There's no doubt about it. Among teenagers, the “it” thing is an iPhone. If you're cool, you have one. You can pull it out in your study hall and text your mom that you need to be picked up early. You can use it to look up information as you study, or at least that's what you tell your parents and teachers. But most of all for kids, it just makes you cool to have one.
A study was recently released saying that forty percent of teenagers now have iPhones. Does that mean that sixty percent have androids? While you might think so, no. Teenagers have always been ones to sport the “in” fashions. A survey is saying the “in” cell phone is the iPhone, and the numbers are increasing.
Earlier this year, the survey found only thirty-four percent owning iPhones, and that was more than the twenty-three percent six months earlier. The survey of 7,700 teenagers also revealed that sixty-two percent claimed that their next smartphone will be an iPhone, while just twenty-two percent made the same claim for Android.
Extending beyond cell phones, forty-four percent of these teenagers have a tablet, and seventy-two percent of those tablets are iPads. For the kids who plan to get a tablet somewhere later down the line, seventy-four percent of them want the iPad.
As a parent of a 16-year-old and 19-year-old, I can answer the next questions already. In this household, three out of four people, and one out of two teenagers, have an iPhone. I have never bought my kids a smartphone and don't plan to. That's on their own dime. My son is working and bought my old iPhone 3GS from me, ditching his newer Android. My daughter doesn't have a smartphone yet. But to help her out through her “drought,” I did get her an iPod Touch for her birthday.
Yet I know that some of the kids who have the iPhones received them from their parents. I'm sure of it. Maybe that's the next survey they should take, asking where kids get their iPhones. The next survey should then ask how many of them get them stolen at school. I bet that figure is very high.