Posts filed under 'Lifestyle'
Studying teenage behavior reveals a lot about the future. While teens tend to be replicants of their parents, it’s their unconventional, non-biased nature that makes teenagers so appealing to marketers. So, are they truly the multitasking, non-brand-loyal, technology-savvy neo-conservatives as everyone paints them to be?
We know that kids are growing up faster. Mattel coined the term “KAGOY” – Kids Are Growing Older Younger” – to describe this phenomenon. That’s why so many news reports focus on the early ages at which teens begin to use cosmetics or dress “inappropriately.”
The latest teen malapropism? Taking naked pictures of themselves on their cellphones and sending them to boyfriends and girlfriends. Last year, 18 students at a Castle Rock, Colo. middle school sent around nude photos of themselves. Other cases have been reported in New Jersey, New York, Alabama, Utah, Pennsylvania, Texas and Connecticut, notes USA Today. Here are a few more contemporary, young-adult phenomena:
- DWT – A Liberty Mutual study of more than 900 teens released in July 2007, found that nearly 50% of teens admit to driving while texting. And with about 73% of teenagers owning cell phones as of 2007, according to Tween & Teen Lifestyle Report, expect the incidence of DWT to merely rise in the future.
MyDeathSpace, a tribute to deceased members of MySpace, features a growing number of examples of teen victims of “DWT” – driving while texting. More than 50% of teens report texting while driving, although a growing number of states are outlawing the practice.
- Multitasking – On average, teens perform about three to four other tasks while surfing the Internet and two to three others tasks while watching television, a study commissioned by Yahoo and the OMD ad agency reported in 2005. Some 73% of TV-online multitasking kids are engaged in “active multitasking,” defined as content in one medium influencing concurrent behavior in another, a 33% increase in active multitasking since 2002, notes a 2008 Grunwald Associates social networking study.
- Neo-Conservatism – U.S. teens appear to be more conservative than many of their global counterparts, including teenagers from India, China, Germany and France, according to a February 2006 Energy BBDO GenWorld Teen study. About half of U.S. teens qualify as “Red Teens” with strong conservative views, while the remaining half, Blue Teens, emphasize individuality and tend to reject tradition. Red Teens are more likely to believe in God (89% vs. 55% globally) and that abortion is never justified (40% vs. 12%).
- Advertising – Cultural differences also influence marketing. The Yahoo/OMD study found that teens in developing countries are more receptive to advertising than teens in developed countries. More than half of teens surveyed in Mexico and China and 68% in India agree that advertising is a good way to learn about trends and things to buy. Thirty-five percent or less of teens surveyed in France, Germany and the U.S. think so.
- Sexual Practices – In 2005, the National Center for Health Statistics released the U.S. government’s most comprehensive survey of sexual practices and found that more than half of all teenagers ages 15-19 have engaged in oral sex, including nearly a quarter of those who have never had intercourse.
If the names no longer sound familiar to you, you’re too old. Zac Efron, the star of Disney’s megahit, High School Musical, is the current female teen heartthrob. Miley Cyrus, Disney’s Hannah Montana star, displayed her teen spirit in a Vanity Fair photo that created a publicity storm, Britney-style.
- Alcohol/Drug Use – A 2007 National Institute on Drug Abuse annual survey found that the proportion of 8th graders reporting use of an illicit drug at least once in the past 12 months was 13% in 2007, down nearly half from 24% in 1996. But by the time teens become 10th graders, drug use rises to 28%, although that figure is down from 39% in 1997. Among 12th graders, drug use rises to 36%, a decline from a peak of 42% in 1997. There was a significant increase in the use of OxyContin among 12th-graders, with 10% of 12th-graders reported using the painkiller Vicodin, while 6% reported using OxyContin in the past year. Also noted was the significant increase in the use of sedatives and barbiturates among 12th-graders since 2001. Nearly half of America’s 5.4 million full-time college students use drugs or drink alcohol on binges at least once a month, according to a March 2007 study by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University. Alcohol remains the favored substance of abuse on college campuses by far, but the abuse of illicit drugs, rose from 31% in 1993 to 37% in 2005.
- Cigarettes – The good news is that cigarette smoking among teens is down. But who has time to juggle a cigarette when you have to update your Facebook profile, shop online, play videogames, or use your iPod while IMing on your phone?
- Social Networking – A survey conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project in Fall 2006 found that 55% of teens ages 12 to 17 used social networking sites. The survey discovered that older girls are most likely to have used social networking sites, with 70% of teen girls, ages 15 to 17, maintaing profiles on social networking sites, compared with 57% of boys in that age bracket. More than one in four (27%) of all students surveyed are heavy users of social-networking sites and services, reports a Grunwald Associates social networking study. That same study found that 71% of online tweens and teens connect to a social network at least once a week.
