I noticed recently that there was new material uploaded recently about youth, including youth in Asia. I am not sure about the term millenials (which may or may not have two n’s). Some things don’t change - youth consistently have the same core requirement of this lifestage - to both fit in and stand out, and as a client commented to me after a global presentation - “Youth are always bored.” Last year i was in a home in Ho Chí Minh observing a teenager take us through her media collection, and there were connections for me with Catcher in the Rye (it’s amazing what a yahoo 360 site can trigger). Yet observing youth in the same city in internet cafes playing some extraordinary blend of Karaoke and dancing games reminded me of nothing else in the world. Expressions of different needs are constantly changing, and it’s always intriguing to see what are the emergent trends and regional & country differences.
So again - i have compiled a collection of links and sites on the basis of where i would send some young qualitative researchers. It is work by people in their industry, and it ranges from global to Asia. Some of it is a bit older because i believe the site has some good thinking. I have tried to choose a range of different examples. Please comment if you can add to the list (click on post title and scroll to the end of post to add comment). If you haven’t already seen it scroll down to see the deck on slideshare about Korean B Boys and audience 2.0 (thanks Guy for this link).
Digital Youth Research is an academic research project carried out by researchers at the University of Southern California and University of California exploring how kids use digital media in their everyday lives. The research team interviewed over 800 youth and young adults and conducted over 5000 hours of online observations as part of the most extensive U.S. study of youth digital media use to date. They found that social network sites, online games, video-sharing sites, and gadgets such as iPods and mobile phones are now fixtures of youth culture. The research finds today’s youth may be coming of age and struggling for autonomy and identity amid new worlds for communication, friendship, play, and self-expression. Key highlights are available on the site.
Danah Boyd has also investigated how American teenagers socialize in networked publics like MySpace, Facebook, LiveJournal, Xanga and YouTube which has caused some discussion on the net.
Flamingo is an international qualitative research consultancy and youth is one of their specialisms. They have some excellent pieces in their Thinking section.
Barking Robot by Derek Baird, was voted by mobileYouth as a top marketing youth blogger as was Paul MacGregorand Lisa Li Yi.
Universal Mccann research into social media, uploaded to slideshare regularly provides rich sources of data on young people
scenarioDNA have a page listing their presentations including the deck titled The Transformer Generation as well as papers written for Admap and other publications.
Insites Consulting has some interesting updates around their work with youth including a piece about authenticity, and their explorations with netnography. Useful because of their attention to methodology
Being Young Ian Stewart has released some excellent pieces from his time at MTV, on widgets, a fundamental piece about trends in Asia from a couple of years ago, and of course on music matters..
This presentation By Steve Mellor and Cathy O’Donnell of Harris Interactive is now on slideshare about Millenials which contrast generation y (or as they preferred to be called millenials) to generation x and the baby boomers. (However, as i noticed a while ago which era generation x is always seems to change according to who you read, and i did think we might be up to z by now). Slide 19 refers to the Fourth Turning by Strauss and Howe which sees American history as a series of recurring 80- to 100-year cycles. Each cycle has four “turnings”-a High, an Awakening, an Unraveling, and a Crisis. (I’m not sure i buy it as a predictive idea and Schumpeter’s economic theory on creative destruction possibly has more merit at the moment, but it is an example of how to frame history for the future).
Grant McCracken in his blog www.cultureby.com comments, “The other day, I found myself thinking that everytime I hear Millennials described: 1. the tone is that of a smug outsider. 2. the speaker is not a Millennial. Millennials don’t seem to talk about themselves. They have allowed other generations to define (and design?) who they are. This departs from the youth culture handbook. Normally, each generation assumes the right of self authorship…But let us observe that “Millennial” was created (I believe) by William Strauss and Neil Howe. When one generation allows itself to be named by another generation, the game is up.” And as one comment to this blog post asks - is the concept of generation still relevant?
The follow deck showcases trends including Mash Up, Urban Village, Hyper real, the engineers, Collaborative Culture and Micro Trends including The Wacky Racer and Death in the Afternoon (which sounds a lot more interesting than the term Millenials).
