A recent GenZ survey by TCS has highlighted the fact that teenagers still prefer Laptops and PCs for surfing the Internet over the smartphones, despite the rising adoption rate of smartphones in India. The survey targeted the students from class 8th to 12th to interpret their digital habits.
According to the survey, Laptops, Desktops and home PCs are the major preferred devices among students for surfing the Internet, 44% of the surveyed students claimed that they prefer these devices. On the other hand, 43% of teenagers access the internet through smartphones. Digitalization has crept into every aspect of our lives as 83% of the teenagers in India still see the smartphone as the most ‘coveted electronic gadget’.
“Technology has transformed young India. The gadgets considered as luxuries earlier have swiftly become necessities making an impact on both their student and personal lives”. The survey said
WhatsApp rules the chart as the most preferred messaging app platform for teenagers with 71% students making most of it, thanks to the free text, audio & video chat feature. Surprisingly, WeChat and other messaging apps failed to make the list. After WhatsApp, 12% of the teens prefer traditional SMS service for messaging.
A majority of the budding students, around 86%, undoubtedly prefer to login to Facebook for social media activities. Google+ is slowly garnering recognition among the students as a considerable 65% of the teenagers find it quite useful for various reasons. These platforms, however, have emerged as boys’ playground as the survey revealed that girls lag behind the boys in terms of social media activities.
Despite the growing craze of video content, students are still not into video chat platform as only a small 21% of the teens prefer using video chat for learning a new hobby, around 20.5% for completing their school assignments and 15% for educational tutorials.
Parents may take a sigh of relief as 40% of the respondents prefer face-to-face interactions with friends when compared to social media platform or phone calls.
In the era of Internet and Smartphone, it’s always a pleasure to know if the upcoming generations value the roots and basics. Students fancy news to keep themselves up today, a whopping 79% of the students either read newspapers or watch news channels on TV. 38% of the teens follow the links on Facebook for news whereas 34% read it online.
Apparently, Parents nowadays are having a hard time saving their money as 87% of the students admitted that they prefer online platforms for shopping, a majority of them (57%) fall for gadgets. 50% of the students prefer books as well and 37% shop for apparel.
The teenagers are spending a chunk of their day surfing the internet. 26% of the teenagers admitted that they spent about an hour surfing the Internet whereas 27% revealed that they reply to a notification within 5 minutes of its occurrence.
The Takeaway’s
Companies must not ignore the potential of Laptops and desktops in the era of the smartphone as a big chunk of the student population still relies on the traditional devices as highlighted by the survey result. The devices are gradually becoming the necessity of every individual especially the budding youths. Laptops and desktops are the most student friendly devices as a majority of school assignments can be easily done by using these devices.
Device manufacturers, such as Lenovo which has emerged as the top vendor in the PC department despite registering a 7.2% YoY global decline in Q1 2016, must focus on students needs to strengthen their PC/laptop business unit.
Brands that are creating products/offering services catering to students must push their marketing agencies to design campaigns focused on Facebook and WhatsApp to reach their potential customer base.
Though technology is gradually creeping in our lifestyles, still there’s a ray of hope in the future as a majority of the students that were surveyed by TCS emphasised on face-to-face interaction rather preferring the Virtual world.
