How Mobile Phones are Shaping Global Culture

Two decades ago, there were barely 1.8 billion people with mobile cellular subscriptions in the world. However, as of 2023, approximately 8.9 billion mobile cellular subscriptions^[a] were recorded across the globe. That’s more mobile phone subscriptions than there are people in the world!

In fact, mobile phones are so ubiquitous that the World Bank’s Digital Dividends report^[b] once suggested that mobile phones are more accessible to the poorest households than clean water and toilets.

Today, we’ll take a look at how mobile phones have become a transformative force in shaping global culture, addressing the impacts on multiple facets of global cultural and economic development.

The Ubiquity of Mobile Phones

We have established that there are more mobile cellular subscriptions than people in the world.

As of October 2024, all these subscriptions were coming from 5.75 billion^[c] unique mobile phone users— about 70% of the world’s total population. That’s more people with mobile phones than there were people in the world 30 years ago.

Access to mobile phones and the internet makes it possible for you to connect with any person in any part of the world in a few seconds. It bridges the divide between the global north and the global south and allows for lots of cultural exchanges to happen across the globe.

One particularly interesting exchange is exemplified by members of the most highly-isolated Kanamari tribe, who took up mobile phones to document and showcase their ways of life to the world while broadcasting the impact of illegal logging on their indigenous lands.

Mobile Phones and Communication

With rapid mobile phone penetration comes an equally rapid transformation in how we communicate.

From the comfort of your home, you could, in an instant, reach out to your Kanamari friend who has never left the jungles of the Javari Valley in the Amazon.

You could text, call, or have a video chat with them, and it wouldn’t cost you much.

The recent advancements in mobile communication mean you can communicate with nearly anybody in any part of the world.

Service providers like BOSS Revolution have also made it possible for you to ensure your family and friends from the other side of the world will also have access to you at any given time.

For instance, with BOSS Revolution international mobile top-up, you can send credit to Jamaica from Canada.

And thanks to the versatility of mobile phones and mobile phone applications, users from vastly different cultural and economic backgrounds can communicate effectively in real time.

Mobile phone services, like international mobile top-ups, help ensure that these two-way communications between users are seamless by enabling individuals at either end with the airtime to initiate communication at any time.

This is made even more possible by the proliferation of communication platforms designed to cater to the varying needs of users across the globe, with some boasting integrated translation features.

Most smartphone keyboards have over 500 language inputs, allowing you to text in multiple languages, including logographic languages.

Social Media as a Cultural Catalyst

Let’s say you’d like to make some Indian food at home but don’t have an Indian friend to teach you; what would you do? You’d most likely turn to social media—YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, etc. There are many content creators with loads of content on how you can make a variety of Indian dishes.

All thanks to the democratization of content creation (through user-generated content) that comes with global mobile phone penetration, cultures that were once particular to certain people are now global trends.Anybody with a mobile phone could offer to share bits of their culture with people outside their communities.

We can see how K-pop has become one of the trendiest cultural imports in Canada and the U.S. as Korean influencers continue to churn out content that targets non-Koreans.

At the other end of the influence are North American, European, and African youths using their mobile phones to effectively consume that content, even in the absence of prior experience with Korean culture.

From reggaeton and afrobeat to Diwali and bubble teas, social media is propelling the rise of cross-cultural exchanges at a rapid rate.

Economic Impacts

Besides cultural exchanges, mobile phones are key drivers and facilitators of borderless shopping among Canadians.

According to Statista, about 15% of Canadians^[d] use their smartphones to shop and make payments for daily purchases. On a broader scale, about 60% of Canadians^[e] use their mobile phones for shopping every other time. Ultimately, mobile phones were Canadians’ most preferred device for cross-border shopping^[f].

Today, Canada’s e-commerce sphere has witnessed a rapid turnaround with mobile app platforms like Amazon Shopping, Shein, and Canadian Tire, among other e-commerce giants and startups, chipping in to create a market that consistently exceeds CAD$3 billion monthly sales^[g].

Conclusion

Mobile phones maintain the lead as the major communication tool in the world. That much is evident in the fact that there are more mobile cellular subscribers than there are people in the world.

They have become an indispensable tool for eliminating borders and keeping the world closely interconnected while fueling cultural exchanges and driving global economic development.

With mobile phone innovations happening all around, the new wave of smartphones will come with new user habits, routines, and customs that further redefine how we communicate, shop, interact with our immediate and virtual environments, and carry out other everyday activities.

[a]https://www.statista.com/statistics/262950/global-mobile-subscriptions-since-1993/

[b]https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/961621467994698644/pdf/102724-WDR-WDR2016Overview-ENGLISH-WebResBox-394840B-OUO-9.pdf

[c]https://datareportal.com/global-digital-overview#:~:text=Global%20mobile%20adoption,use%20around%20the%20world%20today

[d]https://www.statista.com/forecasts/998603/mobile-payments-by-situation-in-canada#:~:text=In%20a%20survey%20conducted%20between,than%20500%20industries%20and%20topics

[e]https://www.statista.com/topics/11193/mobile-commerce-in-canada/

[f]https://www.statista.com/statistics/1376363/online-cross-border-purchases-by-device-canada/

[g]https://www.statista.com/topics/2728/e-commerce-in-canada/