Gen Y/Millennials - A Few Key Facts

 The last few blogs (below) have noted the size of the Gen Y/Millennials, which are now a bigger generation than the Boomers, and Radio Programmings struggle to reach this emerging force.   If we want to reach them we probably need to learn a lot more about them.  While there are plenty of articles in Ad Age and other sites on their consumer behavior one of the more in depth pieces on them came from the Pew Research Center in February 2010. Read the Pew Study here.

The Pew Study covers a lot of interesting traits for this generation in comparison to Gen X, Boomers, and the Silent Generation but a lot of the facts track their religious, political and family values sides.  While they are important traits they probably don't help us programmers get a handle on their entertainment desires.   

I pulled a few of charts that bring out some broad areas we may learn from: 

• They are more diverse:  

• They are less likely to be Married than the other generations in the 20s:

• What do THEY think makes them unique?:

This is a very interesting comparison.  While we would expect that they would have Technology Use at the top and in greater numbers than Gen X the #2 unique trait is Music Pop Culture.  None of the other generations cite this trait.  Radio could play a HUGE role if we chose to dive in with them.   

• And Just For FUN - How many of them have Tattoos:

There is a lot more to learn from the study.  For the most part they are more liberal and actually more family oriented in their values than their marriage stats would indicate - guess they are just being fussy with partners and that's probably due many of them coming from split households.

They are an interesting group that is clearly plugged into the new media and technology as a full fabric of their lives.  Their ability to communicate is very strong in their technology usage.  Communication is key to nearly all generations.   For the Boomers the 4 big communication factors were - Television, Telephones becoming commonplace in the 50s, the advent of world air travel, and radio providing a fairly common music backdrop.

Obviously radio will need to weave itself into their tech world and the new tools of communication.  But, we also have to learn who are are communicating with.    We have a ways to go here.