Tracking youth behaviour
Sure youngsters spend a lot of time surfing the net or on gaming consoles. But websites and mobile service providers aren’t the only ones making money thanks to the lifestyle of young Indians.
A survey by communication specialist Dentsu India reveals that at least 85 per cent of young middleclass urban Indians, who are 25 years old or younger, spent more time online in the past 12 months than on other media options.
The study was conducted on 1,734 youngsters across 68 cities. Of those polled, 62 per cent were men. Predictably, 80 per cent said they owned mobiles, 75 per cent owned laptops or computers, 47 per cent owned Mp3 players and 47 per cent had digicams.
The Internet took over only between noon and 5 pm, with 21 per cent spending more than 2 to 3 hours on it. Mobile phones dominated their lives between 5 pm and 8 pm with 22 per cent using it.
However, their attention span was the longest when they were online. A staggering 77 per cent said they were most attentive when online and 63 per cent spent their time googling for information.
Over half the respondents admitted they checked their social networking profiles everyday, while another 28 per cent were content to check it every week. The rest visited their pages only occasionally. Facebook’s worldwide surge, however, seems to have hit a roadblock in India with 73 per cent of the youth preferring Orkut, as compared to Facebook’s 18 per cent.
Gaming is equally popular with 45 per cent respondents playing online games everyday and 30 per cent doing so weekly. Both sports and car racing games have an equal number of admirers (31 per cent) and 21 per cent prefer to play strategy games.
The good news comes at the end: youngsters still step out to play real games or at least watch it. Nearly 70 per cent of the respondents said they played cricket, while 74 per cent said they enjoyed watching the game as well.
—Shamni Pande
