The Process of Domestication of Media Technology: The Lived Experience of Iranian Youth in Using Smartphones

Recent years have witnessed great changes in the field of mobile communication with the emergence of smartphones. The expansion of modern technologies is borderless and the Iranian society has also witnessed the social changes caused by media technologies. The lives of the youth, as the most accepting group when it comes to new technologies, have been affected and changed by these technologies. The present study is concerned with the process of acquisition and domestication of smartphones by the Iranian youth.
With a qualitative approach, we conducted in-depth interviews with a number of bachelor students studying in the city of Tehran and found six main categories of smartphone consumption in the personal and social lives of the interviewed Iranian youth. These categories are as follows: accessing information including looking up facts, reading news. The second category is location-based applications that include showing locations, controlling locations, and feeling safe. The third category is communicating including using social networks, using some application programs and getting detached from real communities. The fourth category called technological adaptation includes being everywhere, ease of learning, and fluidity of technology. The fifth category is individual independence. This includes independence from family and forming selective relationships. Finally, the sixth category is controlling technology consumption. It includes controlling how one’s virtual identity is represented.