Thursday, August 03, 2006
Not A Surprise: Youth Are The Fastest Technology Adopters
byWe are living in an age of unprecedented rapid change in communication technologies and, according to Forrester Research (via TCMNet), the people who are assimilating that change most quickly are the 18 to 24 age group. This isn’t surprising when you consider this is the group who didn’t have to shed old habits to learn new ones. This is not a lightweight study: it surveyed technology use in almost 67,000 households in the U.S. and Canada and charted that use across five different generations. One fact jumped out above all else—this generation accesses the Internet more than it does TV. The results show people ages 18-26 access the Internet 12.2 hours per week and access TV 10.6 hours per week.
Some other facts of interest from the report:
• 75 percent of the households in North American now have mobile phones. About half of these homes use mobile phones for most long-distance calling.
• 91 percent of online households use a search engine once a week or more, and Google gets 62 percent of the searches from Gen Yers and Gen Xers.
• 78 percent of online Gen Yers and 61 percent of online seniors ages 62+ research and/or book their travel online.
