Millennials have an interesting relationship with their technology, it is their “Byte-Sized Frenemy,” the cause and solution to many of their problems. Learn more about this trend in this excerpt from our syndicated gTrend Young Adult Report on the 21- to 35-year olds.
We call the current batch of 21- to 35-year olds, The Crossovers. Find out why, and what the overall themes of this cohort are in this video.
In the COVID-19 Era, Gen Z & Millennials use technology as a connector more than a means to an end.
Emily Tedford, 13, is having dinner with her parents at a Brazilian restaurant, and 20 of her closest friends know she has ordered the grilled pineapple and banana.
It’s just one of hundreds of text messages she’ll send tonight.
Emily, an A student in St. Charles, sends nearly 20,000 texts a month, as she has for the last two years since she got her phone. She is one of the übertexters, with the phone pad chronically attached to her thumbs.
Her parents, Paul and Rebecca Tedford, aren’t too concerned. They periodically monitor the texts on her phone to make sure it’s typical teenage chatter. If they find something inappropriate (such as when she posted questionable song lyrics on Facebook), they make her remove the post and issue a public apology. (They even had her write a report about the origin of said lyrics.) Of course, they subscribe to an unlimited texting phone plan.
They figure that even while sending more than 600 texts a day, Emily still keeps up with school, plays the drums and runs track. She clearly has plenty of friends, and a few of them also rack up more than 15,000 texts a month.
“For the most part, we have a really good kid,” Paul Tedford said.
They did have to take her to the doctor once when her wrists started hurting. It was tendinitis.
But are hundreds of texts a day the new normal? And because today’s tweens and teens would rather text than talk, what kind of adults will they grow up to become?
Among the teens who say they text, the average number of text messages they send and receive in a month is about 3,500, based on a query in the Kaiser Family Foundation’s recent report on children and media use. With the spread of smart phones and popularity of unlimited texting plans, use of text messaging has skyrocketed.
AT&T’s data from the third quarter of 2007 show that nearly 66 million subscribers sent 24 billion text messages. Two years later, in the most recent third quarter, about 82 million users sent 120 billion texts.
As parents of teens can attest, texting is frequently the easiest way to keep tabs, get a response and avoid hearing attitude. Some may lament the loss of personal contact, perhaps the demise of civility and an inability to fully experience a moment. But others point out that members of polite society in the late 1800s thought telephones ought to be installed in barns. They were considered just as intrusive and impersonal.
“It’s debatable to talk about what is a pathologized amount of texting,” said Amanda Lenhert, a senior research specialist at the Pew Internet & American Life Project.
There may be plenty of kids who send thousands of texts a month but are able to still talk to people, read a variety of things, get outside and do other activities, she said.
It may seem like a parody of a Sprint commercial, but many teens are most comfortable sharing their most intimate feelings through this shorthand language, according to Gary Rudman, chief executive officer of GTR Consulting, which offers trend reports on teens and technology.
When asked by GTR about the sort of things they prefer to text, one teen responded that she would rather text “when it’s something really sad or something not that important to talk about.” Another wrote: “Guys always break up with you on SMS (short message service). They don’t want to hear you cry.”
Emily agrees. “I think it’s easier to say anything with text messages,” she said. “You can’t stutter, it’s not as awkward-feeling. I feel more comfortable talking to people that way.”
It’s this avoidance of conflict and lack of human interaction that worries psychologists such as Sherry Turkle, director of the Initiative on Technology and Self at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is writing a book, “Together Alone: Sociable Robots, Digitized Friends and the Reinvention of Intimacy and Solitude,” to be published next year.
“You lose something if you don’t talk,” she said. Teens need to learn how to respond and pick up on verbal cues, how to spontaneously respond to questions without having to compose or construct a response and how to effectively handle confrontation.
“They don’t have that developmental skill,” she said.
In the last billing cycle, Emily used her phone to send 19,657 texts and spent 102 minutes talking on the phone. “And an hour of that was probably spent talking to me,” her mother said.
