Global youth and technology trends from MTV, Nickelodeon and Microsoft

The average Chinese young person has 37 online friends they have never met, Indian youth are most likely to see mobile phones as a status symbol, whilst one in three UK and US teenagers say they can’t live without their games console.

These are the results of a research report – Circuits of Cool/Digital Playground – from MTV, Nickelodeon and Microsoft, looking at the relationship between young people, brands and technology. The survey spoke to 18,000 kids and young people in 16 countries.

Other key overall findings from the report

• 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 instant messenger, 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.

National differences

The survey found that while many of the young people surveyed have access to similar technologies, they use them in different ways. For example, Japan’s reputation as a land in love with technology is not necessarily the reality. Japanese young people live in small homes with limited privacy, generally don’t have their own computer until they go to college and socialise away from home a lot. As a result, their key digital device is the mobile phone because it offers privacy and portability.

Unlike young people in other countries, Japanese kids and young people have few online friends. Japanese kids aged 8-14 have only one online friend they haven’t met, compared to a global average of 5, whilst Japanese teenagers have only seven online friends they haven’t met – compared to a global average of 20. Japanese teens also used instant messaging and email the least out of the 16 countries surveyed.

China has lower mobile usage amongst young people, a less evolved print media market and a family life of no siblings with parents and multiple grandparents. As a result the internet provides a rare opportunity for only – and lonely – children to reach out and communicate using social networks, blogs and instant messaging.

In stark contrast to their Japanese peers, 93% of Chinese respondents aged 8-14 have more than one friend online they have never met face to face. China is also the only country where TV is not the number one media choice among 8-14 year olds. Online is seen as more important.

Climate impacts on digital technology too. In countries with a strong outdoor culture, such as Italy, Brazil and Australia, young people use mobiles for arranging to meet, flirt and take pictures of their friends.

Northern Europeans take a practical approach to technology, but are perhaps the most immersed in it of all. Out of all nationalities surveyed, young Danes are most likely to say they can’t live without mobiles (80%) or TVs (75%), and young Dutch most likely to say they can’t live without e-mail (85%).

Despite the plethora of new communicating tools, a majority in almost every nation expressed a preference for meeting in person, although Japanese, Chinese, Poles and Germans scored higher than others when it came to wanting to communicate online. Only Chinese youth actually expressed a majority preference for texting over face-to-face meetings.

Social culture structure

Technology’s greatest impact has been on the depth and range of friends that 14-24s have. From having an average of 11 friends between the ages of 8-14, young people speedily acquire circles of dozens of friends in their teenage years. The average 14-24 year old has an average of 53 online and face-to-face friends – and communicate with them often.

Many of the 14-24s surveyed said that the different forms of communication enabled them to talk about more intimate subjects than they would have otherwise done. Over half said that they could talk about more things on instant messenger than face-to-face, 53% said that they could get to know people better, whilst around four out of every 10 said that they found it easier to make new friends and felt less lonely as a result of using the internet

On average, 14-24s said they had 20 online friends, with Brazilians claiming the most – 46. Communicating with their friends is a priority. Nearly 70% said the first thing they did after turning on their computer was to check instant messenger. Out of all young people surveyed, 14-17 girls spend the least time online – 21 hours per week – whilst 22-24 males spent the most time online – 31 hours a week online. 100% of those surveyed said they communicate every time they go online.

Safety and parental control

Safety and parental oversight ranks high on the uses technology serves with the younger demographics. 68% of 8-14 respondents said they felt safer having their mobile phones with them outside the home – rising to 81% in the UK – and 71% said their parents use the phone to find out where they are.

When parents aren’t around, 8-14s are more likely to communicate with friends, participate in chat forums and use the internet for entertainment. German kids aged 8-14 use the internet the least of all countries studied and were also the least likely to view it positively – only 25% of German kids said they loved the internet – compared to 73% of Dutch kids. The behaviour is likely to be linked the high degree of parental supervision of German kids on the internet.

With social networking becoming a frequent online activity for over half of youth, 35% are claiming they now use these sites because all their friends are on them. This helps to explain the phenomenal rise of social networking – their popularity is based on collective usage. In the UK, one of the strongest reasons for people using social networks is to keep themselves from feeling left out.

Business Impact

Advertisers and content companies wishing to evolve and engage with kids and youth audiences need to understand the changes taking place in how kids and young people lead their lives.

A clear majority of young people asked said the majority of website links (88%) they viewed and the viral video content they downloaded (55%) came from friends’ recommendations. Audiences also wanted more control of what they watched and when they wanted it. Young people expect content to be on all platforms; mobile, computer and TV. They want it to be searchable and increasingly expect it to be supplied on demand through services such as Joost.

Young people are not geeks

“Technology” itself is irrelevant to kids and young people. While kids use mobiles and the internet constantly, the survey found that only 20% of 14-24s actually loved technology, and they’re in developing nations such as Brazil, India and China. The people least interested in technology were the Danes and the Dutch – despite saying they couldn’t live without it

Apart from a few key new media terms, most young people avoided industry jargon. Only 8% of those questioned used the term “multi-platform,” and only 16% admitted to using the phrase “social networking.” The terms they use most frequently are those relating to accessing content for free, like “download” and “burn.” They also use brand names rather than category terms, with MSN, Google, and MySpace amongst the most popular. The term “Web 2.0” is used by very few people (8%) outside China.

Kids and teenagers are the same as ever – only different

Circuits of Cool/Digital Playground found that what kids and teens do has not significantly changed in 15 years. For kids, they may be immersed in tech from the day they were born, but the things they enjoy doing most are watching TV (85%), listening to music (70%), hanging out with friends (68%), playing video games (67%) and spending time online (51%).

As they grow into teens, so the ranking of their favourite pastimes change. At the top of the list of 14-24s favourite pastimes is listening to music (70%), followed by watching TV or hanging out with friends, both of which polled got 65%. Next came watching DVDs (60%), relaxing (60%), going to cinema (59%), spending time online (56%), spending time with girl or boyfriend (55%), eating (53%) and hanging out at home (49%).

Kids still love good advertising. While the ‘best ad they’ve seen recently’ is still overwhelmingly on TV, there is the opportunity for marketers to extend their digital advertising across the other technologies kids are engaged with, including instant messenger and social networking sites, especially since 47% of youth IM each other about ‘what is on TV right now.’

And for instant messenger, the top topics for 14-24s were: gossiping (62%), making arrangements (57%), talking about the opposite sex (57%) and flirting (55%), work or school (54%) and TV and music (52%).

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Interesting stuff, hmmm? If you want to know more on any of this, please contact MTV directly.