The report found:
- Technology has enabled young people to have more and closer friendships thanks to constant connectivity.
- Friends influence each other as much as marketers do. Friends are as important as brands.
- Kids and young people don’t love the technology itself, they just love how it enables them to communicate all the time, express themselves and be entertained.
- Digital communications such as IM, email, social networking sites and mobile/sms are complementary to, not competitive with, TV. TV is part of young peoples’ digital conversation.
- Despite the remarkable advances in communication technology, kid and youth culture looks surprisingly familiar, with almost all young people using technology to enhance rather than replace face-to-face interaction.
- Globally, the number of friends that young males have more than doubles between the ages of 13-14 and 14-17 — it jumps from 24 to 69.
- The age group and gender that claims the largest number of friends are not girls aged 14-17, but boys aged 18-21, who have on average 70 friends.