What is your Creative Output when it comes to your phone?
Smartphones challenge us to always stay connected, share our stories and create a unique storytelling journey, even if we are writers, journalists, doctors or accountants.
To many, mobile usage equals social media, connectivity, staying in touch with relatives and friends and meeting new ones.
To others, mobile usage equals business, emails, productivity, calendars, and appointments. A mini, digital assistant that can fit in anyone’s pocket and can ease their everyday work-life.
To some others, smartphones are devices that help them boost their creativity, create a personal, digital journal, learn new skills, broaden their horizons and sharing their talents.
To many, smartphones are all (or a bit of all) of the above. We like to socialize, we get creative, we keep up with work and we expand our skill set, even if we do not deliberately sit down to learn something new.
During the University’s winter semester at Panteion University, we challenged ourselves by our coordinator, Betty Tsakarestou, to get to discover more about how, how much, why and where different people use their phones.
How much our everyday lives have changed the past years due to smartphones?
How do we express ourselves through our mobile phone?
Why do we stay late and scroll through our Instagram feed?
How do we edit our photos and why do we care so much?
Is our phone simply an extension of our hand?
Can we use our devices to better understand ourselves?
Are smartphones advanced enough to make us forget about other devices or even assistants?
Do our peers have the same views as we do?
These and many other questions are trying to be answered by our interviews, research, and insight-studying, in relation to this semester’s course: Mobile Reputations and Collaborative Consumption in Sharing Economy by Betty Tsakarestou.
In our attempt to better understand a sharing economy that is based on open data, collaborative projects, social understanding (or as Joey would say: a connection based on giving and receiving, as well as having and sharing), we approached diverse mobile users, creatives, students and workers to learn about their habits. We also shared thoughts and findings with other teams, we analyzed data and we observed practices among our peers and ourselves.
Our goal is to look deeper into how mobile consumption works, not only in our own country but also internationally, examining people of different backgrounds and learning about their distinct characteristics when it comes to creatively expressing themselves.
While many argue that these age groups are more and more getting addicted to Instagram, Facebook, selfies and oversharing, we pursuit to feature how smartphones have made younger generations more tech-savvy, creative, innovative and have helped them to exceed not only in digital life but also in analog, everyday life.
The financial crisis and lower living standards have made millennials think creatively and turn elsewhere in order to survive the living costs of today’s situation. Jia Tolentino, staff writer at The New Yorker, in her 2017 New Yorker piece about Millennials, Where Millennials Come From, argues:
If for the baby boomers self-actualization was a conscious project, and if for Gen X — born in the sixties and seventies — it was a mandate to be undermined, then for millennials it’s more like an atmospheric condition: inescapable, ordinary, and, perhaps, increasingly toxic. A generation has inherited a world without being able to live in it. How did that happen? And why do so many people insist on blaming them for it?
With this research, we are trying to map the patterns, routines, and uses of people, mostly millennials, and put it in perspective with our own habits and knowledge of the subject.
As a team, we are attempting to comprehend the hows and whys of mobile usage by Millennials and youngsters, focusing on the creative output they provide.
Ultimately, we want to show that stereotypes are only what they sound; a stereotypical mapping of a habit and situation. There are actually many and bright examples of Mobile Usage: younger generations most probably are not going to be wrecked by smartphones and thinking out of the box is actually what can save us from mistreatment and overuse of the technology in our hands and pockets.
Our team: Danai Lyratzi, Christos Daniilidis, Frossini Drakouli, Maria Kall
