November 5th, 2008
Check It Out: Priyanka Matanhelia’s Blog on Mobile Phones & Millenials
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Even as I’m painfully aware of the myth of leapfrogging, I’m endlessly fascinated by how young people in urban India have embraced mobile phones.
I have been able to persuade new friend Priyanka Matanhelia to blog about the findings of her doctoral research on mobile phone usage amongst Indian youth and she is off to a quick start.
Consider her post on SMS romance in India where she references some interesting sources like the 2002 Asia Times story titled “India’s Love Affair with Hi-Tech Flirting” and the 2002 India Today story titled “Love, Sex and SMS” —
In most cases, hi-tech flirting - often punctuated with smileys and winking ‘emoticons’ - is a private display of affection. You can hear them in pubs, meetings, seminars, fashion shows, sit-down dinners, drawing rooms, even in bedrooms. The buzz of the SMS has become an omnipresent, everyday rhythm, sometimes the secretive smiles giving away the frenzied exchanges between couples even as they sit in the same room watching a fashion show or attending a corporate conference. Some users confess that they spend a good part of the night making SMS love. It is indicative of a paradigm shift in personal communication among Indians, for many of whom explicit talk about love and sex is restrained by conscious cultural reminders, but continues to simmer inside.
