July 24, 2007
Young keep it simple in high-tech world: survey
While young people embrace the Web with real or virtual friends and their cell phone is never far away, relatively few like technology and those that do tend to be in Brazil, India and China, according to a survey. Reuters reports.
"Only a handful think of technology as a concept, and just 16 percent use terms like "social networking," said two combined surveys covering 8- to 24-year-olds published on Tuesday by Microsoft and Viacom units MTV Networks and Nickelodeon.
Young people don't see "tech" as a separate entity - it's an organic part of their lives," said Andrew Davidson, vice president of MTV's VBS International Insight unit.
"Talking to them about the role of technology in their lifestyle would be like talking to kids in the 1980s about the role the park swing or the telephone played in their social lives -- it's invisible."
The surveys involved 18,000 young people in 16 countries including the UK, U.S., China, Japan, Canada and Mexico.
... The surveyors found the average Chinese computer user has 37 online friends they have never met, Indian youth are most likely to see cell phones as a status symbol, while one-in-three UK and U.S. teenagers say they cannot live without games consoles."
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