Social research can often be more demanding that commercial research projects. Define Research & Insight have discussed in their magazine work they have completed on the use of Alcohol among Children and Young People. The research involved parents & young people and included 40 observation sessions, 10 creative conference workshops (239 respondents participating) and interactive galleries involving 79 respondents… to download the pdf file of the report
mobileYouth who constantly release interesting material especially mobile tech trends on slideshare. Worth viewing is “i am not interested in mobile marketing” from a youth perspective. They have have released some recent trends and behaviour. They see the iphone as a timely stimulation of the youth market given falling levels of arpu. mobileYouth encourage mobile brands to engage in dialogue and crowdsourcing with their target market (but warn of the risks involved with nomadic youth who lack loyalty). They are also encouraging clients to pay more attention to ethnography. They also point to speakerphones as an underserved trendas youth crave to connect and share experiences with others. “Ask yourself - what is the social currency of my product?” In contrast, Christian Lindholm & team have released their mobile trends for 09.
Another presentation that has been released on slideshare about the advent of Korean B-Boys. Korean B-Boys have adopted and adapted break dancing and now regularly win urban dance competitions often beating their US and Euro rivals. This presentation examines this phenomenon and explores its relevance for how we understand audience.
On slideshare another from a presentation at V&A on youth in Shanghai.
Finally, China Youthology have released some results from their study into the use of social networking by youth in China. They discovered, “SNS is more than an online tool for relationships. It has altered the way many young people perceive, construct, and manage their sociality, self-expression, learning, and entertainment, and hence their identity and relationship with the outside world.”
Towards the end of the blog post they discuss, “The above four features of socializing is increasingly desired by the young people today in their life on and off the Internet. China Youthology would like to put it ‘moderate socializing’ – a form of socializing that enables establishment and maintenance of a large number of connections, in a moderate strength of relationship, with high efficiency, and minimum intrusion of private space of people. It is increasingly important because of people’s higher needs in enhancing social capital via building and managing weak ties.”
Update - Channel 4 have released their latest research on youth tribes - . UK Tribes began a few years ago when Channel 4 commissioned Crowd DNA to “explore youth in honest terms and as described to us by young people themselves; to acknowledge that whereas once it was about monolithic youth tribes that stomped on all before them (punk, rock ‘n’ roll, acid house etc) now it’s more about fluidity, a menu of options.” Qualitative techniques used included Desk research; Online forums; Depth Interviews; Expert interviews with marketers, media, event promoters, DJs, fanzine editors etc; Video and picture diaries; SMS-derived insight; A UK network of young people providing regular trend reports. The results on the site are commendably interactive. Check out Crowd DNA here.
Also zandland blog from the Zandl group in NY, Ypulse updates on youth research on a regular basis and Pew releases regular updates. Just for website prowess checkout GTR Consulting, Trendwolves from Europe, and 3iying.
Asia Scout Network operated by Mindshare is a site which has scouts documenting trends across a range of Asia cities depending on their lifestage (seed stage, tribe or herd).
Another addition: Millenial Marketing blog
[...] who are the leading youth research bloggers and observers … [...]
Hi Lee - Thanks for this round-up of youth researchers in Asia! Thought I’d take this opportunity to introduce you to the Asia Scout Network. It’s basically a blog that collects updates on youth lifestyle from a network of young people across Asia, initiated by Mindshare. I’ve led the project since 2007 and we’ve produced several summary reports covering topics such as gaming, causes, and widgets/digital apps. The blogs and the reports can be found at http://www.asiascoutnetwork.com. Would be great to hear what you think of it. Thanks!
Hi Lee,
A colleague of mine pointed me to this site and it’s a fantastic resource. In particular we are looking for information on Gen Y’ers who are in the IT industry and trying to discern their psychography.
I have tagged this post on del.icio.us and will tweet it out as I think a lot of my colleagues will find this valuable.
Hi Lee,
I thought you should know of another prominent blogger / youth researcher that I’d define as a leader in this area. Her name is Carol Phillips and her website is http://www.millennialmarketing.blogspot.com/
Steve
I think you should check out our blog is you’d like to know more with what’s going on with Chinese youth right now.
http://www.enovatechina.com/blog