The Relation Between University Student's Mobile Phone Utilization And Social Capital

Along with the development of technology, lots of media play the role of the extension of human's body and sense. There is no need for people to join in the real networks, they can also achieve their social interaction. Thanks to the development of 3G and GPRS network signal technology, the mobile phone's functions become increasingly ample. The mobile phone is turning out to be a mobile multi-media terminal. The dual meaning from communication and sociology science which it stretches out, is affecting modern people's life style more and more.As a part of mobile phone user which has huge quantities and rapid growth, almost each university student gets a mobile phone and never lives without that. The mobile phone has the merits of excellent interactivity and convenience, it becomes a kind of important contact tools among university students and plays a key role in their interpersonal communication, thus the mobile phone will affects the social capital's accumulation of those students. With the help of Communication and Sociology Science, this paper took the university students from Shanghai, Hong Kong, Taipei and Singapore as the sample and discussed below questions: 1. The service condition of mobile phone's traditional functions and new functions which based on the mobile web among the university students.2.The university students' satisfaction situation about the interpersonal communication and mass communication function of mobile phone.3.The influences the mobile phone exerts on university students'strong ties and weak ties. 4. The relation between university students'mobile phone usage and their social interaction. 5. The relation between university students'mobile phone usage and their social trust. Besides, this paper will compare if it has difference among the four cities about those questions above.This research results show: 1.University students give more interests in mobile phone's traditional function like calling and texting than it new function. 2. University students don't care so much about the mobile phone's mass communication ability, they concern more about their family and friends' situation and the information related to themselves.3. The mobile phone utilization can influences university students' "strong" tie and "weak" connection to some extent. 4. The utilization frequency of mobile phone has some degree of positive correlation with university students' social interaction and trust. And these conclusions appear the same tendency among Shanghai, Hong Kong, Taipei and Singapore. Because limited by the internet speed, screen size and lower energy consumption CPU, the mobile phone's new function cannot competitive with the computer. Computer has a high substitutability to mobile phone on the new function aspect. Both the substitutability from computer and its own privacy trait restrict the mobile phone plays more important part in the expansion of university students' extrovert social capital. Moreover, as an adult, the university students has mature mind and thoughts, this will decrease their overly dependent on mobile phone.Although the mobile phone accesses the possibility to carry out infinite and diverse development, its communication function between close people is still valued most by mobile phone users. This paper's discussion not only deepened our understanding about the mobile phone's mew media function, but also will provide a new perspective for research in future.