Lykke Rasch Larsen (13) and the gang meet several times a week. But something that is almost never left out is the mobile phone. – It’s always there, the girls say almost in unison. If you go back to the 2000s, there were Nokia flip phones with cash cards and thick, desktop computers that you might have had of the technological kind. In other words, one might have to choose between staying at home and surfing the net, or being out with friends and talking face to face. Youth researcher Anders Bakken at Oslo Met believes that the reason why more and more young people now meet friends outside may be that you can carry your mobile phone and social media everywhere. Anders Bakken is researcher II at NOVA, section for youth research. He thinks more people meet outside because you always have social media available now. Photo: Oslo Met The trend has reversed He has been researching young people for over 30 years. One of the things that has changed the most over time is that young people started to spend more time at home and less time out, says Bakken. – But over the past six or seven years, that trend has changed, and now it is more common among young people again, he says. This is shown by the new Ungdata survey. Lykke Rasch Larsen, Vida Elea Berg Dolmen and Signe Kvalsvik Lilleås say that they most often just “hang out” at the secondary school nearby when they are together. Photo: Remi Sagen / news Someone who has helped turn the trend around is the girl gang in Ålesund. They meet up to several times a week and think it is important. – It’s social, fun and you have a lot of fun when you’re together, says Vida Elea Berg Dolmen. – Because it can get very boring if you sit inside all the time and have finished watching everything on Netflix, says Lykke and laughs. They say that when they are out together, they often “hang out” at the nearby secondary school. – We go back and forth a bit, sit on a type of swing, go to the shop and buy something good and then we go back to school, says Lykke. – And sometimes we play truth or dare, says Vida and laughs. Photo: Screen dump / Ungdata Due to the availability of social media The researcher believes that young people meet again more often because social media is more accessible. – At the beginning of the 2000s, when the trends went down, we saw that if young people were to chat or be social online, they had to be at home because it was only possible there, says Bakken and continues: – But around 2015, things started to change . Mobile phones have become small computers that you can take with you everywhere, so you don’t have to be at home to be social online. Lykke Rasch Larsen, Vida Elea Berg Dolmen, Signe Kvalsvik Lilleås, Kaja Holsvik Øksenvåg, Johanne Tafjord Jansen and Jenny Madssen Aarseth are just some of the group who meet several times a week. Photo: Remi Sagen / news But the girls in Ålesund believe that they would have met each other just as often even if the mobile phone could not have been taken out. – But it would probably have been difficult to get more people along and not text with them, so then we might have been a bit fewer, says Signe Kvalsvik Lilleås. – The best thing about the mobile phone is that we can communicate, everywhere, says Vida. – There is quite a lot of TikTok then, says Lykke and laughs.
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Now young people are more out with friends again, but the mobile phone is always with them
