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The consumption and lifestyles of young people have always been less
characterized by the “traditional” collection of material objects than
is the case for older age groups (e.g., Wilska, 2002a). Hedonism,
visibility, and open-mindedness have also been regarded as typical
of the consumption of young people. The consumption styles of young
people represent everything that theorists argue to be typical of today’s
“postmodern” lifestyles and consumption. Apart from everyday life
having become “aestheticized” (Featherstone, 1991), consumption is
regarded as much more than purchases of products and services.
Instead, consumption is to a greater degree seen as a means of self-
expression, individual identity-formation, creativity, or even art (e.g.,
du Gay, 1996; Gabriel & Lang, 1996; Giddens, 1991). Unpredictability
and the blurring of traditional styles are typical of both postmodern
consumption and new technology. Moreover, the portrait of a post-
modern consumer also includes eternal youthfulness or at least the
pursuit of it. More and more, the lifestyles and consumption patterns
of young people determine the consumption trends of the whole
stage earlier than before, and the discovery of one’s “own style”
becomes important at a very early age. Thus, the pressures for keeping
up with the “legitimate” styles have never been as strong as they are
now. According to Klein (1999) and Quart (2003), the logos and
brands of products have become ever more important for young con-
sumers. However, Finland is still behind the United States and Western
Europe in terms of the development of consumerism and the consumer
society (Wilska, 1999, p. 194). As consumers, Finnish young people
clearly are different from their parents as consumers, but consumption
and brands do not yet fill their lives to the same extent as is the case
in countries with more established consumer cultures, such as Great
Britain or the United States.
According to the Finnish Youth Barometer, to be “trendy” was
the most important purchase criterion for only two per cent of young
respondents aged 18–30. The most important criteria were quality,
price, and sustainability. Moreover, 80 per cent of the respondents
thought that when choosing products, they were unaffected by the
opinions of their peers (Youth Barometer, 2001, publ. 2002). A recent
commercial study also indicates that young people do not have very
affectionate relationships to brands (Norrena, 2002). However, it is
obvious that Finnish young people have many different consump-
tion styles.
These are the main issues on which this article aims to shed
light empirically, using survey data on Finnish young people aged
16–20.
The data used in this study are derived from the survey “Consumer
Cultures of Young People in the Information Society” which was
carried out in Finnish schools in the spring of 2001 (Autio & Wilska,
2001). The target group of the survey was young people aged 16–20
in upper secondary schools, vocational schools, and other middle-level
educational institutes throughout Finland. Upper secondary schools
included both “ordinary” schools and those that were specialized in
science, technology, and environmental studies. Other educational
institutions in our sample included middle-level business schools,
schools of technology, schools of social services and vocational
schools. The schools were located in cities, small towns, and the coun-
tryside, in both wealthy and deprived areas. The questionnaires were
filled out during school lessons, under supervision. The final sample
size was 637. There were slightly more girls (55%) than boys (45%)
in the sample.
The main themes of the survey questionnaire given to the young
respondents were their consumption and general economic well-being,
their self-perceived consumption styles, use of the mobile phone,
attitudes towards technology and the information society, and attitudes
towards environmental and ethical issues in relation to consumer
choices. The respondents were also asked about the possession and
use of different goods and services, as well as about how they pre-
dicted their futures as consumers.
In this article, I first look into the general structure of the con-
sumption patterns of young people and their self-perceptions as
consumers. Then I scrutinize their use of the mobile phone and finally
focus on the connection between mobile phone use, perceived con-
sumption style, gender, and other possibly significant background
variables.
446 Terhi-Anna Wilska
TABLE I
Self-Perceived Consumption Styles
Mean 1 2 3 4 5
ments for individualism on the one hand and pressures of the peer
group on the other (see, e.g., Gronow, 1997). This applies in partic-
ular to young people who are right in the middle of the process of
constructing their consumer identities.
It is not surprising that so many of the respondents regarded them-
selves as slightly more frugal and environmentally conscious than
the average. In general, Finnish people tend to see themselves as
less materialistic than “the others.” In a “Finland 1999” lifestyle
survey, most consumers thought that they spent less than others on
almost everything (Wilska, 2002b, p. 199). This is what Lunt and
Livingstone call cognitive resistance: To consciously distance oneself
from the “heavy spenders” is a coping strategy in a rapidly changing
material culture (Lunt & Livingstone, 1992, pp. 155–156). Although
this kind of resistance is more typical of older consumers, even for
young people the “ideal” consumer is still someone who aims at saving
money and spends frugally (Autio & Wilska, 2003; Wilska, 2002b),
an ideal the old generation wilfully passes on to the new.
