Mobile Youth - the 10 most common myths (#10 Connectivity)

In this series for our features series, I look at the 10 most common myths held about Mobile Youth. If you want to understand young consumers don’t hire a technologist - they’ll tell you why young people are or are not relevant to Web 2.0, mobile and the internet. However, what you need to be understanding is why these technologies are relevant to young people.

Technologists will view the challenge as to how youth fit into their universe and cling on to the myths accordingly creating significant wastage in product development and marketing.

As the old addage goes, if the only tool in your toolbox is a hammer - everything will resemble a nail.

So, from my experience of working in Tokyo from 1996-1998 to growing Mobile Youth since 2001 I offer you my best insights - the 10 most common myths about Mobile Youth.

Starting with #10

Myth 10. Mobile Youth are the “Connected Generation”

I find this to be the blandest statement ever made in qualitative research. Every time I read it in an industry white paper the question that often comes to my mind is “so what?”.

What exactly is this saying? Not much. It’s a very safe and middle-of-the-road approach to understanding young consumers which unfortunately offers little or no insight.

Consider, for example, the parents - are they not also a connected generation? Doesn’t almost every 30-39 year old executive and office worker live out most of their days staring at a screen? On the way to the office they stare at their blackberries, followed by 9 hours of staring at a larger screen. The more active of this demographic will squeeze in an hour at the gym where, you guessed it, they stare at a screen. Evening activity involves starting at a screen.

Almost every economically active individual today is “connected”, so the fact that it is only youth that are connected, is a myth.

What Mobile Youth really want is social interaction because they place a higher premium on tools that facilitate it than other age groups. Consider this; at what period in your life do you consistently interact with more than 50 people on a daily basis? Generally speaking, few adults do. This level of interaction is only available to those in institutionalized education - college and school. So does it not also make sense that those who interact most ahve the greater need for tools that support this interaction?

When we are brave enough to venture beyond the stale platitudes of white paper speak and understand the psychological and sociological drivers that shape young consumer behavior we also realize that “connectivity” is merely superficial gloss applied by a technologically driven industry that wants a quick, simple fix to a much more complicated question - ie., why would young consumers buy my product?