Generation Y love their smartphones — deal with it

By Lisa Kiplinger

USA Today (MCT)

You’ve seen them shuffling down the street, eyes glued to four-inch (10.16cm) screens, fingers tip-tapping away. To say that young people are in love with their smartphones would be an understatement: It’s more like they’re obsessed, confirms a new study out by Zogby Analytics.

Almost 90 per cent of Millennials (also known as the Millennial Generation or Generation Y) say their phones never leave their sides. The first thing that 80 per cent of Millennials do every morning is reach for their smartphones, and 78 per cent spend more than two hours a day texting, surfing, talking, tweeting and — more importantly for businesses — shopping, banking and more.

“Businesses will ignore this at their peril,” says James DeBello, CEO of Mitek, the company behind mobile bank deposits that commissioned the independent study, “Millennials, Selfies and the Changing Face of Mobile Commerce”.

Companies that don’t speak mobile “are missing the boat”, he says, because young consumers are expecting it, even demanding it. “If you don’t have it, you’re considered old-fashioned, out of date and not a company I want to do business with.”

The study, which surveyed 1,019 people ages 18-34, found that what many Millennials love best about their smartphones is the camera. Almost 90 per cent snap shots daily or weekly, and not just “selfies”. Say, they’re out and about and see a shirt or a stereo they like, DeBello says. They might grab a shot and send it to friends to see what they think — call it shopping by crowdsourcing.

They’re also depositing checks via photo and getting car insurance quotes by shooting a pic of their driver’s licence and sending it off. No need to slog through manually entering name, address, yada yada yada. Millennials love the ease and speed of using their smartphone camera as tool to get things done.

“I think the overall trend we discovered is they still wish they could do more, in fact, they expect it. And they want to do it faster and easier,” DeBello says.

What Millennials are saying about mobile:

• 81 per cent say it’s important for retailers to have high-quality mobile apps.

• 47 per cent access businesses via mobile at least once a day.

• 58 per cent have tried to enrol for a new service or account on mobile.

• 36 per cent have made a decision on where to spend money or switched companies based on what they let them accomplish on mobile

For consumers of all generations what this means is that they can expect to see a crop of new, more sophisticated apps on the way. If Millennials had their way, they’d be able to pay bills by snapping a photo of them (45 per cent), enrol for everything from credit cards to gym memberships using a photo of their driver’s licence (33 per cent) and take some pain out of tax time by inputting W-2’s by photo (33 per cent).

Companies such as Progressive Insurance, Bank of America and Apple are at the forefront of the trend, DeBello says, but that’s only the start. And the mobile trend is being driven by Millennials... perhaps the very dawdlers in front of you on the sidewalk with their faces in their smartphones.

Millennials by the numbers:

• 87 per cent say their phone never leaves their side.

• 88 per cent have or would deposit a check by snapping a picture.

• 60 per cent say in the next five years everything will be done on mobile devices.

• 54 per cent would pay using a mobile wallet.

• 86 per cent say there are still a lot of websites without good mobile functionality.

• 14 per cent wouldn’t do business with a company that doesn’t have a mobile site or app.