‘You’re Telling Me in 2023, You Still Have a ’Droid?’ Why Teens Hate Android Phones / A recent survey of teens found that 87% have iPhones, and don’t plan to switch::undefined
87% of US teens. Here in Germany I see a big mix of devices in teenagers and grown ups hands and nobody seems to care about it.
Yep. The popularity of iPhones in US doesn’t represent the rest of the world. iPhone users are the minority in Finland. No one is complaining about green chat bubbles because iPhone users have to use WhatsApp aswell.
same here, hearing about green chat hate was completely bonkers to me.
It’s annoying that people have to use a Meta program.
Why? It’s easy to use, there’s no ads, has many features, etc.
Is it only because it’s owned by a big corp?
Meta is not just a big corp. They are known for misusing the data they illegally gather. It’s no secret that they admitted to trying to change the results of political elections. That’s no entity I want to have my data.
Considering they are probably on the side of iMessage, I’m going to venture a guess and say the company size has nothing to do with it.
Meta is deeply unethical, even for a giant company.
It’s because it’s owned by a personal data vacuum corp.
There are still enough people who are obnoxious about it, and most of them seem to be iPhone users interestingly
Drummed up marketing.
I still remember Apple’s ‘Mac vs. PC’ campaign and even then I thought it would just encourage (even more) elitism amongst Apple users…
That was a hilarious campaign since it ran while Apple computers were just regular x86 IBM clones.
As an iPhone user who was not obnoxious about it I’ve seen a fair share of pushy android user in school. Then again so were the Xbox vs PlayStation kids. They’ll grow out of it.
Like the vegans of smartphones
They also always refer to it as “my iPhone”, never “my phone”, at least all the users I have met (NL). I find this very odd.
I see a big mix of devices in teenagers and grown ups hands
Casually observed anecdotal evidence is even more worthless than a survey.
87% seems insanely high unless the survey was being done inside an apple store or something. But the article just keeps asking if I’m a robot, so I can’t actually read it.
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But the article just keeps asking if I’m a robot
At some point you’ll just have to come to terms with it.
Ah, the easy days of being an obnoxious asshat while mum and dad buy your expensive tech for you.
Let them enjoy it, they have yet to grasp how dire the situation is.
When I was that, I became a Linux user the moment I realized I can’t just use XP or 2000 (what was on our home PC) on a laptop coming with 7, cause no drivers. Some literacy followed.
What I really felt bad about - everybody around carrying that expensive tech without any understanding of it, as if it were normal to use a portable personal computer for Instagram, Facebook, making photos etc. Like hitting nails with a microscope.
It’s actually become less disgusting today. Back then (around 2012) normies would aggressively behave as if progress looked like Instagram, Facebook etc, with their dumb screen poking, and my idea of how computing would be cool is something stupid and old and imaginatory , as if they had any understanding to evaluate that.
OK, just a little flashback.
87% of teens are lazy fucks who don’t know how to download an app that isn’t TicTok, surprised?
It’s scary how tech illiterate most teens / young adults are. Despite the fact that they live their lives through digital interfaces, the majority do not know how to use a keyboard properly.
I wrongly had assumed that by being surrounded by so much tech, young people would just soak it in and strive to optimize it’s use through early mastery. It turns out that despite everyone using tech all the time now, it’s still the same thin slice of the pie that scratch the tech any deeper than the top surface.
I feel like we’re getting old. Is this our “kids these day can’t even change their own oil” moment?
I couldn’t imagine any of these kids having to deal with a dos prompt.
Then again the thought of having to be on instagram robs me of control over bodily functions.
They are the new boomers now. Like even basic folder navigation is something that is difficult for them.
https://www.theverge.com/22684730/students-file-folder-directory-structure-education-gen-z
Tbf, I don’t use prefer clicking thro a series of folders. I rather have a fuzzy finder that help me open any important documents regardless of its format.
Holy shit, yes. I took over some job stuff from a younger guy and when they passed me his files they were all in one giant folder on his Mac. I couldn’t find anything!
It’s like having everything from your house in a single room with the toilet next the the oven.
But that kinda makes sense. They never had that period where tech sucked and you had to struggle through it. Even as a developer I’m noticing the junior developers amazed at the stuff i know how to do and they ask how i soaked it all up. It’s cuz i had to just to get basic shit to function.
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I feel this so much. It’s so frustrating to spend 30 mins helping someone who basically gave up after 5 mins of trying. And it’s not easy to teach that ability to search and learn because it’s more of a mentality than a skill.
I think these days either being into PC gaming, streaming, video editing, etc is what provides the motivation to become tech literate with how lot of people these days may not own a device that runs a desktop OS and either uses a phone or console for gaming. Otherwise, being in an ecosystem that just hands people everything by design makes even folder navigation something that can be confusing for new generations as it was for boomers.
https://www.theverge.com/22684730/students-file-folder-directory-structure-education-gen-z
But even those motivations only get you surface deep. I’m glad technology has gotten better but what streamer today has bought a new camera only to find the drivers haven’t been updated and had to go into the system registry to add a new vendor id? Not that this individual task is important but it’s the mentality of being about to fix and manipulate their system when things don’t work…computers aren’t walled gardens. That’s totally lost on this generation.
