Mobile youth - the 10 most common myths (#9 “Youth Grow Up Faster These Days”)

In the second of our features series looking at the 10 most common myths held about Mobile Youth.

Myth #9 - Youth Grow Up Faster These Days

Following on from our previous post about the Myth of Connectivity, it’s appropriate we address another widely held prejudice about today’s young consumers.

Perhaps the most pervasive of all myths is #9 - that “Youth Grow Up Faster These Days”. If like me you were in your 20s when you got your hands on your first mobile phone, to think that back then the prospects of owners not yet to have reached their first birthday would have been unthinkable.

Yet here we are in the 21st Century. The average age at which consumers get their first mobile phone is just under 9 years of age. With the world of the internet a mere click away, surely youth today are far more worldly, if not warey, of their environment and what marketers have to offer.

However this is where reality and observation diverge.

Youth today, if anything, grow up slower than their predecessors. In our 2007 mobileYouth research we surveyed parental attitudes towards mobile ownership by their children. Universally, parents cited “security and safety of my child” as their number one concern about parenthood. No wonder then that parents today fret over the prospect of their children walking home from school when in their generation they would have happily lept through hedgerows until dusk.

The youth of the industrial revolution were far from being protected. 120 years ago, if you were a young teenage girl in London you’d be lucky not to be working in a match factory. Not only were the
conditions unhygienic but also exploitative and dangerous. Teenage girls took to the street in 1888 to protest against 14 hour working days and the use of phosphorous in matches. One social commentator noted the plight of a particular “match girl” in question who

By working eighteen hours per day the girl could sometimes get through a
gross of boxes, but, it was plaintively added, “She could only do that
occasionally, as it made her ill.”

Social historians amongst us will remind us that youth “back then” were less protected, less smothered in their development. If anything, youth of yesteryear grew up a lot faster. Teenage marriage, workhouses and conscription were not uncommon in the 19th century.

So what does this mean for marketers today?

We tend to resign all issues related to the ineffectiveness of modern marketing campaigns aimed at youth as stemming from the ubiquitous issue of “youth growing up to fast these days” - read: youth are too clever for fall for this marketing trick. However, if anything this tends to be a widely held misnomer. Youth today are more protected than their parental forebears. If you want the reason why youth aren’t digging your marketing the answer lies in trust and relevance.