Smartphones, youth and moral panics: Exploring print and online media narratives in India

Abstract

India is a rapidly growing youth market for smartphone technology. Accompanying the spike in Indian youths’ smartphone use is a proliferation of media coverage on the purported impact of smartphones on youths’ physical, psychological, and social well-being. We use a qualitative media analysis to show that the online and print media narratives around this issue reveal widespread fear and anxiety about youths’ smartphone use. We argue that this stems from a moral panic reaction to youths’, particularly young women’s, potential exercise of agency using their smartphones and accessing forbidden content over the internet. This narrative fails to include the potential affordances of internet access for youth and other marginalized people while also failing to address deeper concerns about digitization.