Three in four teens and tweens own at least one console or portable gaming system and plan to buy 3.1 games in 2008, up from 2.5 last year. The videogaming world is becoming tightly meshed with teen reality, making pop-culture icons out of such as videogame stars as Nintendo’s Super Mario.
- E-commerce – Nearly six out of 10 U.S. teens surveyed have made a purchase online, according to a June 2008 study conducted by OTX and The Intelligence Group. Responding online buying teens said they spent an average of $46 every month. Total spending among 13-to-21-year-olds was estimated at $120 billion in 2007, according to Harris Interactive. Apparel can be an important focus for status-conscious teens. Some of the most popular apparel sites visited by MySpace users are American Eagle, Hot Topic and Hollister.
- Texting – Several studies suggest that heavy-texting teens are more prone to disrupted sleep, restlessness, stress and fatigue. Meanwhile, the report “Writing, Technology, and Teens” shows that 38% of high-school-age students have used abbreviations like ‘LOL’ in school assignments, notes Richard Sterling, professor at the University of California Berkeley and contributor to this report.
Is it any surprise that our future social dialog will be heavily influenced by text messaging? David Crystal, a University of Wales language historian, believes that the written language will resemble text messages by 2020. “The Internet is fostering new kinds of creativity through language. It’s the beginning of a new stage in the evolution of the written language,” says Crystal. Leave it to our tech-savvy offspring to take us there first.
Ubertrends: Time Compression, Digital Lifestyle, Unwired
Value Propellants: Multi-Functional, Speed, Convergence, Connectedness, Freedom
July 3rd, 2008
In January, researchers at the California Institute of Technology and Stanford business school reported that people ranked the taste of a $45 wine higher than the same wine priced at $5. The same was true when a different wine was compared at $90 and $10.
The study discovered that higher priced wines sent more blood and oxygen to a part of the brain called the medial orbitofrontal cortex, whose activity controls pleasure. Perhaps that explains why over the past few decades, prices for consumer goods and services have gone “where no man has gone before,” to quote Startrek.
In June, a London Burger King announced it was serving a $190 burger made from Wagyu beef, topped with white truffles and Pata Negra ham and served in a bun topped with organic-white-wine-and-shallot-infused mayonnaise, pink Himalayan rock salt and Iranian saffron.
American excess. In 2003, New York restaurateur Daniel Bolud launched the $50 DB Bistro Burger Royale, made with boned short ribs, truffles and foie gras. Move over Bolud, a London Burger King now offers a $190 burger that makes yours look positively plebeian.
While many pricing tactics like this are aimed at generating PR, there are numerous sectors where pricing has long been used as a yardstick for product sophistication. The audiophile business caters to “golden ears” – consumers who do not blink while spending $6,000 for audio cables or $70,000 for a pair of Wilson Watt Puppy speakers.
That was then. A scan of the current audio scene shows that there are at least 53 speakers priced over $100,000, according to HigherFi. And while the jewelry business has long enjoyed the vagaries of eye-popping prices, there’s no question that the superpremium market spread outside its rarified audiophile atmosphere and infected other consumer categories.
In June, a jumbo black watermelon was auctioned in Japan for a record $6,100, the most expensive watermelon ever sold in that country. This after a pair of Yubari cantaloupe melons fetched a record $23,500 in May. In November 2007, Guerlain introduced a lipstick priced at $62,000. And we’ve already reported that Japan’s Fillico markets a $100 bottle of water in our “What’s Tappening” story.
French excess. This November, Guerlain launched a $62,000 “Kiss Kiss” lipstick, bejeweled with Swarovski crystals – a perfect complement for that Louis Vuitton Tribute handbag ($45,000), designed by Mark Jacobs, which sold out before it even hit retail stores.
Music mogul David Geffen reportedly sold his Jackson Pollock painting “No. 5, 1948,” for a record-breaking $140 million in 2006, exceeding the $135 million that cosmetics heir Ronald Lauder paid for Gustav Klimt’s “Adele Bloch-Bauer” that same year.
At least with art prices there’s the intrinsic value of rarity that may merit overpaying. But can the same be said for a $2 million Bugatti Veyron sports car? The trend – which acquired its “superpremium” nomenclature from the alcohol business, where bottle prices are setting similar records – does owe its logic to one phenomenon: the growing millionaire class.
