Having only had a few encounters with "youths" this week I’ve not had many chances to observe, however the encounters I’ve had certainly fit modern stereotypical behaviour of 'chavs'.

Mostly the young people I observed used them as mini-ghetto blasters (one even during a film… I may have ruined the research by politely telling him to turn it off).

I do find that quite a lot of young people use their phones as a form of self-expression. They play music loudly out of their phone much in the same way that the old ghetto blasters of the 80s were used (but thankfully quieter than them).

The reading talks about the concept of 'apparatgeist' or "the spirit of the machine that influences both the designs of the technology as well as the initial and subsequent significance accorded them by users, non-users and anti-users" - Katz and Aakhus (2002). You can see how this concept of apparatgeist fits in with the use and significance that mobile phones hold in this modern era.

The mobile phone has certainly evolved since the days of my lowly Nokia 3310. Instead of just a simple communications device, through convergence we get a personal organiser, games machine, portable music player and obviously a telephone all wrapped up into one small device. The spirit of the machine has changes from a communications device to something more. This device now lets the youth of today carry around a tool that can help themselves self-express to those around them (much to my ears displeasure).

Although I never witnessed it, the uses the youth of today have for mobiles is still going to be fairly similar to the old uses. As the reading suggests, there is an international culture of phone use among teens and an almost near-universal way in which people perceive communications use in their lives.

*= No young people were harmed during this research, however one was shouted at.