Does spending time online rob today’s youth of the art of communication? It was one of the popular fears stoked by the rise of the internet; however, the first round of findings from Microsoft Advertising and MTV’s groundbreaking youth research programme suggests nothing could be further from the truth.
The “Circuits of cool” research project, which studies the online habits of 14-24-year-olds across the world, reveals the extraordinary extent to which communicating with peers dominates young people’s web use.
Email remains the dominant online communication channel for the age group as a whole, with 56% sending at least one on most of the occasions they log on. However, instant messenger has claimed a comparable role, with 44% communicating through it during their web sessions. The role of social networking sites is also clearly growing, with 26% of young people now claiming to visit them.
Instant messenger’s rapidly growing popularity owes much to the youngest users, with 45% of 14-17-year-olds acknowledging it as the first thing they do after switching their computer on. Similarly 41% of the study’s youngest age group attest that they can get to know friends better through the channel.
In contrast, over-18s have a slightly greater affinity with email: 22% of 18-21-year-olds see it as a means of getting to know friends better, compared to 17% of 14-17-year-olds. Over 30% of both groups say that they share content and weblinks with friends via email.
Just over half of young people globally maintain a regularly updated profile on a social network, linking it to 84 contacts on average.
