The majority of young people of the ‘digital generation’ in the UK have fully engaged with the mobile telephone revolution. Nearly all young British people aged 16–24 years have access to one or more mobile phones (Ofcom 2008). There has been a great deal of media attention focused on young people’s mobile phone use, often in the form of ‘moral panics’. For example, there are concerns about the impact of everyday use of abbreviated text language, fears about a mobile bullying epidemic in schools, and worries about the rise of ‘happy slapping’.
Often, these accounts do not focus on the positive aspects of mobile phone use, such as its role in safety or social connectedness. Moreover, recent research on young people and mobile phones tends to talk about young people as a homogeneous group, rather than looking at different cultures of mobile phone use.
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