Mobile Phone Use By High School Students And Its Impact

With the development of human society, the emergence of each new medium will bring about tremendous changes and impact on people's daily life. In the 21st century the mobile phones are rapidly and widely used, which become a hot issue for discussion and study. According to the statistics report of China Network Information Center, it shows that high school students are one of most active groups in mobile phone users during recent years. They are in a critical period of socialization, and are easily influenced by the outside. It is an important pointer for the students who are interested in new things and easy to accept the modern tools to understand the use of mobile phones. However, the domestic researches on the usage of mobile phones for high school students are currently not systematic. Therefore, this paper selects high school students in Guangzhou as a research object, under the theoretical framework of the Uses and Gratifications Theory to expand the study on three levels: First, why students need to use phones--the use of motivation; the second is what students do with phones--the use of behavior; Third, the impact of using mobile phones.By choosing samples of different ages, different depths of usage and different preferences of usage, this paper adopted a structured in-depth interview, combined with participant observation. Through data compilation and analysis, the study found that high school students use mobile phones primarily to meet the safety and security needs, social needs, esteem needs and self-actualization, and the need intensity is relevant to ages and how long they use mobile phone. In the mobile phone use of behavior, it mainly includes the social interaction, media-related use for Internet surfing and personal entertainment, as well as the age-related use. The study indicates that students develop a social network, construct a "private domain" allowing students to get freedom from their parents, and shape the information space providing a platform for social participation. In addition, the consumption of mobile phone stands for social image and status, which accelerates the growth and socialization of the individuals.The study found that in the specific social context of Guangzhou and under its political and economic background, high school students use the cell phone has its own rituals. They will maintain their social network "always on online", which also result in the use of space and time confusion, and the"fragmentation"communication context.