Turkle argues that there also are opportunity costs. What else would children be doing in the hours they are currently spending on text messaging? There is a value to stillness, which most children today cannot fathom, in taking an undistracted walk or looking out a window without constant vibrations from a phone interrupting their thoughts.
The teen years are critical in discovering one’s identity, she said. When the most common form of communication allows the child to construct an identity, compose the persona he wants to project, it stymies development, she said. It is a less authentic version of a teen’s self, she said.
She does not recommend taking away a cell phone. The trick is to look critically at how we behave with our phones.
“This is the communication device of their generation. Everyone has to live in (his or her) generation,” she said.
Do teens constitute an audience for marketers when they’re visiting social sites?
Oct 5, 2009
NEW YORK Teenagers are a mystery to most adults. New technology and media are another mystery to many adults. Combine these mysteries and you have ample opportunity for adult misperception of how teenagers use and feel about new technology and media. Some recent research works to get beyond popular misconceptions and provide a look at how teens actually engage with these things, including the advertising they encounter along the way.
Based on quantitative and qualitative research conducted between January and April, a report released last month by GTR Consulting confirms the conventional wisdom that teens are deeply involved in social networking. But it raises serious doubts about how congenial a medium this has been for marketers trying to reach the teen audience. Asked to cite the online activities they indulge in during their free time, 66 percent of the teens said they “use social networks” — exceeding the number who said they “watch user-generated videos” (59 percent), “send or receive instant messages” (51 percent), “play online games” (50 percent), “watch TV/movie clips” (36 percent), “get news/current events” (34 percent) or “blog” (12 percent). The report emphasizes that social-networking sites “have become more important for communication and connection among teens than the telephone, e-mail or instant messaging.” (See also: “Probing the Minds of Teenage Consumers”)
But that doesn’t necessarily mean teens constitute an audience for marketers when they’re visiting social sites. “Notably, we found that teens use social networks to socialize, not to read ads, play games or participate in marketing efforts,” says the report. Indeed, GTR finds teens critical of online advertising more generally. “They know that advertising is the price to pay for getting online services for free,” says the report, “but after spending hours online each day, they have grown weary of the many variations of online marketing. . . . From banner ads, online billboards, pop-ups and advergames to fictitious brand profiles on their social networking pages, teens universally point to these marketing efforts as their least favorite aspect of the Web.”
A report released in the spring by youth-marketing agency Fuse (in tandem with the University of Massachusetts at Amherst) found a similar aversion to advertising via social sites. One part of its polling, fielded in June, asked teens to say how they’d like brands in various categories to advertise to them. Ads on social-networking sites ranked poorly across a range of sectors. For instance, just 10 percent of respondents said they like apparel brands to reach them via social networking, vs. 71 percent saying they like those companies to use TV spots; 14 percent said they like consumer-electronics companies to advertise to them via social networking (vs. 69 percent saying the same about TV spots); 11 percent like getting food and snacks marketing messages via social networking (vs. 78 percent citing TV).
Since social networking is so important to teens, do brands risk an out-and-out backlash if they blunder intrusively onto that turf? Gary Rudman, president of GTR Consulting, suggests that they do. “If brands are clumsy and fail to understand how teens want to be approached in the social-networking environment, marketers are risking a potentially hostile reaction,” he tells AdweekMedia. As for online advertising more broadly, he adds that teens are “frustrated by ads that disrupt, distract and disturb their online experience.” Or, as GTR’s report puts it, “From what teens have told us, online advertising is interruptive, distracting and intrusive. In a nutshell, online advertising is not working for this generation.”
Bill Carter, a partner in Fuse, has also seen wariness of marketers’ ventures into social media when these are out of sync with the reasons teens go to these sites. “Teens are indifferent to advertisers on social networks who don’t participate in the actual purpose of the social network, which is to actively communicate with each other and have fun in their communities and organized groups,” says Carter. “Advertisers that treat social networks like billboards, TV, radio or other media in which they simply run advertising will be met with at best a neutral reaction from teens and can be met with real backlash.”
