The strategy+business publication from Booz Allen normally contains some good thought provoking stuff. I am afraid that in the last edition an article evaded the editors eye. The piece, titled “capture the value of the ’Generation Tech’ employees” argues that there is a fundamental difference between somebody over the age of 30 (a digital immigrant) and a person in their 29th year (a digital native).
It starts with a bold, unsubstantiated claim: “People under the age of 30 are better than any previous generation at absorbing information and making decisions quickly”. I would love to see some proof of that claim.
It then goes on to make another interesting observation: “Think about the extraordinary cumulative digital experiences: an average of close to 10,000 hours playing video games; more than 200,000 e-mails and instant messages sent and received; nearly 10,000 hours of talking, playing games, and using data on cell phones; more than 20,000 hours spent watching TV - all before they finished college. At most, they’ve logged only 5,000 hours of book reading.” The author clearly thinks a young person's digital immersion in front of a screen (I reckon that adds up to 30% of their life) provides something of real value- other than 20-30lb of excess weight.
Marketers need to take a view on how different levels of tech exposure have affected different generations and to decide if this has fundamentally changed their consumer behaviour. This article doesn’t begin to answer this question. In the next few weeks I will publish something that does a better job. Dick Stroud: www.20plus30.com
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