Social ecology/screen ecology
Most studies of smartphones tend to assume and focus upon the relationship between a single individual and a single device. But to properly understand the smartphone, both of these need to be expanded. The smartphone is encountered alongside a wider ecology of screens such as tablets, laptops, and smart TVs. While some people now do their banking on their smartphones, others will only do this on the computer. Other people may prefer to use a tablet for many of the operations most people now use smartphones for. That is what we call screen ecology. Smartphones may also be shared and borrowed, for example, by children who don’t yet have their own. Or there may be a husband who doesn’t do various things on his smartphone because those are done by his wife.
The clearest example of social ecology is found in fieldwork in Kampala, Uganda. Here, it is often the case that more than one person owns the same mobile or smartphone which has to be shared. Nakito and her son (in the background of the photo below) use one smartphone between them, which they use on alternate weeks.
As can be seen in this infographic, among older people in Shanghai, certain apps are only found on one person’s phone, because the couple use each other’s phones.