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87% of American teens own an iPhone; 88% expect an iPhone to be their next phone

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Re: 87% of American teens own an iPhone; 88% expect an iPhone to be their next phone

#21

Post by JPKab »

My 16 year old son has an iPhone because Apple has the best parental control integration built-in. Kids can always get around it, which is why I have monitoring the little bastard doesn't know about via my WiFi router, along with automated deactivation of his cellular data connection via a schedule with the carrier (after 10 PM on weekdays).

The "green bubble" crap that I get from my iPhone owning buddies due to my Pixel is most obnoxious because it's entirely Apple's choice to have that.

However, no question that teens are incredibly status conscious. After all, Abercrombie and Gap built massive businesses slapping labels on shitty goods and marking the price up by 1,000%. Nike as well.

Re: 87% of American teens own an iPhone; 88% expect an iPhone to be their next phone

#22

Post by shadowgovt »

m348e912 wrote: post #8
rsync wrote: post #2

My two oldest children - 13 and 15 - have loudly proclaimed that having a "green bubble" would be worse than death .

(iPhone user here) It does seem to me that Apple isn't playing fair and this is no longer the technical issue it once was. Apple has so far refused to adopt RCS (the successor to SMS and MMS) which is now an industry standard for text messaging. Because of that, aside from the green bubble, the text messaging experience with non-iPhone users is subpar. Images and videos are compressed and things like tapback and grou…

They have no incentive to adopt some external standard if 4 out of 5 teens will be adopting their platform in the not-too-distant future.

Re: 87% of American teens own an iPhone; 88% expect an iPhone to be their next phone

#23

Post by neaden »

This claim seems a little odd to me. I searched more about it and found this article: https://appleinsider.com/articles/22/01/06/gen-z-survey-says... from January saying the exact same thing as this fall survey, and this article form 2020 which says it was 86%: https://nationalinterest.org/blog/techland/apple-rules-86-pe... . I can't find an estimate for teen iPhone ownership besides this company but this just seems very high to me when you account for teens without a phone as well as non-iPhones. In comparison from what I can find about half of adults own an iPhone. The fact that it is this high and stable for several years seems suspect to me.

Re: 87% of American teens own an iPhone; 88% expect an iPhone to be their next phone

#24

Post by heavyset_go »

rsync wrote: post #2

My two oldest children - 13 and 15 - have loudly proclaimed that having a "green bubble" would be worse than death .

We like to fingerwag at social media companies for knowingly negatively impacting children's mental health and self-esteem, yet Apple is aware of how their systems ostracize children, in their own peer groups, who can't afford to carry around luxury phones.

It's one thing to be ostracized by strangers on social media, it's an entirely other thing to be ostracized by your own friends and peers. The latter is tragically more personal and leaks into the real world with real world consequences.

Re: 87% of American teens own an iPhone; 88% expect an iPhone to be their next phone

#27

Post by JPKab »

m348e912 wrote: post #8
rsync wrote: post #2

My two oldest children - 13 and 15 - have loudly proclaimed that having a "green bubble" would be worse than death .

(iPhone user here) It does seem to me that Apple isn't playing fair and this is no longer the technical issue it once was. Apple has so far refused to adopt RCS (the successor to SMS and MMS) which is now an industry standard for text messaging. Because of that, aside from the green bubble, the text messaging experience with non-iPhone users is subpar. Images and videos are compressed and things like tapback and grou…

They do this on purpose. They know from focus groups this encourages lock-in.

Re: 87% of American teens own an iPhone; 88% expect an iPhone to be their next phone

#28

Post by atonse »

m348e912 wrote: post #8
rsync wrote: post #2

My two oldest children - 13 and 15 - have loudly proclaimed that having a "green bubble" would be worse than death .

(iPhone user here) It does seem to me that Apple isn't playing fair and this is no longer the technical issue it once was. Apple has so far refused to adopt RCS (the successor to SMS and MMS) which is now an industry standard for text messaging. Because of that, aside from the green bubble, the text messaging experience with non-iPhone users is subpar. Images and videos are compressed and things like tapback and grou…

RCS is not end-to-end encrypted. (But neither is SMS, I get it).

The fact that they're pushing a protocol in 2022 that has state-of-the-art design for fifteen years ago, is disingenuous, and is emblematic of all the chefs that have their hand in the pot with the Android ecosystem.

Re: 87% of American teens own an iPhone; 88% expect an iPhone to be their next phone

#29

Post by akgoel »

ajross wrote: post #4

It's just a line in the article, the data isn't provided. This is the source of the headline quote: > 87% of teens own an iPhone; 88% expect an iPhone to be their next phone; 31% of teens own an Apple Watch And sorry, but that's just laughably wrong. Even in my teen's upper middle class school of tech scions, the penetration of any kind of phone sits somewhere around 50%. And I don't think I've even seen a smart watc…

My 13 year old daughter has an Apple Watch. It allows her to send and receive texts even though her phone has to be put away, and the teachers haven’t stopped that. Yet.

Re: 87% of American teens own an iPhone; 88% expect an iPhone to be their next phone

#30

Post by cgearhart »

rsync wrote: post #2

My two oldest children - 13 and 15 - have loudly proclaimed that having a "green bubble" would be worse than death .

Anecdotally, my twins (both 17) have been asking for Android phones since they got their first phone at 14. I thought they’d be excited to get iPhones because I read reports and stories like this, but it doesn’t appear to be universal.
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