However, an interesting finding in the Finland 1999 survey was that
the use of ICT is generally regarded as “legitimate” consumption: It
is something people regard as useful and innovative. Thus, people
“dare” to admit that they spend more money on ICT than they believe
other people do (Wilska, 2002b, pp. 199–200). For instance, the atti-
tudes of parents towards purchasing mobile phones for their offspring
are generally positive, and phones are commonly bought for children
as young as seven years of age. One should note that for the youngest
children, the phone is usually intended as a “lifeline,” even if the
Mobile Phone Use of Young People 449
The different ways of using a mobile phone, as well as its social and
cultural meanings, were examined with a set of statements that
TABLE II
Respondents’ Use of the Account Control and Self-Assessed Ability to Save Money
(Per cent)
TABLE III
Factor Analysis of Mobile Phone Use Styles
“Thrifty use” factor, the use of the phone is restricted to the neces-
sary minimum.
By examining the factor scores for each respondent, a crude
estimate of the relative size of the various user groups can be obtained.
In order to reduce the error variance, the factor scores to be investi-
gated here were formed by weighing and summing only the highly
loaded variables for the particular factor (with loadings higher than
0.35) and saved as standardized factor scores to make them compa-
rable for further analyses (see Tabachnick & Fidell, 2001, p. 626).
Then the number of respondents who had their highest factor scores
for that particular factor was counted. One can see in Table IV that
it was most common to have the highest estimated factor score on
the “Thrifty” factor (40% of the respondents). About one third had the
highest score on the “Trendy” factor and about one fourth on the
“Addictive” factor.
However, there could obviously be respondents who had high scores
on more than one factor. It was also likely that some respondents
had low scores on all factors. In order to find more distinctive groups
of respondents, new groups were formed by selecting only those who
had not only their highest score, but at least a value of +0.5 on that
particular factor, as well as a low (less than +0.5) or negative score
on the other factors. Table IV shows that when using this catego-
rization, the size of each group groups diminished by around 15
percentage units. The “Thrifty” group diminished the least, and still
came to include over one fourth of the respondents. The “Trendy” and,
in particular, the “Addictive” user groups shrank relatively more and
were thus more likely to overlap with other groups.
It is obvious that neither the addictive use of the phone nor tech-
nology enthusiasm were the most distinctive features of the mobile
TABLE IV
Relative Size of the Three Groups “Addictive Users,” “Trendy Users,” and “Thrifty
Users”
TABLE V
The Relationship Between Mobile Phone Use Styles, Gender, and Consumer Types
Shown by MANOVA
B B B
Gender
(Wilks’ lambda F = 22.92***)
Girl 310 00.25 –0.37
Boy 237 00 (a) 00 (a)
0F 09.13** 21.25*** 02.83
Trend-consciousness
(Wilks’ lambda F = 6.58***)
1 Trend-conscious 029 01.06 01.45 –1.06
2 174 00.93 00.97 –0.78
3 241 00.72 00.63 –0.43
4 079 00.42 00.22 –0.19
5 “Laggard” 024 00 (a) 00 (a) 00 (a)
0F 08.45*** 17.94*** 10.26***
Impulsiveness
(Wilks’ lambda F = 3.65***)
1 Impulsive shopper 045 00.61 00.66 –0.80
2 130 00.27 00.19 –0.20
3 152 00.13 00.27 –0.31
4 162 –0.15 –0.02 –0.13
5 Prudent consumer 058 00 (a) 00 (a) 00 (a)
0F 07.01*** 05.03** 05.34***
Environmental consciousness
(Wilks’ lambda F = 1.94*)
1 Environmentally conscious 022 –0.34 00.56
2 202 –0.16 00.61
3 239 –0.02 00.44
4 070 00.10 00.35
5 “Free rider” 014 00 (a) 00 (a)
0F 01.71 02.55* 02.86*
Gender Differences
The results suggest that the use of the mobile phone is not an isolated
part of the lifestyles of young people, but is very clearly linked to
general consumption patterns and lifestyles (see also Oksman &
Mobile Phone Use of Young People 457
with age. One reason for this may be that the computers used by
girls are usually owned by their brothers, fathers, and boyfriends
(Kangas, 2002, p. 151). According to our survey data, 48 per cent
of the boys had a computer of their own, but only 18 per cent of the
girls. A personal internet connection was held by 28 per cent of the
boys but only 7 per cent of the girls. In another survey, Suoninen
(2003) found almost the same results (p. 57).
Among very young mobile phone users the differences are smaller.
According to Suoranta and Lehtimäki (2003), the use of the various
functions of the mobile phones (such as calling, sending messages,
composing ring tones, playing games, buying logos) is rather similar
for girls and boys aged 7–10 (pp. 34–35). We don’t know how per-
sistent this uniformity is, though. Whether the differences between
genders melt away, or whether girls turn into traditional “female” users
when they reach youth and adulthood, remains to be seen.
nowadays marked with the new N-sign, most of young people’s leisure
time consumption still consists of other things than the use of ICT
products. Despite the rapid growth of ICT-related consumption, for
young people clothes, private vehicles, fast food, alcohol, and leisure
travel are still at least as important ways of expressing lifestyles and
identities.
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THE AUTHOR