The number of millionaires has exploded over the past decade. Figures released by the 12th Annual Merrill Lynch and Capgemini World Wealth Report in June shows that India and China are the fastest-growing millionaire generators. People whose net assets are valued at $1 million or more increased 23% in India, to 123,000 individuals, and 20% in China, to 415,000.
Indian excess. Mukesh Ambani, India’s richest man, is building a 27-story mansion in the heart of the country’s commercial capital, Mumbai. Total cost of the home is expected to reach $1 billion, equal to the average annual income of 1.5 million Indians.
These two countries are followed by Brazil, whose 19% yearly growth rate raised its millionaire population to 143,000. Meanwhile, Barclays Wealth noted in May that 41%, or 436,000, of Singapore’s households would have assets of at least $1 million by 2017, compared with 39% in Hong Kong and 28% in Switzerland.
Is it any surprise then that USA Today reported that the Louis Vuitton Tribute bag ($45,000), designed by Marc Jacobs, sold out so quickly? Other people may not be able to tell that my handbag costs more than their car, but my medial orbitofrontal cortex tells me otherwise.
Ubertrends: Generation X-tasy
Value Propellants: Indulgence, Exclusivity, Prestige, Experience
June 30th, 2008
The texting revolution is reshaping the social dialog. Americans already send 30 billion text messages each month. In first quarter, Verizon Wireless delivered nearly 58 billion text messages in the U.S.
AT&T reported that a record 78 million text messages were sent during this season of “American Idol.” Globally, some 7 billion text messages are exchanged each day. As the conversation shifts to this burgeoning communication medium, trends are emerging:
- DWT– Remember that old joke about walking and chewing gum at the same time? The modern version is sending text messages, or checking e-mail for that matter, while driving. Unfortunately it’s no joking matter. DWT is the new DUI (“Driving While Texting” has become the new “driving under the influence”), reports The Wall Street Journal. A bill halfway through the New York State Legislature would make it illegal to type, read or send text messages while at the wheel. New York would join two other states, California and Minnesota, that have introduced similar legislation. These DTW efforts picked up steam in the U.S. following the release of a Nationwide Mutual Insurance survey that found one in five drivers texting while driving.
The DWT trend is not limited to the U.S. In the U.K., Rachel Begg, 19, entered prison on July 20 for four years after causing the death of Maureen Waites, a 64-year-old grandmother. Begg used her phone nine times during a 15-minute ride before ploughing into Waites’ car at 70mph.
- Text robbers – San Francisco once again became a trendsetter when two robbers who had stolen a mobile phone, texted someone in the stolen mobile phone’s address book and then robbed the text recipient’s iPhone.
- Medical texting – The NBC Today Show reported on June 5 that patients are now being reminded to take their medicine via SMS.
The Boston police department now accepts anonymous crime tips via SMS. Expect more services to be delivered via text message.
- luv ur nam – Some parents are inspired by cool SMS and e-mail spellings, and are naming children with unusual abbreviations and hyphenations.
- SMS capital – The Philippines is the SMS champion of the world. Fifty million Philippino subscribers sent 1 billion text messages each day in 2007. By comparison, China, with more than 10 times the texting fans, sent 1.6 billion text messages daily last year.
Nearly two-thirds of 700 students surveyed said their e-communication style sometimes bled into school assignments, according to a study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. “I think in the future, some e-mail conventions, like starting sentences without a capital letter, may well become accepted practice,” notes University of California, Berkeley Professor Richard Sterling. LOL!
Ubertrends: Time Compression, Unwired
Value Propellants: Multi-Functional, Speed, Connectedness
June 12th, 2008
In her concession speech, U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton used a pointed analogy to describe the ascent of women: “Although we weren’t able to shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling this time, thanks to you, it has about 18 million cracks in it and the light is shining through like never before.”
Those 18 million cracks refer to the popular votes Clinton received, many from women who viewed her presidential aspirations as a testament to the new-found power of women. A growing clout that’s being propelled by an Ubertrend dubbed “WAF” – an abbreviation of the “Woman’s Acceptance’s Factor.”
That Clinton was able to harness more popular votes than rival Barack Obama is a significant feat considering that just 160 years ago, on July 18, 1848 to be precise, the first Women’s Rights Convention was held in Seneca, New York, a movement that later came to be identified with the “suffragettes.”
Hillary Clinton may not have dodged sniper fire in Bosnia, but her resounding campaign for U.S. President made her the world’s most outstanding example of female power.
