Odd one this, Morgan Stanley recently took on a 15 year old intern named Matthew Robson, and asked him to write them a briefing paper on how teenagers use different media. It’s ‘shaken the city’ apparently, a location you would have thought would have been reasonably difficult to surprise by now given recent economic events, but no matter.
In a nutshell, he reported that teenagers don’t listen to the radio much or buy many newspapers, but they do like the internet, listen to music, go to the cinema and play computer games. Cutting edge stuff I’m sure you’ll agree.
Seriously though, there are some interesting thoughts in it, you can read the full report here, although the research methodology seems unclear from the Guardian article. Is it desk by research from many sources, or just the views of one 15 year old?
Assuming it’s just the latter, we got our own 16 year old Delib Wunderkind Jo Hemmingway to give her own critique of what Matthew put together for Morgan Stanley.
My thoughts are it’s generally pretty good, I was actually surprised because I expect these things to be genuinely quite rubbish, and the whole article made me point and laugh in typical Jo fashion – “IT”S SO TRUE!”. If I haven’t nitpicked it below than they’ve pretty much got it spot on.A few points though:- More teenagers use Spotify rather than Last.fm.- PC gaming is coming back with Sims 3, I’ll admit the Wii and XBOX are killing PC games and pirating a game isn’t “relatively easy” – most teenagers would buy a PC game, only a very small percentage can use torrents, ISOs, etc…- Most teenagers have not signed up for Twitter, they would’ve heard of it in passing but are not clued up on what it’s purpose it. AND NO ONE USES TEXTING TO UPDATE THEIR TWITTER…you can happily do it from your PC/at school/mobile internet/iPhone etc.- For eBaying, a lot of teenagers have debit cards (not credit cards obvs, cos that’s illegal) but you can still sign up for Paypal using a debit card, which you can get from about 13. Ebay’s T&Cs actually say it’s illegal for anyone under 18 to use the service, so make of that what you will, but I’m sure the reason why a lot of kids don’t use eBay is down to worried parents (phishing for passwords, overspending, endless parcels through door etc)- I’m sure this “most teenagers have never bought a CD” statistic is utter rubbish, in the last few years maybe but at some point in their life they would’ve.- I don’t know what they mean by ‘filesharing’ sites, but the most popular medium is still Limewire, throw BitTorrent at them and they won’t have a clue. (Most have heard of Pirate Bay now though mind, and know it’s a website…and not much else).- This whole idea of downloading a song, and then continuing to stream it is barbaric…surely a streamed file is lesser quality than a download?- I don’t think anyone buys pirated DVDs anymore…I don’t even know where to buy them! If you know how, you’d torrent the cam version, or just go see it. I think if teens want to go see a film, they’d just go see it. Price isn’t THAT big of an issue, but I remember seeing more films when I was in early-teens than at present (It was “I CAN GO SEE A 12A UNACCOMPANIED I’M SO COOL” ahem)- Teens don’t care that much about viruses really, we all have anti-virus software. And what we don’t know is on our machines can’t hurt us…right?- Sony Ericsson? Really? I don’t think there’s any make specifically anymore, I know the Nokia N and E ranges are making a comeback, but basically anything that’s got some kind of touch capabilities is a winner (and that isn’t LG…)- I think there’s more contract phones than pay as you go (PAYG). A lot of parents pay their child’s contract, saying “well, at least you won’t run out of credit during an emergency” kinda thing. And at my age, most teens will earn around £100/month doing a weekend job, so £20/month for a phone isn’t that bad.- Wifi isn’t that big a deal with teens and phones, a lot of contract phones have good/unlimited data plans, but no-one really IMs on their phone. Sending songs via Bluetooth is kinda dying…most people will just get it themselves, it’s a hassle putting it back on the PC really.- If you’re on contract, you just get a new phone when your contract renews…simple. On PAYG it’s probably once every two-years, but my friends break their phones about once every year so y’know..- I don’t think that many people have HD screens…well, I don’t. Not really sure about that (I’d like to think they don’t!). I’m going to accept the point made about Macs, through gritted teeth…- I’m sure the Wii is popular due to Wii Fit, and the idea of computer game + activity = not to fat nerdy child. I don’t know, I don’t have one. But I don’t think there are very many violent/bloody games like there are other consolesSo there you go, I generally enjoyed this guy’s research, and I want to meet him and give him a hug.
Consensus of a sort then! One thing this report and Jo’s response brings up once again though is the importance of finding out from young people what they do and don’t do before starting to consult with them; letting them design the consultation process in many ways. For all the different experts out there, the only people who can truly tell you what young people think and the methods they want to us to be involved are young people themselves.
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