Young people are obsessed with the mobile internet, who knew?

Written by Scott Bicheno
16 October 2017 @ 11:17

New global research by networking vendor CommScope reveals users aged 13-22 are umbilically dependent on their smartphones.

This age range is being referred to as Generation Z and CommScope spoke to 4,000 of them in eight major cities around the world. The top-line findings are that they check their phones constantly, share stuff feely online – none of which they expect to remain private – and their most popular career aspiration is to be a famous YouTuber.

“Tech intimates, that check their devices every three minutes on average, are set to shape how we live, work and play in the future,” said Fiona Nolan, SVP of Global Marketing at CommScope. “Their attitudes and usage of technology will have a big impact on society, paving the way for significant social, political and technological changes.

In the space of a generation content consumption habits have moved almost entirely from broadcast to on-demand. Today’s teenagers find the thought of consuming a piece of video content when it’s broadcast, rather than whenever they want it, to be as anachronistic as sending a telegram.

The telecoms relevance of all this is already well known: on-demand usage requires data networks. And while anyone who has kids is unlikely to find the findings of this survey remotely surprising, it’s still interesting to see what Generation Z is up to. Here are some more data points from the survey.

Elsewhere YouGov has surveyed the next generational pigeon-hole – the Millenial – and it turns out their favourite brand is Netflix. A quick inference you could draw from this is the video viewing transition has gone from broadcast to on-demand to user-generated in the space of a generation.