That’s not to say it’s impossible for marketers to create a rapport with teens via social media. “Advertisers that are proactive members and participate as any good ‘friend” does will be engaged by teens,” says Carter. Rudman notes that teens turn to social networks in part for “efficiency” in conducting their lives, and marketers that serve this end can use social media to their advantage. “One teen stated that social networks make their social life easier to handle,” he notes. “If a marketer can create and offer a branded app that can make their online experience more efficient, teens are more likely to appreciate the brand and may even forward the tool to their friends,” Rudman adds.
Rudman also stresses the effectiveness that can come from a marketing approach that lets teens feel they’ve “discovered” the brand or its message. “If teens feel like they’ve discovered something, they’re so apt to pass it on,” he says. “They feel so empowered when they feel they’ve discovered it on their own.”
Along with social sites, video games and online gaming sites have become important venues for teens to use their free time. And, of course, this has lured marketers who wish to reach teens on their home ground. But this entails its own challenges. In the case of online gaming sites, the broadening of the gaming audience beyond its youth-oriented roots can be a complicating factor. Rudman mentions that teens who go to such sites are frustrated by the proliferation of ads that have nothing to do with their own interests. “If you have a Depends ad there, it’s obviously not relevant to teens,” he remarks.
Teens also bring a judgmental eye to in-game advertising. Says Carter: “Teens apply much the same authenticity test to in-game advertising as they do to other media. Is the advertising authentic? Is it credible? Does it belong in the game? Is it a distraction? Does it bring something positive to the game experience? If an advertiser can pass this test, it will be met with either a neutral to slightly positive response from teens. If the advertising fails this test, the best the advertiser can hope for is a neutral response, and the more likely response is disdain.”
In their eagerness (or, at times, over-eagerness) to connect with teens via newer media, marketers may be underestimating the efficacy of an older medium: television. For one thing, despite their immersion in new media, teens still spend plenty of time watching TV — 2.1 hours a day, according to the GTR report, a shade more than the 2 hours per day they spend online “for fun.” (They spend another 1.4 hours a day online “for school work,” or so they say.) And, what’s at least as important, TV is a medium where teens aren’t congenitally averse to encountering advertising. “When it comes to options for advertising, traditional TV advertising resonates best for teens,” says the GTR report.
“Marketers that fail to emphasize television in their marketing efforts risk missing the boat with teens,” says Rudman. “Teens are visually literate, and a good television ad will engage them. They remember funny, interesting, engaging, unique ads. In fact, if they like them enough, they will look for them online, such as on YouTube, so they can forward them on to their friends.”
GTR’s findings are consistent with those of Fuse Marketing’s survey. Seventy-five percent of the teens polled by Fuse agreed that TV is the “best way” for advertisers to reach them. The teens also ranked TV as their favorite platform for messages from all the advertiser categories about which they were asked, ranging from health and beauty to quick-serve restaurants.
Carter says that noticing which media teens consume is “the easy part” for marketers. “The difficult part is deciphering in which media teens are inclined to listen to a brand’s message versus those media they consider more sacred and want free from advertising.” Nobody ever accused TV of being sacred, and Carter identifies it as a medium “in which teens are open to an advertiser’s message.” Perhaps surprisingly, TV’s utility for reaching teens extends to products that have come along in what some people imagine to be the post-TV age. Thus, when the GTR polling asked teens to say where they “typically learn about electronics and technology,” 56 percent included TV among their sources, putting it slightly ahead of “online” (56 percent) and outpointed only by word of mouth (77 percent).
