The Mobile Youth

By Graham Brown

10 Years of research.

10 Stories revealing the emotional relationship between young people and their mobile phones from the world's leading authority of youth mobile culture, Graham Brown.

Mobile Youth will take you on a journey through the deserts of Saudi Arabia, the urban explosion of Tokyo, and the dangerous alleyways of Rio di Janeiro.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Graham Brown
• Release date: Oct 14, 2012
• ISBN: 9781480024342

Book preview

The Mobile Youth

Voices of the Mobile Generation

By Graham Brown

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Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2012 Graham Brown. All rights are reserved.

The right of Graham Brown to be identified as author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in retrieval system, copied in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise transmitted without written permission from the publisher. You must not circulate this book in any format.

Published: 1st Oct 2012 Publisher: mobileYouth

www.GrahamDBrown.com

www.mobileYouth.org

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1: ANHUI, CHINA

CHAPTER 2: HACHIKO EXIT, SHIBUYA JAPAN

CHAPTER 3: POKEBERU – TOKYO, JAPAN

CHAPTER 4: BLUE MOON MULITA, VENICE BEACH, USA

CHAPTER 5: CIGARETTES vs. MOBILES

CHAPTER 6: LONG ISLAND, USA

CHAPTER 7: SAUDI ARABIA

CHAPTER 8: LANCASTER COUNTY, USA

CHAPTER 9: VOZ DA COMUNIDADE, BRAZIL

CHAPTER 10: CHINA WEIBO, CHINA

ABOUT GRAHAM BROWN

INTRODUCTION

I’ve been working in the communications industry since the late 90s, back in the days when 9.6kbps was considered a good connection speed and mobile phones were executive toys used to make phone calls. How times have changed.

If there’s one thing that I could share from my experience it would be this: communications isn’t an industry, it’s what we do in our everyday lives. That’s why this book isn’t about technology, it’s about people. If we want to understand mobile technology and its bright future, we need to first appreciate the stories of those changing it right here today. And that starts with the youth.

I spent the best part of a decade traveling the world on a quest to find these stories and I’m excited to be able to share some of them with you here, in this book.

This wouldn’t have been possible without the support of those around me who have been very helpful, and understanding of this journey. So, thanks to my colleagues and researchers: Josh Dhaliwal, Ghani Kunto, Freddie Benjamin, Maha Hafeez, Binbin Lu and Everaldo Aguiar. And a special thanks to my editor, Maxine Garcia, whose patience and eye for detail made this possible.

CHAPTER 1: ANHUI, CHINA

In the early hours of Friday April 29 2011, 17 year old high-school student Xiao Zheng returned to his family’s apartment in Anhui province in Eastern China. Without disturbing his sleeping mother, he crept into his room, placed a dusty travel bag beside his unmade bed and fell into a deep sleep.

Less than a year later, Zheng was lying in a hospital bed, lethargic and short of breath, fighting for his life as his body slowly shut down with organ failure.

As the local media unraveled Zheng’s story, a picture of modern China began to emerge. On the surface, the Zhengs were like any other aspirant Chinese family. They had uprooted themselves from their home town in search of better prospects in a bigger city. They had made sacrifices and often spent months living apart. But as every unearthed nugget of evidence helped build a clearer picture of what really happened to Xiao Zheng that day, journalists and audiences alike were less interested in the details and more in why it happened.

Anhui may have had its fair share of vices, but Zheng was a good kid who few would have gravitated towards trouble. Even so, his mother would constantly remind him of the life-damning consequences of failure. Like many of his generation, Zheng’s life was dominated by study and tests. He worked hard and achieved reasonable grades at high school. He rarely socialized: his peers described him as well-mannered and often quiet. There were never any real issues with discipline apart from an occasional argument at home that was put down to either adolescent exuberance or the absence of Zheng’s father who had to work away from home 50 weeks a year to support his family.

