European and Scandinavian mobile technology has never been better, and the users are getting more and more sophisticated alongside the companies' development of new opportunities, and new services.

2002 saw the dawn of MMS, MultiMedia Message Service, where mobile phones are able to send images, videos and other files with rich content. While the media then screamed about the flood of porn that was bound to come, that has mostly stayed quiet, whilst people have found other uses for the handy technology.

At a 160 characters max length, there's not much you can squeeze into one SMS message, but as we all know, a picture says a thousand words. Both SMS and MMS have become the tool of choice for young people when they are trying to get noticed by their chosen one, so to speak. As a few youths interviewed by the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten said last year; a flirt is only a few buttons away -- and most people dare be a bit more direct in text than they would be face to face.

The August editions of another paper, Dagbladet, saw the exposure of international soccer star John Arne Riise, as he had tried to get several Norwegian celebrities� hearts on fire using a series of SMS-es carefully formulated. There was, of course, much amusement over the episode, which even got a couple of first pages on the second largest Norwegian newspaper, but the bottom line is that it was very telling of the trend. Soccer stars are not the only ones using the method, and as mobile phones become more and more common even with children down to 11-12 years old, it�s not about to go off fashion.

Aren�t there downsides, you ask? Well, as I mentioned, most young people dare be bolder in text messages than face to face, and so relationships develop between even the youngest of the mobile users that perhaps should not have been entered into until a couple of years later. Older boys have been known to take advantage of the fact that they are more likely to be accepted by the younger girls when using sms to get to know them, than they would have been in a face to face situation. This, of course, is also valid when it comes to older girls and younger boys, but less common. The world of SMS has become another internet, where the progression of contact and communication is hard to monitor for parents and guardians, and a phone can be both a reassuring factor and a danger.

MMS has opened up a whole new way of doing things for active users of the mobile phone. Pictures of what you see right then and there can be taken, and sent to another phone, or even an e-mail address. Or pictures of yourself, of course, which is a favorite.

Mobile phone operators in Scandinavia have made big bucks on pre-paid calling, with little to no registration of names and addresses of the users, making anonymous phones a common thing, and a common problem for law enforcement and others wishing to track usage of a specific number. New laws and initiatives are in motion to prevent the problem from increasing, but it is also not likely to be come any less in the foreseeable future.

For now, however, there are more happy stories surrounding this than there are troubling ones. One stellar example is the Norwegian couple who met and fell in love via SMS, picked out rings via their mobile phones, and got married in a phone booth�

Article submitted via Creative Reporter

About the Author:

Gunnar Sommerfeldt is the man behind the Frontman Project, a website dedicated to informative articles, news relay, and updates on diplomacy, foreign affairs and happenings surrounding the EU/US relationship.

The website is meant to spread information on these topics to members of the public in a way that is easily understandable, and accessible to the lay person.

You can view the Frontman Project at http://frontman.vonsommerfeldt.com