Mobiles are likely status symbol for Indian youth: Study

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Jul 25, 2007 /

Mobiles are likely status symbol for Indian youth: Study

MUMBAI: Indian youth are most likely to see mobile phones as a status symbol and the average Chinese young person has 37 online friends he or she has never met. Meanwhile one in three UK and US teenagers say they cannot live without their gaming console.

These are some of the findings from the largest-ever global study undertaken by MTV and Nickelodeon, in association with Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions, into how kids and young people interact with digital technology.
 

Globally, the average young person connected to digital technology has 94 phone numbers on his or her mobile phone, 78 people on a messenger buddy list and 86 people in his or her social networking community.

Yet, despite their technological immersion, digi-kids are not geeks - 59 per cent of 8-14 year-old kids still prefer their TV to their PCs and only 20 per cent of 14-24 year-old young people globally admitted to being ‘interested‘ in technology. They are, however, expert multi-taskers and able to filter
different channels of information.

The Circuits of Cool/Digital Playground technology and lifestyle study challenges traditional assumptions about their
relationships with digital technology and examines the impact of culture, age and gender on technology use.
 

The report found:

  • 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. TV 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 more than doubles 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.

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