MobileActive.org

"Doing the Internet:" How Young People in a Slum in India are Using the Internet on their Mobile Phones

While there's often discussion about the promise of mobiles for development, an important aspect of developing projects that focus on mobile tech is a deep understanding of how individuals already use their mobile devices. "Anthropology, Development and ICTs: Slums, Youth and the Mobile Internet in Urban India" takes a close look at how young people in India use their mobile phones.

Drawn from interviews with twenty randomly selected young people in the Hafeezpet slum of Hyderabad, the study looks at how they use the mobile web. The mobile Internet has become a key feature in the participants' days, with a heavy focus on games, music, movies, and other entertainment options. The authors explain that the focus on entertainment is a new way to look at how ICT4D can reach populations. They write:

...The ICT for development community tends to privilege what are and what are not desired/legitmate developmental impacts of technology. [...] From an anthropological perspective, this distinction is arbitrary, even harmful, because it unnecessarily blinkers the ICTD community into looking only at a narrow slice of the full range of human experience of the people who are using the technologies.

In the study, young people describe in their own words how they access the Internet with their mobile phones, discussing the fun of discovering new games, music, and videos. Participants who discovered new music or games would share them with friends, and those with higher-end phones would pass along discoveries to those with lower-end phones. The participants referred to using the web on their mobile phones as "doing the Internet," as it was viewed as a social and entertaining activity.