The term WAF was popularized by a Home Theater Spot discussion forum aimed at men seeking advice on how to obtain their better half’s approval before, or after, acquiring new gear. Humorously entitled “The Wife Acceptance Factor — Not in my house!” — this forum was dedicated to a contemporary phenomenon using a moniker that was semi- onomatopoetic code for man’s “better half.”
Read more…
June 11th, 2008
Updated: There’s little doubt that the human body has changed markedly over the past century. One glance at movie photographs of 50 years ago shows how human physiology has evolved in the last half century. We’re compressing evolution. You might call this phenomenon “Darwin on Steroids.”
Although one could argue that the physical attributes of movie stars merely mirror the changing attitudes of casting agents, a casual observation of teens attending your nearest high school will confirm that major changes are under way.
The first thing you’ll notice is that high school kids today are much taller. In March 2005, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention noted that men and women alike had added an inch in height since 1960 — with the average American woman now standing 5-foot-4 and the average male hitting 5-foot-9-1/2.
That’s as puny as it sounds: the U.S. is coming up short in the height deparment. America used to be the tallest country in the world. But as Reuters reported in July, the average American’s height reached a plateau after World War II, and is gradually falling behind the rest of the world as it continues to grow taller.
By the time Baby Boomers reached adulthood in the 60s, most northern and western European countries had caught up or surpassed the U.S. Today, young adults in Japan and other prosperous Asian countries now stand nearly as tall as Americans do.
There are other changes too. Americans are far more overweight than just 25 years ago. In 1980, 46% of U.S. adults were overweight, compared to 65% today. And a third of U.S. adults are now obese, compared with 23% in 1994.
The acceleration of change: The human body is morphing rapidly, growing taller and more overweight in some instances. Changes are most evident when comparing old portraits to new.
What you’re witnessing is an acceleration of evolution. The human body is quickly adapting to changes in lifestyle, diets and perhaps even metaphysical attitudes. Although Americans are as active today as they were in 1970, according to a 2003 Harvard University study, they’re eating 200 calories more per day than they did just 10 years ago, which can add 20 pounds a year.
While the U.S. grew horizontally, the rest of the world reached for greater heights instead. In Holland, the tallest country in the world, the typical man now measures 6 feet (1.80m), a good two inches more than the average American. Even residents of formerly communist East Germany are taller than Americans today.
In 1850 the opposite was true: western Europeans were 2-1/2 inches (6cm) shorter than their American brethren. Evolutionary changes are not just limited to height. Japanese women are becoming curvier and taller as their diet, influenced by Western standards, increasingly includes more red meat and dairy products.
Why is this important? The reason is simple: taller people make more money. Studies have shown that an extra inch (2.5cm) of height can be worth about $1,000 extra a year in wages, after accounting for education and experience. If you’re 6 feet tall (1.80m), you likely earn about $6,000 more than an equally qualified 5-foot-6-inch person (1.70m).
According to a BusinessWeek article published in November 2005, ongoing surveys of more than 17,000 people in Britain and 12,000 in the U.S. conducted by Daniel Silverman, an assistant economics professor at the University of Michigan, found that even short teenagers who grow into normal-size adults are doomed to earn up to 13% less in the workplace than people who were tall as teens. This “height premium,” Silverman says, is comparable to wage gaps caused by gender and race.
On May 7, 2007, The Wall Street Journal noted that the average Japanese woman’s hips, at 35 inches (89cm), are an inch wider than those of women a generation ago. And women in their 20s wear bras at least two sizes larger than their mothers, says Wacoal, Japan’s largest lingerie company.
In the past 20 years, the shoe size of the average American woman has grown a full size to an 8 or 9, up from a 7 or 8. More than one-third of women now wear a size 9 or larger, up from 11% in 1987, The NPD Group reported in July 2004.
A shift in lifestyle lead to a big jump in childhood obesity, which has reached 20%. Although the caloric intake of young adults and teenagers has risen only 1% in the past two decades, physical activity has declined 13%, an analysis of federal statistics by the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill found in February 2005.
Since 1995, Harris Interactive has asked adults to name their two or three favorite leisure-time activities. Eight years ago, 38% of replies involved activities requiring exercise, including fishing, gardening, playing sports, swimming, walking, hunting, bicycling, hiking, running or dancing. Now only 29% of replies involve exercise.
According to a multi-country study, U.S. teens were more likely to eat fast food and snacks, drink sugary sodas, and most likely to be driven to school and other activities, contributing to a more sedentary lifestyle, reports the U.S. Maternal and Child Health Bureau. In fact, fast-food consumption increased fivefold among children since 1970, says a January 2004 Children’s Hospital Boston study.