Those numbers are particularly telling when one considers the importance of technology in the lives of today’s teens, for better or worse. The GTR survey found 21 percent of its teens agreeing at least somewhat that “I have experienced peer pressure to have and use the latest technology.” But that phenomenon does not translate into any general aversion to new technology. One reason for this: 76 percent of the teens polled by GTR agreed (including 42 percent agreeing strongly) that “Technology helps me socialize/communicate with friends.” In other words, it is integrated into daily life for teens in a way that is generally not the case for their elders, even if the latter make ample use of new technologies.
“When it comes to technology, it’s almost universal that teens are not ambivalent about adopting it,” says Rudman. “In fact, technology adoption is part of the teen DNA. They have grown up in a world where technology drives communication and social interaction. They must jump on board so they don’t fall out of the loop. They really do not know any other approach. But although they are pushed on board, they quickly wrest control of new technology and make it their own.”
The numbers in GTR’s report certainly make it clear that engagement with multiple technologies is more the rule than the exception for teens. Given a list of electronic products and asked to say which ones they have, majorities pointed to the cell phone (85 percent), video-game console (79 percent), TV (79 percent), desktop computer (76 percent), digital camera (69 percent), portable gaming device (56 percent) and MP3 player with video (51 percent).
Or, teens may decide that a particular technology simply isn’t for them. This is what has happened with Twitter, suggests Rudman. “Teens as a whole have rejected Twitter as a tool for adults,” he says. “Twitter seems to be an announcement to the world, while things like Facebook and texting are a way of announcing to the people they care about.”
One wild card in how teens will interact with the world around them is the recession. As is the case with respect to consumers in general, marketers are wondering whether the severe downturn will have a lasting effect on teens, persisting even after the economy has recovered. Carter suspects that it will. “Teens are observing an economy with real consequences,” he says. “Maybe one or more of their parents have been laid off, maybe they hear the conversations about not being able to pay a mortgage on time, maybe they won’t go away to summer camp or on a family vacation this year. In any case, their lives have been affected, and they are not going to soon forget the significance of what they are feeling.”
September 25th, 2009 by brand-e.biz
By Steve Mullins.
Teen feeling. Ambassatechs have become the bridge between companies trying to figure out the next big thing and parents seeking to determine which new piece of technology to buy, according to the gTrend Teen Report from US-based GTR Consulting.
Ambassatechs? They’re those trendsetting young consumers whose judgment and behavior are the best barometer of future technology adoption, the consultancy reckons. ”Today, adults take their technology cues from teens, whose ability to incorporate innovation into their lives far exceeds their parents’. Nothing may be more important to successfully engaging teens than understanding their role as Ambassatechs.”
However, in a recession, money is tight, forcing teens to become ‘Neo-Frugalists’. So, GTR rightly asks, how young consumers still manage to buy the latest techno-bling.
The answer? “Our research shows that instead of buying on impulse, today’s teens have become more value-driven consumers. If they’re interested in the hottest video game, they’re inclined to find a used copy. Many are now waiting for sales to make a purchase. Or they scour Craigslist, eBay and the rest of the web for a killer deal.” So, that means they’re innovating with old tech. Clever Neo-Frugalists, indeed.
Wait, there’s more. “Teens remain as elusive and contradictory as ever,” GTR says. (And they’re not kidding if these findings are anything to go by). But don’t worry, the consultancy has also identified a new teen social dynamic known as ‘Textual Feeling’. Before you ask, we’ll tell you that this phenomenon means that many teens routinely express their secret hopes, dreams and fears via social networking sites and online.
“In many ways, teens today are an open book,” says GTR. “Yet, most are conscientious about not posting telephone numbers, addresses, and other critical personal information on the web because they recognize the dangers. Our research, however, consistently shows that many teens feel it’s safer and more comfortable to engage peers through technology than in face-to-face interaction.”
We know just how they feel.
