Youth, new media, technology and communication

Purpose – To understand the nature of young people’s relationship with technology and to endeavour to explode a few myths about their affection for it. Design/methodology/approach – The research took four stages; desk research; interviews with four experts; quant through Synovate’s online panel; qual research groups. Findings – It was found that the majority of young people do not love technology – they love communication and entertainment, and technology is just the facilitator for these; it was also found that a surprisingly large number of young people dislike and actively avoid using technology, particularly those from lower SEGs. Originality/value – Marketers always presume that young people are very plugged into technology and that they all love it. This article shows this is clearly not the case and the amount of affection and time they spend using information technology has been overstated.