The New Love of India's Slum: Mobile Internet!

A number of teenagers offered consistent pictures of how they fit the internet into their lives, and what they gained as a result of these practices. Many described straightforward sets of functions that the internet allowed them to carry out, not just as a technical tool but as a social tool that enabled talking to friends, interacting with other people, chatting with friends/family, listening to music, playing games, watching movies and video clips; and having fun sharing unique experiences fashioned by this new entity called internet.

While the teenagers spoke of using technologies as a means of finding comfort, a way of managing and building personal technology infrastructures as an important element in conducting their own lives, they termed it as ‘Doing the internet’. It included gaming, audio-visual content viewing, download, and other non-instrumental uses of technology.