After being approached by a local newspaper, Zheng’s mother told a story tinged with sorrow and anger at her son’s degeneration. Perhaps she failed him by not being aware of his condition. Perhaps it was the fault of the light-touch parenting of Zheng’s itinerant father and his lack of meaningful communication with his only child. Of course, Zheng’s mother was used to the erratic behavior of a growing teenager, but when Zheng had been absent for two days with no forewarning or contact, alarm bells began to ring.

I asked my son where he had been, she said. I heard him return at a strange hour and naturally I was suspicious, but I waited until the morning to confront him in his bedroom. He didn’t answer, just stared blankly at his computer screen. It’s then I noticed his travel bag.

‘What’s in it?’ I asked. But he refused to answer me, so I grabbed it and emptied it out right there on the bed. Cash, a new iPhone and an iPad. I was shocked. Where did he get the money to buy this?

‘Is it drugs?’ I asked. He just shook his head. My mind was frantically searching for answers. Drugs, gangs, theft, gambling, prostitution? I couldn’t work out how a teenager could afford these luxuries. He spent more than my husband and I earned in a month.

Zheng’s mother went on to describe a lengthy interrogation, after which Zheng broke his silence and confessed:

My son broke down into tears. ‘Mom’ he said to me, ‘I’ve done something really stupid.’ I naturally thought he had stolen them and started panicking, worrying if the police would come to our door. But it’s then he lifted his T-shirt to reveal a large swollen scar with bright pink stitches running from his spine to his hip. I felt the blood fall out of my body. It wasn’t real. I kept thinking, ‘No! This isn’t real.’ I felt like the world was crashing down around my family.

The subsequent newspaper headlines confirmed the reality:

Teen Sells Kidney for iPad2.

Only when Shenzhen TV finally tracked down the young boy did they manage to ask the question on everyone’s lips, ‘Why?’

I wanted to buy an iPad 2, but I didn’t have the money. he told the TV crew, When I surfed the internet I found an advert posted by an agent saying they were able to pay RMB 20,000 to buy a kidney.

Black market online agents were offering money to young Chinese students to become organ donors. After making contact, Zheng made the trip to a hospital in another province and following the removal of his kidney, he returned to Anhui with around $3,300 in cash.

Local police enquiries led to Chenzhou 198 Hospital’s urological department, which, it later transpired, was not qualified to perform organ transplants. According to news sources, the department was contracted to a local Fujian businessman who subsequently vanished into the shadows from where he came.

In May 2012, Zheng was admitted to hospital with renal failure as his remaining kidney struggled to filter his body’s toxins. Not only is he now so weak that he can’t attend school, but he has discovered that he was sizably shortchanged on the deal. A black market kidney can fetch up to $160,000.

But this tale isn’t one of Zheng’s personal losses. According to the Chinese Ministry of Health, there are 1.5 million organ transplant requests every year, but only 10,000 of these are performed legally. Many people travel overseas, but significant numbers engage with the underworld to provide cheaper and quicker fixes. China’s black market organ trade has always had a supply of desperate donors: from poverty stricken rural families to indebted gamblers. But just as the country’s miraculous economic growth is providing new options to those without hope, it’s also teeing up a new set of potential donors: the youth. Students were easy prey; they were young, slightly foolish and... just look at the Retina display on the new iPad!

By the time today’s Chinese school children graduate, their country will be the world’s largest economy. This future is built in the workshops of the world: in the provinces of old Canton where our 42" Plasma LCD TVs, Macbook Airs and mobile phones are made. This is a future where technology provides economic opportunities and should be a dependable servant for this generation and their children.

Yet, in their quest to meet the world’s demand for technology, families are leaving children in the care of grandparents so that the breadwinners can move to bigger cities in search of work. In provinces like Anhui, there are 138 boys for every 100 girls at primary school. Nobody asks why there are so few girls, the statistics are clear. The necessity for digital progress is steamrolling everything analogue: the villages, the old Hutong communities and traditional family relationships.

Yu Hai,