No kidding. I’m in my late 30s and regularly have to help 18-24 year old coworkers with connecting their phones to the bluetooth speakers or help with stuff on the computer. I never thought that would happen when I was growing up. I always thought they’d be much better than me!
It feels like a bell curve of technological literacy… most boomers knew jack shit, gen x has a decent amount of tech literates, Millenials are the peak, and then it seems to have started dropping back down from there.
Young gen Z here. I remember time when casual adults (not nerds interested in tech) considered kids the experts. From perspective of time I can guess it was because they didnt have any ‘digital sense’ and saw kids playing on mobile devices.
However these days… I everyday see peers using tech in ways we living in tech bubble consider inproper. They use proprietary software, charge battery to 100% and discharge it to full 0, dont care about privacy, accept bloatware instead of flashing rom/uninstalling with adb, they dont know what bootloader is, dont check repairability of devide before purchase, accept everything soldered into motherboard, they think LLM arent just large next-word suggester, they dont boycott companies shitting on them, they use trademarked words while meaning generic things like ‘googling’ and ‘ipad’, post their real profile photos on facebook, they accept predatory monetization models.
I dont want to say Im smarter than everyone, but Im just sad that this gen fell so low.
I agree with the first part, but knowing about bootloader and flashing rom to a new phone is hackerman level, not a regular tech-savvy user.
New generations having hacking skills is more like a cyberpunk novel, reality is lower attention spans, worst reading skills and over-simplified UIs. People gravitate to the simpler way.
Exactly, I feel like what used to be a “ask a 14yr old” type tech question is now an “ask a 40yr old”
Part of what happened is schools stopped teaching the muggle kids basic computer skills, assuming “they’re young so they must innately know this,” and went all-in on locked down Chromebooks for everything. The average household doesn’t own a computer, just uses phones, and schools took away the only opportunity for them to have exposure to real computers.
Using “to google” actually invalidates the trademark eventually, since it becomes generalized
This is only in the US I assume? The article isn’t very up front about it.
Apple holds 57% of the phones market versus Android’s 42% in the U.S., according to web traffic analysis site Statcounter. The data skews worse for Android when narrowed down to teenagers. According to a survey of 7,100 American teens last year conducted by investment bank Piper Sandler, 87% of teens currently have an iPhone, and 87% plan on sticking with the brand for their next phone. But the stigma regarding Android phones is mostly an American phenomenon, at least to the degree to which it affects purchase habits. Worldwide, per the same Statcounter report, Androids represent the significant majority of all smartphones, holding a 71% share of sales compared with Apple’s 28%.
From the article.
I’m personally so tired of defending android to iPhone users. At the end of the day, it’s personal preference. IPhone is a walled-garden, curated and closed system that has features that are more uniform and well developed across the whole brand. Android has custom options for a huge variety of things that iPhone can’t match simply due to the nature of android’s open system. Android also tends to have significantly cheaper modern options, but iPhone tends to get OS and security updates much longer.
They both have huge market shares and neither can fill the other’s niche well enough to bump the other out. It’s not a competition, it’s just preference. Is it really such a big deal to point out that teens prefer one over the other? Once the next generation comes to an age of owning phones, we might just find that they find iphones lame and old and swap back to android. That’s kind of how generations tend to work.
I would prefer my phones to work well with other phones. If your phone requires that everyone else buy the same overpriced phone, it is not a better device. Anyone can make something that talks well with itself.
I’m on the same page as you. It should be noted, however, that the kind of exclusivity you find repulsive actually works as a selling point for apple. It’s like, “Buy an iPhone! All your friends have them and you want to be able to talk to them right?” Peer pressure is a hell of a drug
I’m aware, it’s why I inherently don’t trust them. They are anticompetitive to a fault. It is unethical no matter what code of ethics you go by and I vote with my wallet.
Using Apple devices isn’t just about the communication it’s about the whole ecosystem working together. No one does that as well across phone, tablet, laptop/desktop, watch, tv box, and speakers. That’s what sold my tech-illiterate wife and that’s why they’re so popular.
I’m not disagreeing with you. But the trade off is price. When you pay $2.5k more for a phone/tablet/laptop/desktop/watch/tv/speaker setup than you would for all of those things individually with industry standard features, they freakin better work together seamlessly.
Wise man once said: but expensive, cry once.
Easy to say if you have several thousand burning a hole in your pocket.
You robbed Apple of the true superiority of their offering: the hardware. There isn’t a phone out there that comes close to being as well designed and beautiful as an iPhone. That’s important to some people.
That’s a silly take.
