Youth and Digital Tech - Viacom, Microsoft Global Study Challenges Assumptions

Youth are expert multitaskers and able to filter different channels of information, according to the “Circuits of Cool/Digital Playground” technology and lifestyle study, which examines assumptions about youths’ relationships with digital technology and the impact of culture, age and gender on technology use.

A fiew of the findings from the global study by Viacom’s MTV and Nickelodeon, in association with Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions, into how kids and young people interact with digital technology (via MarketingCharts):

• One in three UK and US teenagers say they can’t live without their games console; on average, a Chinese young person has 37 online friends s/he has never met; Indian youth are most likely to see mobile phones as a status symbol.
• Globally, the average young person connected to digital technology has 94 phone numbers in his or her mobile phone, 78 people on a messenger buddy list, 86 people in his or her social networking community.
• But youth are not geeks: 59 percent of 8-14 year-old kids prefer their TV to their PCs; only 20 percent of 14-24 year-old young people globally admitted to being “interested” in technology.
• Youth audiences also want more control of what they watch and when they want it: They expect content to be on all platforms - mobile, computer and TV - and they want it to be searchable and increasingly expect it to be supplied on demand and online.

“Digital communications - from IM, SMS, social networking to email - have all revolutionized how young people communicate with their peers. We wanted to understand more deeply how young people interact with these technologies and consequently what this means for our advertising partners focused on reaching this highly engaged and influential audience,” said Chris Dobson, VP, Global Advertising Sales, Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions.

Overview of the study’s conclusions:

• Technology has enabled young people to have more and closer friendships thanks to constant connectivity.
• Friends influence each other as much as marketers do. Friends are as important as brands.
• Kids and young people don’t love the technology itself - they just love how it enables them to communicate all the time, express themselves and be entertained.
• Digital communications such as IM, email, social networking sites and mobile/sms are complementary to, not competitive with, TV, which is part of young peoples’ digital conversation.
• Despite the remarkable advances in communication technology, kid and youth culture looks surprisingly familiar, with almost all young people using technology to enhance rather than replace face-to-face interaction.
• Globally, the number of friends that young males have nearly triples between the ages of 13-14 and 14-17: it jumps from 24 to 69.
• The age group and gender that claims the largest number of friends are not girls aged 14-17, but boys aged 18-21, who have on average 70 friends.

MarketingCharts provides a comprehensive overview of other findings from the study.

About the study: Circuits of Cool/Digital Playground used qualitative and quantitative methods to reach18,000 “tech-embracing” kids (8-14) and young people (14-24) in 16 countries: the UK, Germany, Holland, Italy, Sweden, Denmark, Poland, the US, Canada, Brazil, Mexico, China, India, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. Some 21 technologies that have an impact on the lives of young people were studied: internet, email, PC, TV, mobile, IM, cable and sat TV, DVD, MP3, stereo/hi-fi, digital cameras, social networks, online and offline videogames, CDs, HD TV, VHS, webcams, MP4 players, DVR/PVRs, and hand-held game consoles.