way, but in general they are fun and she follows makeup influencers, because it’s a topic that she’s interested in.
Something really interesting that she pointed was: “I feel sad, because I didn’t use Facebook for many many years and everybody was telling me to and when the time came, everybody was on Instagram. So, did I really have to had one? I can live without social media, because all these things will die one day, as technology improvises”. When Julie is with her friends, she doesn’t use her mobile and she finds it annoying and insulting if someone does. She actually hates it if someone is outside with a company and is occupied with his mobile, because she says that “we’re outside to have fun and make memories and if you want to look at your phone all the time, just stay home”. So, she shares the same habits with her friends about mobile usage and says that “ don’t need someone as a friend, that needs his phone more than me”.
Julie doesn’t think that we need mobile phones to be connected or disconnected, because it’s all about the human lives. She feels connected, because she lives the real life and it’s not like when she doesn’t have her phone she feels disconnected for any reason. In the terms of sharing apps, she has used Airbnb and found it really helpful, but in the terms of trusting strangers, she doesn’t like it, but with this kind of apps, it’s inevitable. She points that “you wish that something won’t happen to you.
Moving on to the Instant Messaging Apps part, she says that they help us to be connected, but it’s up to us. Her favorite apps are Facebook Messenger and Viber, but she prefers Messenger, because it jumps in front of you and you don’t forget to answer. She creates group chats and she jokes that at this point of her life, is the leader of useless group chats! She finds them very helpful for communicating at the same time with a lot of people, especially her friends from the university. She pointed that Instant Messaging Apps are helping you, because you feel your friends closer to you.
Julie admitted that she used Snapchat for some days, but she didn’t like it. She actually, downloaded it just for the hype, because she uses the Instant Messaging Apps that her friends are using. Also, she doesn’t use apps for academic or professional reasons, because she claims that she has basic technological knowledge and prefers the more traditional ways.
Her general thoughts about mobile phones and Instant Messaging Apps were: “Mobile phones are really useful and important, because they’re making our lives easier. But it should be a thing that helps us in our lives, not to help us live a life.” “Through Instant Messaging Apps I just have to communicate”, and closes with and advice: “live your life, because the moments are the ones that stay. The memories make us, so if you look back, you should see a real life and not a mobile”.
The next interviewee is Emma, who is 22 years old, she is from Spain and lives in Greece the past few months and studies Journalism. She wouldn’t want to know how many hours she spends on her phone, because they are for sure a lot and if someone took it away from her, she would feel very anxious, but, eventually, she would get used to it. She doesn’t use scheduling apps and she uses her phone for journalism, which is her profession. Emma says that “it’s very important for a journalist to be in Twitter and Instagram”, so she uses these apps for professional reasons and she also uses Twitter for informing and to see what other journalists are posting. Herself posts pictures of events in her profile, because she believes that if you’re looking for a job, via your profile they will hire you from what you are posting.
She uses her computer only for work and favors her mobile over other devices: “with phone, I can do everything. It’s the only device I need right now”. She shares a lot of content like pictures and videos of the places she goes, with her friends and family. She tries not to use her phone while she’s with others, but sometimes she might check something. On Instagram she follows journalists, that may be considered influencers and also follows women that post pictures of their families, because she likes babies. As long as the habits that Emma and her friends are sharing, are quite different when it comes to the non-journalists, because they don’t have Twitter.
About Instant Messaging Apps, she said that her favorite is WhatsApp, in which shares the most: texts, pictures, videos and documents. “It’s easy and useful”, she says. WhatsApp helps her to stay in touch with her friends and family in Spain. The time that she lives in Greece, she realized that a lot of people use Viber and Messenger, so she uses them too. She also creates groups, especially if she has to set a date with different people. She believes that Instant Messaging Apps help you be in touch with people that are far away from you, because through them, you can really know everything. Although she says that they are vital for her, she doesn’t use them for professional reasons, she prefers email instead, because it’s more formal.
Last but not least, is Beatrice, a 21 year old Italian, who studies foreign literatures. She admits that she’s using her mobile all the time for music and pictures and spends about 2 hours on social media, especially on Instagram. She admits that she never tried to eliminate her screen time, because the idea of it, scares her a lot. If we took her phone away, her reaction wouldn’t be positive, but she would understand the importance of living life, without mobile and she would appreciate every moment.
She prefers her mobile over other devices, because it’s more practical and she also uses it when she’s with other people, especially when she’s annoyed or if she’s not having a good time. Her mobile makes her feel connected, because through it she knows what other people are doing at the same time, but it also makes her feel disconnected, since she prefers physical contact. The most useful apps for her are the university one, the app from which she checks the bus station and the arrivals from the train and apps for discounts in restaurants or shopping centers. About sharing apps and sharing information, she said that she has used a car sharing app in Rome and has a lot of anxiety for online payments, because it’s not always safe to give your information. She loves online shopping, instead and her favorite places are Zara and Pull and Bear.
Her favorite Instant Messaging Apps are WhatsApp, Instagram, Snapchat and Messenger. She started using them about 12–13 years old and her first one was Messenger and then were WhatsApp and Instagram. She says that “everybody uses Instagram, because it is more cool and WhatsApp is the most popular Instant Messaging App. Her interactions are messages with friends about literature and university, but also ironic messages with stickers and emojis and they are talking about everything, like they were face to face.
About sharing the same habits with friends, Beatrice says that has a lot of friends, who are excessive with phone use, they post a lot and prefer chatting, instead of going out. She creates group chats a lot for university and to plan a party. Beatrice follows many influencers and her favorite Italian ones are Chiara Ferragni and Beatrice Valli, but she also follows American ones. She follows them, because they are giving her inspiration for makeup, clothes and she sees them as role models.
She loves Instant Messaging Apps, because they help her keep in contact with people of other countries, but also she is able to send and receive messages in a very fast time. She say that they are “a fast way to keep in contact, exchange opinions and share information”.
As we can see, the millennials in the southern Europe countries, have different perceptions about mobile phones and Instant Messaging Apps. For some of them, they are vital, others can live without them. Facebook Messenger is a common application in all countries and it is very popular and preferable. WhatsApp from the other hand, is very popular too, but not in Greece, where Viber is the second most popular one, after Messenger. Even though Twitter, isn’t an option for anyone now as an Instant Messaging App, it seems to be a professional tool for journalists around the world, so as to promote and inform for news. Influencers are also a topic that southern Europe girls are loving, as all of them are following, each one for her one interests.
These interviews were only two of the ten that we conducted for this project. If you found them interesting you can continue your reading on the other articles of myself or the ones of my teammates Athena Styllou and elena kouki on the links below.
