|  The average Chinese young person has 37 online friends he or she has never met, Indian youth are most likely to see mobile phones as a status symbol, while one in three UK and US teenagers say they can’t live without their games console.
Globally, the average young person connected to digital technology has 94 phone numbers in his or her mobile phone, 78 people on a messenger buddy list and 86 people in his or her social networking community.
Yet, despite their technological immersion, digi-kids are not geeks -- 59 per cent of eight- to 14-year-olds still prefer their TV to their PCs and only 20 per cent of 14- to 24-year-old young people globally admitted to being ‘interested’ in technology.
While most of these kids are in developing nations such as India, Brazil and China, the people least interested in technology were the Danes and the Dutch despite saying they couldn’t live without it. Kids are, however, expert multi-taskers and are able to filter different channels of information.
These are just some of the findings from a global study undertaken by MTV and Nickelodeon, in association with Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions, into how kids and young people interact with digital technology.
The study examined the impact of culture, age and gender on technology use. Some 18,000 ‘tech embracing’ kids (eight to 14) and young people (14 to 24) in 16 countries like UK, Germany, Holland, Italy, Sweden, Denmark, Poland, US, Canada, Brazil, Mexico, China, India, Japan, Australia and New Zealand were surveyed.
Challenging traditional assumptions
The study challenges traditional assumptions about kid’s relationship with digital technology. “For kids and young people, technology isn’t a separate entity now. It’s organic to their lives,” says Colleen Fahey Rush, executive vice president of research for MTV Networks. “They are completely focused on functionality,” she adds.
While many young people have access to similar digital technologies, they use them in very different ways. “Technology is adopted and adapted in different ways in different parts of the world -- and that depends as much on local culture as on the technology itself,” says Rush.
For example, Japan’s reputation as a land in love with technology is different from the reality. The survey found that Japanese young people live in small homes with limited privacy, generally don’t have their own PC 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 eight to 14 have only one online friend they haven’t met, compared to a global average of five, while 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.
It’s still about social interaction
The report found that the age group and gender that claims the largest number of friends are not girls aged 14 to 17, but boys aged 18 to 21, who have on average 70 friends.
Technology has enabled young people to have more and closer friendships thanks to constant connectivity, that friends influence each other as much as marketers do. Friends are as important as brands.
The survey noted that digital communications such as instant messaging, email, social networking sites and mobile/SMS are complementary to, not competitive with, TV, which continues to be part of young peoples’ digital conversation.
Despite the remarkable advances in communication technology, the survey noted that youth culture looks surprisingly familiar, with almost all young people using technology to enhance rather than replace face-to-face interaction.
As for national differences, the survey noted that China has lower mobile usage among 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 per cent of Chinese respondents aged eight to 14 have more than one friend online they have never met face to face.
“Chinese kids inhabit a world very different from their parents, and because of that they would rather find advice and support through their friends than through family,” says Rush.
Among eight- to 14-year-olds globally, only in China was TV not the number one choice. Culture impacts 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. Young Danes are most likely to say they can’t live without mobiles (80 per cent) or TVs (75 per cent), and young Dutch most likely to say they can’t live without email (85 per cent).
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.
Talk the talk
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. “Traditionally, marketing has considered opinion formers and influencers to be a small number of people. Now it has become a much larger group,” says Rush.
“Friends are becoming as important as brands because young people are so influential to one another,” notes Rush.
“A brand needs to be interesting enough to get people talking about it. A brand needs to be special. If not, it won’t be heard, and that’s what some brands get wrong,” she says.
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, the survey notes.
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