Gen Y Would Abandon Social Networks Before Texting and Email
October 22, 2009
While Generation Y Americans spend considerable time on social networks, when asked what they would least like to give up for one week, 9 percent said social networks while 26 percent said email and 26 percent said texting.
These were findings from a recently released study about how Gen Y — primarily considered to be offspring of baby boomers — spend time visiting social networks, reading/writing email, texting, talking on the phone, watching TV, reading magazines and visiting non-social media sites.
The study was conducted by the Participatory Marketing Network (PMN), an organization dedicated to helping marketers transition from push and permission marketing to participatory marketing.
Conducted with the Lubin School of Business's Interactive and Direct Marketing Lab at Pace University, the 203 PMN panel members and consumers ages 18 to 24 were polled this month.
Other notable findings from the study include the following:
- average time spent on social networks per month is 33 hours, compared to 31 hours for email;
- texting remains an important communications tool for Gen Y, with the average number of text messages per month exceeding 740;
- Gen Y spend more time emailing, texting and social networking than talking on the phone, watching TV or reading magazines; and
- interest in mobile marketing remains low among Gen Y, with only one in five now receiving targeted promotional messages and only 4 percent planning to opt in to receive them in the future.
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