image source: Interband

Habbo, a leading virtual world youth website, reports its second Global Habbo Youth Survey, examining the interests, values, attitudes, and online habits of their global audiences.

For the study, Habbo surveyed 58,486 teens between the ages 11 and 18 from 31 countries.
While the stats are interesting to follow, we have to notice that they do not represent mobile youth behavior nor online behavior, but only those who are among Habbo users. As I see it, it does provide some interesting indications for what we may consider next to come.

Communication tools:
Instant messaging was found as the most popular communication tool:

• 88% regularly communicate via SMS
• 76% use the internet to Instant Message friends;
• 72% report having active email accounts (probably as a secondary communication tool, for non-personal needs)
• 71% use their mobiles as a portable mp3 player (up from 38% in the 2006 Habbo survey!)
• 70% take photos and videos (up from 11% in 2006).
• 64% play games (up from 51% in 2006)

Online preferences and behavior:

• YouTube and MySpace were reortd as the most popular global Web sites
• 50% reported that they forward humorous links and videos to their friends
• 30% regularly upload content.

(Among U.S. users, the most popular web sites were MySpace and YouTube, followed by AddictingGames, RuneScape and Facebook).

Consumer brands:
According to the survey – brand familiarity clearly affects teens’ choices as consumers. Moreover – yesterday’s leading brands are still hot today:

• 74% reported that familiar brands guide their purchasing decisions.
• Global well-known brands, such as McDonald’s, Coca-Cola and Nokia ranked high for both boys and girls.
• Gender differences were found in clothing brands: boys favor Nike, Adidas and Billabong as their top clothing brands, where as girls preferred Hennes and Mauritz, Nike and Roxy.

Methodology:
58,486 teenagers were surveyed in October and November 2007. Habbo states that statistical weighting was employed to give all participating countries an equal weight in the global results. Habbo claims 8.6 million unique users on a monthly basis.

More on youth in TrendsSpotting? see previous reviews.

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