“It’s like I trust it so much that I don’t really check where it is I’m going before I leave”: Informational uses of smartphones among Danish youth

Abstract

This article examines the use of smartphones for instrumental information access and use among Danish youth. Based on 31 individual semistructured interviews with Danish high school students and a grounded theory approach, it finds that instrumental use of information on smartphones has become an integrated and relied on part of everyday lives of these young Danes. Near-ubiquitous access to information is found to have consequences at both individual and social levels. Individually, users are able to look up information irrespective of the time and place and respond and adapt to this information in a rapid and flexible manner: a process the article refers to as “flexible alignment.” Further, near-ubiquitous access to information may lead to a more flexible orientation among users, who come to depend on just-in-time (rather than ahead-of-time) access to information in dealing with the contingencies of everyday life. Socially, the article finds that users may become increasingly autonomous vis-à-vis the network of social contacts, as mobile access to information is no longer exclusively available through mediated person-to-person communication but can be accessed individually as well.