Tech-savvy teens have become the bridge between two worlds that absolutely need each other today: Companies trying to figure out the next big thing and parents seeking to determine which new piece of technology to buy. The gTrend Teen Report describes this new breed of teens as Ambassatechs, those trendsetting young consumers whose judgment and behavior are the best barometer of future technology adoption. Because of their comfort with technology, teens have become the household’s de facto experts on everything from personal computers and cell phones to digital cameras and television sets. The gTrend Teen Report found that one in three teens almost always helps their parents use the electronics they purchase; one in four advises them on what electronic products to buy. What’s startling about the Ambassatechs phenomenon is the reversal of roles. At the dawn of the Internet age, technology would trickle down to teens from their parents. Today, adults take their technology cues from teens, whose ability to incorporate innovation into their lives far exceeds their parents’. Nothing may be more important to successfully engaging teens than understanding their role as Ambassatechs.
For more insight about teens and their new responsibility as the gatekeepers of technology spending decisions at home, get the new gTrend Teen Report. Contact GTR Consulting at gtrend@gtrconsulting.com, or 415.713.7852.
Teens remain as elusive and contradictory as ever. Nothing expresses that more emphatically than the new teen social dynamic known as “Textual Feeling.” Identified in the new gTrend Teen Report, “Textual Feeling” is phenomenon in which teens share their deepest emotions via technology for all to see. Because technology is an essential part of who they are, many teens routinely express their secret hopes, dreams and fears via social networking sites and online. This shift to communal sharing of private thoughts is radically changing interpersonal communication among teens. For some, expressing themselves through technology – online conversations or texting – has become the only way they think they can communicate their emotions
In many ways, teens today are an open book. Yet, most are conscientious about not posting telephone numbers, addresses, and other critical personal information on the web because they recognize the dangers. Our research, however, consistently shows that many teens feel it’s safer and more comfortable to engage peers through technology than in face-to-face interaction.
Want to understand more about what is in the new gTrend Teen Report and find out how to reach teens? Contact GTR Consulting at gtrend@gtrconsulting.com, or 415.713.7852.
Breaking through To Chill-Challenged Teens
What does it take to reach the teen market today? The question can’t be adequately answered until it’s understood that teens consider technology a fundamental part of their lives, not a nice-to-have accessory. Having been immersed in technology almost since birth, teens are unable to relax without it. They are accustomed to having every moment of their time, even “downtime,” being filled. In the new gTrend Teen Report to be released in September, we refer to this generation of teens as Chill Challenged. During a typical day, Chill Challenged teens spend nearly twice as much time online, using their cell phones or watching TV, rather than doing homework. With affordable, accessible technology, there are few—if any—occasions when teens are not fully engaged in some entertainment or communication device.
What does this mean for marketers? It’s clear that breaking through is infinitely harder than it ever has been. To understand the strategies likely to work with today’s teens, contact GTR Consulting at gtrend@gtrconsulting.com, or 415.713.7852.
By MARTHA IRVINE – July 12, 2009
CHICAGO (AP) — Ryan Tracy thought he’d entered the Dark Ages when he graduated college and arrived in the working world.
His employer blocked access to Facebook, Gmail and other popular Internet sites. He had no wireless access for his laptop and often ran to a nearby cafe on work time so he could use its Wi-Fi connection to send large files.
Sure, the barriers did what his employer intended: They stopped him and his colleagues from using work time to goof around online. But Tracy says the rules also got in the way of legitimate work he needed to do as a scientific analyst for a health care services company.
“It was a constant battle between the people that saw technology as an advantage, and those that saw it as a hindrance,” says the 27-year-old Chicagoan, who now works for a different company.
He was sure there had to be a better way. It’s a common complaint from young people who join the work force with the expectation that their bosses will embrace technology as much as they do. Then some discover that sites they’re supposed to be researching for work are blocked. Or they can’t take a little down time to read a news story online or check their personal e-mail or social networking accounts. In some cases, they end up using their own Internet-enabled smart phones to get to blocked sites, either for work or fun.
So some are wondering: Could companies take a different approach, without compromising security or workplace efficiency, that allows at least some of the online access that younger employees particularly crave?