Japanese lingerie maker, Wacaol, pictured above, reports that Japanese women’s bust sizes are increasing. They’re not alone. Since the 1920s, British women’s busts have grown four inches (10cm), going from a B cup to a C.
At the September 2002 Leicester science festival, Professor Andrew Prentice, a nutrition expert from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, remarked that people are now undergoing changes similar to those occurring two centuries ago, when Europeans shot up in height by 12 inches (30cm) or more. “I’m talking about the remarkable change that has occurred in man’s evolution in just the twinkling of an eyelid,” the BBC quoted Prentice as saying.
Although most of the baseball-loving world could care less that Barry Bonds took steroids, there’s no question that in less than 20 years, Bonds morphed from a 185-pound (84kg) Pittsburgh Pirate to a hulking, 230-pound (104kg) Giants outfielder, who, suddenly at age 37, hit a record-setting 73 home runs.
Although Bonds claims he’s not on steroids, Darwin clearly is.
Ubertrend: Time Compression
Value Propellants: Survival, Speed, Beauty, Gluttony
September 30th, 2007
“Nasty comments, sometimes even death threats, have become ubiquitous on virtually any site that seeks to engage readers in discussion,” reports USA Today. The publication speculates on what trends could be behind this rude behavior.
Part of the blame lies with our new-found love for interactivity. The blogosphere, which has soared from 100,000 blogs in March 2003 to nearly 94 million today, according to blog-tracker Technorati, provides an easy means for readers to comment, helping the phenomenon surface.
“Ur ugly u suk and u should die,” is a typical comment that appears beneath one of the many videos posted on YouTube. This type of social depravity has led to much discussion, and video responses, on YouTube and elsewhere online.
While the story’s writer, Janet Kornblum, correctly surmises that anonymity is a major driving force behind the growing rudeness of society, this outrageous behavior is actually part of the much larger Casual Ubertrend, which has rendered courtesy a thing of the past.
Anonymity was certainly not involved in an incident that had Faith Hill berating a fan for grabbing her husband’s private parts during a concert at the Cajundome. The incident, captured on video, shows just how brazen society has become:
During a Soul2Soul 2007 tour stop at the Cajundome in Lafayette, Louisiana Saturday, country star Faith Hill had to reprimand an overzealous fan who had grabbed husband Tim McGraw’s crotch, an incident captured on mobile phone video naturally.
Breeding a society that’s less polite and much more aggressive in attitude, the Casual Ubertrend is also to blame for a number of “attack videos” that recently received media coverage.
One video, which recently appeared on YouTube and which shows a young girl from San Mateo, Calif. being viciously attacked by a school mate, caused the despondent victim to abandon high school due to fear and depression.
The Internet has significantly lowered the barrier to asocial engagement by providing an easy way of adding no-holds-barred commentary.
As the above New Yorker cartoon pointedly suggests, our interactive future may have us all singing the participatory blues one day.
Ubertrends: Casual
Value Propellants: Aggression, disruption, dominance, informality, shock
August 1st, 2007
In 2003, New Scientist magazine reported that one-third of Americans suffered from something it called celebrity-worship syndrome, which it abbreviated as CWS. The growing popularity of celebrity-obsessed blogs, like Perez Hilton and TMZ.com, have surely boosted CWS. In a sign of the times, TMZ staffers are now regularly interviewed by the major media, often pre-empting People and US Weekly.
Pointing to the potential future implications of CWS is the growing number of mobile phones with cameras, a figure that will pass the 1 billion mark this year. Within a decade, an armada of worker bees equipped with some 4 billion camera phones will lead to an explosion in consumer-generated, celebrity-obsessed media.
Imagine for a moment, a live-updated, 24/7 show of pictures submitted globally. Uploads would likely number in the hundreds of millions each day. Timely example: One of the first, if not the first, iPhone paparazzi photos, taken by yours truly:
Pixel Paparazzi: Courtney Love captured with an iPhone outside The Mercer Hotel in New York’s SoHo district on Friday, July 13 at 6pm. This may well be the first paparazzi picture taken with an iPhone. The photo is also notable for its obvious image recording flaw, as you can see in upper left, center.
With its diminutive size and widespread popularity among media and creatives, the Apple iPhone could well become the poster child for digital voyeurism, part of the Voyeurgasm Ubertrend. It looks like Celebrity Worship Syndrome is set to truly reveal itself.
Ubertrends: Voyeurgasm
Value Propellants: Curiosity, thrill-seeking
July 22nd, 2007
