Band 9: The chart shows the results of surveys in one African country asking teenagers the main reasons for using their phones between 2016 and 2019. Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant.

The pie charts illustrate the main reasons why young people used their phones in an African country from 2016 to 2019.

Overall, it is clear that teenagers used their phones mainly to engage with social networking platforms, whereas phone calls had the lowest usage throughout the period. It can also be seen that digital cameras replaced email as the second most popular reason for using smartphones.

Throughout the period, social networks increased from 50% in 2016 to 56% in 2019, making up the majority of African teenagers’ responses. In contrast, only one out of ten teens used smartphones to make a call in 2016, which made it the least vital reason in that year. Even though it experienced a slight rise of 3% the next year, the proportion of youngsters in the “phone calls” category fell notably to an insignificant minority of 5% in 2019.

At the same time, email was the second leading category at 25% in 2016, followed by the “digital camera” group at 15%. After four years, in 2019, every fifth teenager used their phones to take photos rather than for an email, overtaking the “email” category by 1%.