“It’s no different than spending too much time around the water cooler or making too many personal phone calls. Do you take those away? No,” says Gary Rudman, president of GTR Consulting, a market research firm that tracks the habits of young people. “These two worlds will continue to collide until there’s a mutual understanding that performance, not Internet usage, is what really matters.”
This is, after all, a generation of young people known for what University of Toronto sociologist Barry Wellman calls “media multiplexity.” College students he has studied tell him how they sleep with their smart phones and, in some cases, consider their gadgets to be like a part of their bodies. They’re also less likely to fit the traditional 9-to-5 work mode and are willing to put in time after hours in exchange for flexibility, including online time.
So, Wellman and others argue, why not embrace that working style when possible, rather than fight it?
There is, of course, another side of the story — from employers who worry about everything from wasted time on the Internet to confidentiality breaches and liability for what their employees do online. Such concerns have to be taken especially seriously in such highly regulated fields as finance and health care, says Nancy Flynn, a corporate consultant who heads the Ohio-based ePolicy Institute.
From a survey Flynn did this year with the American Management Association, she believes nearly half of U.S. employers have a policy banning visits to personal social networking or video sharing sites during work hours. Many also ban personal text messaging during working days.
Flynn notes that the rising popularity of BlackBerrys, iPhones and other devices with Web access and messaging have made it much trickier to enforce what’s being done on work time, particularly on an employee’s personal phone. Or often the staff uses unapproved software applications to bypass the blocks.
As a result, more employers are experimenting with opening access.
That’s what Joe Dwyer decided to do when he started Chicago-based Brill Street & Co., a jobs site for young professionals. He lets his employees use social networking and has found that, while they might spend time chatting up their friends, sometimes they’re asking those same friends for advice for a work problem or looking for useful contacts.
“So what seems unproductive can be very productive,” Dwyer says.
Kraft Foods Inc. recently opened access to everything from YouTube to Facebook and Hotmail, with the caveat that personal use be reasonable and never interfere with job activities.
Broadening access does, of course, mean some employees will cross lines they aren’t supposed to.
Sapphire Technologies LP, an information-technology staffing firm based in Massachusetts, started allowing employees to use most Internet sites two years ago, because recruiters for the company were going on Facebook to find talent.
Martin Perry, the company’s chief information officer, says managers occasionally have to give employees a “slap on the wrist” for watching sports on streaming video or downloading movies on iTunes. And he says older managers sometimes raise eyebrows at their younger counterparts’ online judgment.
“If you saw some of the pictures that they’ve uploaded, even to our internal directory, you’d question the maturity,” Perry says.
It’s the price a company has to pay, he says, for attracting top young talent that’s willing to work at any hour. “Banning the Internet during work hours would be myopic on our part,” Perry says.
But that also means many companies are still figuring out their online policies and how to deal with the blurring lines between work and personal time — including social networking, even with the boss.
“I think over time, an open embrace of these tools can become like an awkward hug,” says Mary Madden, a senior research specialist at the Pew Internet & American Life Project. “It can get very messy.”
One option is for companies to allow access to certain sites but limit what employees can do there. For instance, Palo Alto Networks, a computer security company, recently helped a pharmaceutical company and a furniture maker open up social networking for some employees, but limited such options as file-sharing, largely so that sensitive information isn’t transferred, even accidentally.
“Wide-open Internet access is the risky approach,” says Chris King, Palo Alto Networks’ director of product marketing. However, “fully closed is increasingly untenable for cultural reasons and business reasons.”
Flynn, at the ePolicy Institute, says it’s important that employers have a clear online policy and then explain it. She believes not enough employers have conducted formal training on such matters as online liability and confidentiality.
Meantime, her advice to any employee is this: “Don’t start blogging. Don’t start tweeting. Don’t even start e-mailing until you read the company policy.”
Martha Irvine is an AP national writer. She can be reached at mirvine@ap.org or via http://myspace.com/irvineap