(unpaywalled version on archive.today: https://archive.ph/03cwZ)
Interesting figure that comes out of the article: 87% of US teens prefer iPhones. Also the explanations given aren’t quite surprising, I guess it’s mostly because of iMessage. Teens will feel like outcasts if they get an Android phone while their friends still use iMessage because of the green bubbles.
It’s actually hilarious how we allowed consumerism to take us this far and that we have now peer pressure over smartphones.
“You’re telling me in 2023, you still have a ’Droid? […] You gotta be at least 50 years old.”
ouch 😔
I’d even say that Apple targeted teens from the start, because we all remember when we were all kids how those little details mattered and how kids can be really horrible to each other about that. Them including a social differentiator inside a texting app is just evil.
Apple is the company who gave all the elementary schools free computers in exchange for putting their advertising posters up in.the hallways.
It was fully intentional.
Exactly. Apple knows what they have been doing for decades. When I was a kid I “needed” a Mac because of their advertising campaign in schools. My father bought us an Atari st barely used. It was almost twice as powerful as the Mac of the same time period and he paid a quarter the price. I remember my peers at the time saying “what’s that good for playing pong?” No it’s good for programming, databases, word processing, but also yes it’s good for playing pong.
Yeah it definitely sucks… a significant portion of your social status is tied significantly to what you have (via your parents)… Probably because at that age almost nobody has actually done anything yet