Uses are concentrated around the following activities: personal communication, search for information, and leisure.
Information
Looking up information is by far the most common activity in all the countries:
more than 9 young Europeans in 10 say they use search engines sometimes, often or very often (highest: United Kingdom and Quebec: 98%; lowest: Greece 81%). The French study (Bevort & Bréda, 2006) demonstrates that youth do not systematically use search engines for finding information, but go to sites they are already familiar with. The Danish study (Tufte, Rasmussen, & Christensen, 2006) underlines the fact that the youth in the sample group consider Google and search engines to be synonymous. This fact is established in all the countries.
Communication
Online communication continues to be popular. Seven out of ten European youth use Instant messaging (MSN) and electronic mail. Messenger is what they use most frequently: 42% use it very regularly as opposed to 23% for e-mail.
Table 1. Declare to have used the Internet
Quebec 100%
Estonia 99%
Denmark 98%
UK 98%
France 96%
Poland 96%
Portugal 96%
Belgium 93%
Greece 89%
Italy 85%
© Mediappro, 2006
The study also reveals sensitive differences between countries. Instant messaging (very closely linked to the availability of equipment, particularly the presence of a high speed Internet connection in the home) is used by 63% of Estonians, as opposed to only 12% of Greeks; 20% of Estonian households were equipped with high speed Internet in 2004, vs. no homes in Greece (Eurostat 2004). “Greek students ignore or are not interested in basic Internet functions, such as MSN, e-mail, personal pages, blogs” (Aslanidou & Ikonomou, 2006). In Quebec, youth used electronic mail and instant messaging much more than in Europe: 80% and 90% respectively either often or very often. More than half the participants stated they wrote SMS messages often or very often (36% very often) and young Quebecers most of all (73%).
Instant messaging is used, above all, to stay in touch with friends (62% of the Euro- pean youth, 89% in Quebec) rather than one’s family (14% claim to use this method of communication with their parents). Instant messaging has supplanted chat rooms in all the countries: two thirds of youth claimed to have never or very rarely visited chat rooms, in that they prefer to communicate with their friends rather than with strangers. Instant messaging enables them to contact people of their choosing and their address books can contain more than 50 names (30% of youth). According to the Quebec study (Piette, Pons, & Giroux, 2007),
The core contact group is always composed of a restricted number of people: close friends or family. However, the circle expands by integrating other relations that are more or less close. Even if one is not communicating with a lot of people, contacts are kept on file as a permanent link to the different relations established over time.
This network also reflects the young person’s ability to reach out to others and helps to define their personality. The names appearing on their MSN Messenger list takes on great significance, as it represents marks of their own identity and lays out the crucial steps of their socialisation.
Table 2. Activities on the Internet (sometimes + often + very often)
Search Engines E-Mail Instant Messenger Chat Rooms Downloading
Belgium 95% 74% 81% 28% 58%
Denmark 92% 66% 87% 26% 50%
Estonia 90% 69% 88% 33% 73%
France 94% 67% 69% 32% 49%
Greece 81% 46% 39% 41% 65%
Italy 86% 59% 49% 33% 59%
Poland 91% 62% 75% 34% 67%
Portugal 95% 69% 77% 38% 60%
Quebec 99% 94% 93% 58% 79%
UK 98% 81% 78% 20% 60%
Average 91% 66% 71% 32% 60%
© Mediappro, 2006
Instant messaging is an important vector of socialisation. For a significant number of young people, it represents the contentment of feeling connected to their network of friends, even from home. The French study observes that electronic media often contributes to appeasing relationships within the family. It can enable some young people to reconcile their double family life if they live in re-composed families, or for those who have left their community or country of origin. These methods of com- munication can equally attenuate internal struggles that young people experience, by allowing them to take on childhood or teen-age activities, with these same tools.
Of young people, 95%, have their own mobile phone (highest: Italy 98%; lowest:
France 87%). It is very clear that they see these as vitally important to their lives, something they would find it difficult to live without. A majority of them consider it important to be connected with their friends all the time. The situation is completely different in Quebec, where only 4 young people in 10 have their own mobile phone, and very few of them send text messages (22%).
Mobile phones were mainly used in Europe to communicate with friends, includ- ing planning events, telling someone they are thinking of them, or gossiping.
With the exception of Estonia, where calling is more popular than texting, they are more likely to send text messages (79%) than to call (65%). One reason for this is financial: sending a text message is clearly cheaper than a phone call (72%
of the young people agree with this affirmation). They also use text messages for planning activities and informing their parents, and to tell someone that they are thinking about them. There is some evidence (as noted in the UK and Portuguese interviews, for instance) that they value the distance provided by texting, which makes difficult communication easier. The Danish interviews suggested that the Table 3. Declare to have their own mobile phone
Denmark 98%
Italy 98%
Estonia 97%
Portugal 97%
UK 96%
Belgium 95%
Greece 94%
Poland 90%
France 88%
Quebec 41%
© Mediappro, 2006
older age group use phones for flirting, and also appreciate the distance afforded by texting to reduce embarrassment.
There is minimal use of other functions of mobile phones such as photography, image-sending of mobile gaming. There is almost no interaction between the cell phone and other media, for instance, for transferring pictures onto a computer or for participating in contests or television, radio, or Internet games.
Other Activities
If communication holds an important place in the habits of youth aged 12 to 18, they also frequently devote themselves to the Internet for a host of other accompanying activities:
• Downloading material from the Internet is widely-practised: 61% say that they download a range of material from the Internet sometimes (17%), often (18%), or very often (26%). Strikingly, 44% of the young people said that they download music even when it is forbidden. Awareness and regulation concerning downloading, strongly differs from one country to the next. When such rules exist, the youth take different positions, but generally believe that pirating is acceptable for personal use.
• Music or online radio programmes are very popular: 67% of young people listen sometimes (21%), often (20%), or very often (26%).
• The number playing online or network games seems small: only 18% of them say that they play frequently or very frequently, though again this varied Table 4. Consequences on cultural practices
Less TV Less reading More music
Belgium 43% 20% 38%
Denmark 31% 23% 45%
Estonia 49% 40% 62%
France 40% 17% 40%
Greece 24% 16% 40%
Italy 17% 11% 44%
Poland 50% 20% 45%
Portugal 34% 29% 45%
UK 39% 29% 44%
Average 36% 23% 45%
© Mediappro, 2006
considerably between countries. For instance, 30% in Denmark, 26% in the UK, but only 11% in Poland. In Quebec, more than one of two declare to be an online gamer. However, this may represent a considerable rise in use over the last few years.
• Creating their own content is much less widely-practised than forms of com- munication. For instance, 18% of young people say that they have a personal site and 18% a blog. A blog is quite popular in Belgium (38%), Quebec (35%), and France (25%), while in some cases, young people seemed uncertain what a blog was (one-third of the Danish sample, for instance). The Belgian study (De Smedt, Geeroms, Verniers, & De Theux, 2006) observes that the life-span of young people’s blogs is typically very short, while the French and Quebec studies note that a large proportion of blogs owned by young people are dor- mant.