Institute for Money, Technology & Financial Inclusion

This article is based on a descriptive and exploratory study conducted in Nigerian Christian and Muslim neighborhoods on the new social space created by digital innovations. It examined the intrigues that characterized adults-­‐adolescent girls’ relations as regard to how and when digital innovations like digital financial services should be used. Questionnaires, ethnographic interviews, school debates, observation and focus group discussion methods were used to study the logics, antics and new social behaviors that evolved due to uptake of digital innovations. Mobile phones provided young people the opportunities for exploring and constructing identities but mobile phones have also upset social traditional resources and routes to adulthood. Both adults and adolescent girls play identity politics, and are struggling to (re)construct their roles and identities in the new social space. For this population, smart phones display contextual symbolism that transcends their technological meaning, shifting girls’ social dependence from adults to peers and technology. Apart from configuring boyfriend-­‐girlfriend negotiation in a unique way, DFS uptake has given adolescent girls a voice in family finance as well as assigned new roles to them. Adults’ concern about adolescent girls’ uptake of DFS is rooted in adults’ fears about the possible negative influences of smart phone use, which they see as entertainment driven and inimical to adolescent girls’ development. Findings of this study, which rest primarily on Christian neighborhoods, revealed that tensions between adults and adolescent girls over DFS uptake originated from mistrust, misconceptions and poor awareness of DFS, which effective marketing campaign could address. It is recommended that these tensions can be managed better when adults act as midwives to adolescent girls’ entrance to the digital era as well as open up to discovering their new roles in a world where digital innovations are necessities.