Insights on Youth
As technology has improved over the past half century, we’ve always presumed that it was the younger generation that was on top of all the changes…the ones who adopt the new technology more quickly…the ones who explain it to the rest of us who want to learn but really don’t know why the new thing is any better than the old thing we already use.
That may be changing, however, with the current generation that has grown up with smartphones, tablets, and screens-screens-screens everywhere.
Pocket FM has released it’s new “Digital Entertainment Insights” report, which shows that 90 percent of those responding, among all age groups, engages with audio content each and every day…could be radio, could be podcasts, etc.
The survey shows that one of the main reasons especially young people turn to audio is to distress, avoid distraction, and enhance focus. Video, it seems, is too distracting and anxiety-producing.
That’s interesting, because it actually takes more work to listen to audio…because you only have the words to focus on, as opposed to video which has graphics and images, often moving images, to go along with the audio.
But for those of us who complain about our video screens being overloaded with too many things…cable news, for example, with video on the screen, a lower-third graphic telling us what we’re watching, a scrolling news ticker of unrelated items, a promotional bug of what’s coming up next in the corner…the fact that younger folks are apparently ditching the stuff that annoys we more senior folks is not only interesting, but encouraging.
Maybe the folks who do video have gone too far, with audiences retreating into the media form that has fewer distractions and requires real effort on the part of an audience member…audio, including radio.
We’ve also seen surveys showing younger people are ditching smartphones in favor of flip phones because of the same issue of over-stimulation.
So as we head into the weekend and a bombardment of messages from merchants to politicians and everyone in between…maybe settling in to a good old audio presentation is even more soothing than a cup of hot cocoa on a December day.
