Have to admit to really enjoying twitter. Just connects me to info that I wouldn’t otherwise find. Yesterday I was cruising around my twitter entries and found Stephen Davies, a communications consultant from the UK. http://stedavies.com/
He was talking about a “DAVOS for Youth” that is happening this week in London — called One Young World. http://oneyoungworld.com/about/flashindex.html
Cannot seem to find a proper “cite” for this research. If someone does know — please let me know. Not sure precisely “who” they surveyed to get these trends — but they are interesting nevertheless.
Here goes (a summary for Stephen’s site — go there for more info) — I make some “rethink, redesign, rebuild/business design/beyond carbon-type” comments:
1. Real-time expectations –no snail mail for this generation — means that technological innovation will continue — and it means that we in educational institutions have to get with the program — probably the campuses of today will fade as students want to learn “on the spot” — ideally in their job.
2. Living more intense local lives — I like this one because I think the energy is local — “Facebook is just an amalgam of discrete localities”. What does this mean for zero carbon opportunities? A business focus on district energy systems and ways to engage local opportunities to decrease our carbon footprints.
3. Radically transparent — don’t get the reality TV scene — but like the idea that this generation will be more transparent about thoughts, feelings and actions. This feeds well into the idea of using the creative side of our brains — 20-somethings will probably be much more flexible and fluent in their idea generation capacity.
4. Expecting cheap or free everything — 20 somethings are used to value and discount offerings everywhere. As Stephen says: “the trend of cheap or free expectations will increasingly shape business models.” Businesses need to be alert to this one — what are the opportunities here?
5. Entertainment must be part of the deal — Here is a nugget: “In an extensive 38-country on-line survey of 15,844 young adults aged 23-28 fielded by SurveyShack in association with YouGovStone between July 2008 and December 2009, 59 percent of respondents said they regularly play video or computer games in their spare time; this makes gaming the second-most popular activity after socializing (61%).” Is our pedagogy responding fast enough to this trend?
6. Worrying about the planet — the survey indicated that 64% of respondents saw climate change affecting them seriously in their lifetime. Now we just need to encourage them to vote — at least in Canada. The opportunities to find solutions to climate change that involve innovative businesses is great — hopefully 20-somethings are excited about this.
7. Seeing luxuries as standard — normal life includes a mobile device of some sort, a computer, a wide-screen TV and higher education. This is where I started wondering who had been surveyed globally. Did this include youth in Africa? Then I remembered that the techno-leap has occurred everywhere — skipping land-lines and moving directly to wireless,mobile devices.
8. Pro-business, anti-multinational — 20-somethings aren’t anti-business — but they aren’t keen on multinationals. 2/3 of them think that global corporations have too much power. And they aspire to “out-business them” not bring them down by force. Also references the “local” focus.
9. Regulate the heck out of media bias — 70% of the 20-somethings get their news via the internet. They are for sure aware of media bias. They want to make sure it is regulated and independent of state and corporate bias. but — they don’t want to government to regulate social media.
10. Naturally Me but aspiring to We — A pointed observation: “Everybody wants to save the earth; nobody wants to help mom do the dishes.” I find this one particularly powerful and full of hope. It is always going to be about me and we — finding balance is the issue.
I was excited to happen upon these set of trends — made me think about post secondary education and how we are responding. And it made me wish I was going to be at One Young World – at least being a fly on the wall.
Hi Moura,
Found your recent blog ‘Generation Real-Time ’ very interesting and thought provoking, some feedback regarding trend points number 9 and 10.
One of the things you note is this age group is now getting ‘their news from the internet’ and that caused me to wonder if they appreciate the difference between opinion and news. The reality of the internet and many current news outlets have blurred that distinction by encouraging the view ‘the news is what I say it is.’ The market share driven view of what defines news is now morphing back to Speaker corner of hyde-park definition.
If one is to rely on the internet for news one needs to apply the same standards, perhaps that you do when looking at other forms of media…Fox news is much different that ABC or NBC, the same distinction can be applied to news papers, the traditional purveyors of news, range from the National Enquirer to Financial Times of London. Hopefully young people are not calling for government regulation of that range of publications. Indeed the key question to ask the youth is more more along the line of what is the value of free and does cost of information relate to qualities.
I would argue that one of the role of government should not be to regulate but rather incent the availability of non market share news; that is precisely the role of the CBC. Also one of the reason dish washers are so common place is that the market responded to the reality of no-body wants to help mom do the dishes and invented them.
Equally the market will respond to saving the earth when the cost of behavior putting it at risk is not longer subsidized, as it is today, and the market responds by saying ‘activity that saves the earth will be rewarded.’
David — thank you for your thoughtful reply. Yes — quite a difference between opinion and news! Being subject to a lot of US news – it is astonishing how different Fox, CNN, ABC, NBC etc. are — at the gym we cruise from one to the other. I thought the idea of government regulating was an interesting point — I tend to agree with you that government should incent, not regulate when it comes to media. All the best,
Moura