Study: one-third of U.S. teens own an Apple iPod

“According to a study released this week, Americans aged 13 to 18 spend more than 72 hours a week using electronic media–defined as the Internet, cell phones, television, music and video games. Because teens are known for multitasking, their usage of devices can overlap,” Stefanie Olsen reports for CNET News.

Olsen reports, “So much technology makes teens feel they are playing a starring role in their own reality TV show, said Jim Taylor, vice chairman of the Harrison Group, which conducted the 2006 Teen Trend study.”

“The Harrison Group, whose 2006 Teen Trends study was sponsored by VNU Business Media, surveyed 1,000 Americans aged 13 to 18 on their thoughts and habits, to extrapolate trends for the estimated 25.2 million teens in the United States. This is the third year of the study,” Olsen reports.

Olsen reports, “For 2006, one-third of teens reported owning an Apple Computer iPod, up from only 1 percent in 2003, according to the study.”

Olsen reports, “Harrison estimates that 75 percent of teens spend two or three hours a day downloading or listening to music online. Roughly half of those kids say that downloading music for free is illegal. But 41 percent are unconcerned with the ramifications or ethics of illegal downloads.”

More info in the full article here.

24 Comments

  1. Teens are smart. The other 2/3 will be getting Zunes.

    They may be “unconcerned with the ramifications or ethics of illegal downloads,” but they are concerned about liberal DRM policies, quality of the user experience and the color brown. Teens don’t have time to fight the difficult-to-use, bug-ridden iTunes software and iPod, and they don’t have money. That’s where points come in. Kids like games and fun and they shun grownup stuff like money. They don’t want to have anything to do with money, so Microsoft’s brilliant points system at the Zune Marketplace is right up their alley. Apple simply doesn’t have a clue.

    Welcome to the Social.

  2. The effect for Apple in the long term of this is good, since they are building awareness and mindshare in long term consumers. Selling me an iPod or a Mac is not as much of a big deal since I am a long time Mac owner anyway. Apple is finally doing more than just preach to the choir!

  3. What is really wrong is that I pay $50 a month for Charter cable modem access that is lousy except after midnight. The whole world should be a free hotspot. The people who don’t use it because of the cost now would far outweigh the cost of providing it free and the monetary benefits would be incredible.
    .Mac should be cheaper, even as cheap as it is. If it was free, the volume jump of people using it would far benefit Apple in other ways than the nickels they make now. At least they should offer one year of .Mac for free with the purchase of a new Mac.

  4. ” …41 percent are unconcerned with the ramifications or ethics of illegal downloads”

    That’s hardly surprising, considering that the portion of the brain (the pre-frontal lobes) that governs the understanding of ethics is not developed until late teens to early twenties.

  5. Zune Tang. You are letting your guard down. You are making it too easy to realize that your comments are just biting sarcasm. It used to be difficult to realize that you are really making fun of Microsoft. No more. Just replace Zune and Microsoft with iPod and Apple. Too easy.

    But keep up the good work!

  6. “That’s hardly surprising, considering that the portion of the brain (the pre-frontal lobes) that governs the understanding of ethics is not developed until late teens to early twenties.”

    That doesn’t explain the U.S. Congress unless there’s a curve back downward after age 45.

  7. ” …41 percent are unconcerned with the ramifications or ethics of illegal downloads”

    These are my kind of people – I’m going to recruit them! They’ll be the next “Contract *on* America” politicians.

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