Mobile Me & You: marie_di

In the context of our mobile reputations of sharing economy and collaborative consumption course we were asked by our coordinator Mrs Betty Tsakarestou to examine millennials’ behaviors and their relationship with their mobile phones on a daily basis. Some of the topics that we had to put under the microscope were the time their screen time, their mobile habits, their favorite and most used apps and whether their mobile phones are their personal assistants as well.

After presenting our own behavior, our friends’ habits and some global case studies, we choose to further examine a specific target group, a community. We decided to interview millennials that might use their mobile phones’ services and the possibilities they offer as a creative output. Maria is one of them.

Maria is a 26 years old amateur photographer who is studying psychology in the university of Crete. She uses her mobile phone approximately 5 hours per day with an average of 900 pickups per week, mainly for social networking, creativity and entertainment. She has 50 apps and her top 3 are Instagram , VSCO and Spotify. She mostly uses Instagram (13 hours per week), Messenger and YouTube.

First things first when she wakes up is Instagram, checking her e-mails and her messages. She always listens to Spotify playlists when she’s taking a bath and when she takes the metro. When we asked her to check her screen time she was surprised to find out that it was only 5 hours per day when she expected it to be at least 8 hour p/d

If we took her phone she away from her she would feel that she can’t communicate and connect with people that easily and she would not choose to use her laptop for some tasks she uses her phone for. However she’s lived without her phone for 5 days and even though at first it was kind of difficult for her, at the end of this process she realized that she was less stressed and it was a good break for her.

She also sees her phone as her personal assistant. She uses her phone’s calendar, alarm and notes but she definitely prefers to write them down. When she was working she used to use slack and her phone was certainly one of the most useful tools of her job. When it comes to Uni stuff she manages to do most of her work via her phone and she always checks her e-mails and grades online. Finally transportation-wise she uses BEAT, the OASA app, google maps and she still has transportation apps of other countries she has visited.

When it comes to photography she uses the Canon app to send some demo photos to her phone. She doesn’t trust her phones camera except for uploading stories and even though sometimes she thinks that editing is much easier with mobile apps, she can sit for hours in front of photoshop on her laptop

As said before her favourite social medium is Instagram where she tries to promote her shots, she uses preview to check her profile’s consistency but she doesn’t have a strategy concerning uploading posts for stories. She doesn’t post anything on facebook and she only uses it for University updates and messenger and she is a passive user of Pinterest.

When out with friends, she might check her phone many times without any reason, but she tries not to do it. She’s not part of any community and she wouldn’t want to be. She also thinks that one can be both connected and disconnected while using his/her phone but she personally prefers face to face communication.

She’s used Airbnb many times but she wouldn’t use couch surfing or any other similar sharing platform. She doesn’t prefer buying stuff online even though she’s done it before (her camera). She also pays for e-food, BEAT, Spotify premium and tickets and she paid for VSCO.

She thinks that most Millennials share most habits and behaviors and that we’re all kind of addicted to this mobile life.

When it comes to editing she believes that no1 app is VSCO which she uses every day. She knows plenty of editing communities but she believes that the Greek ones are rather pretentious and amateur. She believes that editing is almost as important as the shot itself because it’s part of the photographer’s style. Finally someone that doesn’t know a lot about photography could maybe learn some basic stuff through editing apps but he has to do some further research.

Our Team : Christos Daniilidis Danai Lyratzi Frossini Drakouli Maria Kall