MOBILE PHONE AND TEENAGERS

Nowadays all people in different ages, social status, jobs, life style, have mobile phones. At first mobile phone was used just for dialing and communicating with others which was in separated places. The first mobile phone was just transferring sound which then this gadget had been developed by some mobile companies so that many futuristic features such as MMS, SMS, games, internet connection, video streaming, and other sophisticated features were available. Consequently, in these globalizations era teenagers take benefits of the modern features of mobile phone.

Today’s teenagers realize that the existence of mobile phone is as same as the existence of clothes for them. The cloth in social theory is one of human’s primary needs which must be fulfilled whatever the way should be taken. On the other hand cloth is part of fashion, mode, and life style which changes every season, time, and era. Cloth makes teenagers follow the fashion so that they can be the center of attention and have important role in their social community. Furthermore, teenagers need to update their image by following the newest fashion. At the time, mobile phone has same position as cloth, teenagers will follow the development of mobile phone technology and try to update their old mobile phone with the new one, the modern one, and match with recent mode and mobile phone trend. Then, it can be said that nowadays mobile phone is teenagers’ primary need. To meet the need of mobile phone, many ways have been done by teenagers, such as: asking their parents or boyfriend to buy a new mobile phone for them, depositing pocket money as much as they can do, or doing part time job to collect additional saving for their future new mobile phone. One of the worst fact teenagers do to meet their need of mobile phone is they are willing not to go to canteen to eat, stay talking with friends, and save their pocket money in order to buy the newest mobile phone.

The needs of mobile phone for teenagers have some reasons; one of them is teenagers’ needs to exist in case of cyber world relationship with their friends. Cyber world in this case can be in the form of making call, sending SMS (short message service), or any other social networking facilities which are provided. Teenagers with high economic standard, they usually like to maintain their social communication by making a call which basically needs more charge than other cyber facilities. But, nowadays teenagers do not need to be much worried or burden since there are competition among communication operators which cause the call charge cheaper than before. Teenagers with middle and low economic standard prefer to maintain their social communication by SMS. Though, some high economic standard teenagers sometimes use SMS too. SMS is a cheap and easy facility for teenagers which can be used to make short conversation, greet friends, or just to say hello or good night. Since teenagers in a decade have used to send SMS to friends, the mobile phone vendors have created the newest mobile phone technology which is provided with QWERTY keypad. For most teenagers QWERTY keypad makes them easier to type the letter in mobile phone and makes them type their SMS faster. Furthermore, the amount of SMS which is produced by QWERTY mobile phone is more the SMS produced by Candy Bar keypad mobile phone. Hence, QWERTY keypad mobile phone has become new trend since 2009.

In the past three years, teenagers have been infected by some new social networking virus called Facebook or FB and Twitter. Though some years ago there was other social network virus named Friendster, but the teenagers’ interest on social networking stronger and being trend at the time FB come to their social communication world. Many teenagers feel that they cannot live separated with their FB. They need to check their wall in FB, update their FB status, comment their friends’ status, upload their recent photograph; they will do these at least once a day. Since FB and Twitter have become a lifestyle, this condition makes the existence of these two features in mobile phone is very important. To satisfy the customers, in this case are teenagers, the vendors of mobile phone produce some types of mobile phones which are provided with FB and Twitter software so that customers will browse and use FB and twitter easily without a must to go to internet shop. With this ease, teenagers will exist more for their friends in cyber communication world. Moreover, teenagers that like to do chatting and communicating with friends in FB or twitter via mobile phone, they will be addicted with their mobile phone since they will feel that their friends are in the gadget.    

Mobile phone is as part of lifestyle for teenagers of course it cannot be separated from value of prestige. The word prestige is meant as pride, special position, or showing high social status of someone. For some teenagers, having a new popular brand mobile phone is a prestige. Some brands of mobile phones which are still in trend in years 2011 are iPhone, Nokia, and Blackberry (BB). Teenagers proud to have those three mobile phone bands are because they provide latest and futuristic features in their hardware such as their camera, unbreakable chase, QWERTY keypad or touch screen, and many sophisticated software such as multimedia, non-cable connection, games, and some social networking features. On the other side, it cannot be neglected that those mobile phones with popular brand are in expensive price as the compensation for the special features in them. Higher the price of mobile phone teenagers’ have, higher the value of prestige and luxurious of they will get. For some teenagers who have Blackberry mobile phone, the prestige is not only because of the price, indirectly they exclusively create their groups by using one of Blackberry feature, it is Blackberry messenger. The users of Blackberry can communicate with other users of BB exclusively without being interfered by other mobile phone brands. In addition, when the users of BB messenger change PIN with other user, the users will have additional prestige while other teenagers who do not have BB cannot make exclusive communication with them. Also, when teenagers are updating their status in FB or Twitter, those three popular mobile phone brands increase the prestige of their status. If the users update the status with iPhone or Blackberry mobile phone, then their FB status will be noted with “Update via iPhone” or “Update via Blackberry”. Consequently, their friends who see the note below their friends’ status will think that their friends have mobile phone with sophisticated features and expensive price.

            In conclusion, mobile phone has become valuable gadget for all teenagers. Since, it helps them in many ways such as in communication (calling, sending SMS and MMS), browsing information from internet, managing schedules, and for further purpose, brand new mobile phones can increase the owners’ social status. (Afif I.M.)