The hardware offerings outside of Apple are just more diverse. You could buy a $40 Motorola or LG and get exactly what you’d expect. Or you could get the flagship Samsung or Google and blow the iPhone out of the water.
I’m not one of these Apple salespeople, but I was a latecomer to iPhone. Started with the 12. It was the first device I owned as far back as I remember that didn’t feel like it was lagging/dying at the end of year one. And consequently I didn’t replace it as I had with years of Pixels, Nexus, Samsungs, etc prior. I think their hardware design is better. And I think the hardware + software tightness results in extending the life of the hardware. And I say this still wishing I could get the new Pixel devices - but I simply haven’t felt that feeling of my phone becoming irrelevant as much as I did with my various android devices.
Same story repeated with tablets -> iPads seem to last forever / until the wheels fall off. I’ve owned Galaxy Tabs, Nexus 12s, etc -> they do not have the same longevity period. It’s sad honestly I wish that weren’t true.
I have a MacBook Pro 2013 that still runs like new (one battery replacement along the way). I can’t even imagine what a 10 year old Dell or Lenovo or HP would be right now. A paperweight?
The laptops are subpar, miss me with that soldered SSD bullshit
Well designed and beautiful are two very subjective words for a discussion about objective differences.
I think that iphones are bland and kind of ugly for their caliber of technology. My last phone was the sage-back pixel 5 and I absolutely loved the design of that thing. The thing is, looks alone don’t constitute superiority.
I don’t care about the beauty and I think some android phones are prettier, but iPhone hardware is ludicrously fast and that’s one of the reasons I have one.
Samsung equivalents have better hardware for the same price
E: I can guarantee you the downvotes are from people who have never even looked at the hardware in their phone. Nobody will even engage with the numbers.
Versus.com is useless. There’s no value in their comparisons.
This stuff always makes people defensive, but it’s better to make informed decisions. There is no dismissing this data, period. It’s not just a number score, the specs are there for you to read. The equivalent Samsungs have twice the RAM and two more processor cores than their apple counterparts.
You aren’t informing yourself when you read versus.com You’re comparing numbers and those numbers are often not comparable because they either aren’t counting the same thing or they’re an implementation detail that doesn’t affect the actual outcome. Versus.com is essentially worthless search spam.
For example, comparing cores and clock cycles between different architectures is useless.
The A16 chip in iPhone 14 is an ARM chip, same as the snapdragon.
Until the battery gets old lol. iPhones are fine; they’re simple phones for simple people.
Preferring simplicity in your smartphone doesn’t make you simple.
And what phone doesn’t need a battery replacement after a few years?
Sure it does.
Every phone needs a battery replacement after a few years, but not every phone will perform worse because of it. When your iphone battery wears out, your phone slows down. You have to replace the battery to both improve performance and battery life. When your android battery wears out, your phone does not slow down. It just runs out of battery sooner. Replacing the battery will not improve performance as it never slowed down in the first place unlike an iphone.
That’s because with any phone, an old battery stops being able to provide enough current to the phone when it gets old. So Apple throttles the phone. Phones that don’t do that become unstable, while the iPhone remains stable, but slows down.
Maybe if you keep using it once it doesn’t hold a charge for more than an hour, but I’ve never done that. When my batteries have gotten low, the phone didn’t start crashing more or acting weird, just running out of battery sooner.
Fuck Apple for normalizing the removal of 3.5 mm jack.
beauty of an iphone
Generic ass glass slab with a very short service life
Miss me with that clown shit.
Very short service life compared to what? It has a very long service life relative to other smartphones.
Ok pal. Take it easy. I simply expressed an opinion.
A truly lost generation
Gen Z here. Even if I could (somehow) afford an iPhone, I can’t imagine buying them because they’re just so locked-down… How can you use a phone you can’t even access file system on? Hell, even load apps the manufacturer doesn’t like? AND sell a kidney for this? Around me, iPhones are a minority but still prevalent, but I am living in a major, pretty wealthy city.
Stock android doesn’t want you to access the file system either. And the stock file manager on iOS/iPadOS is more than enough to do any kind of reasonable file management. And their are legitimate security and data privacy/protection reasons to want to use an abstracted file manager and give apps limited access to the underlying file system.
As far as sideloading, you can do it with a developer account or you can use web apps to fill in the gaps for a big chunk of those use cases. But if you need better performance from sideloaded emulators or virtualization host or programs of those sorts which apple doesn’t allow on the App Store, you will have better luck on android.
iPhone makes a design choice to be more restrictive by default than android but it’s for good reason. If full control of your privacy is something you value then you should definitely consider running an open source ROM on an android phone but you should also consider why you are doing something and consider if it is something that is secure and if there isn’t a better workflow to accomplish the same task.
For instance, on device ad blocking. Do you really trust that ad block developer with permission to inspect network traffic on your device and potentially modify ui elements to block ads (but maybe more). Or is that something that is better left on the edge of your network on a device running pihole.
Sorry to get so wordy on you, but I always getting slightly amused when someone criticizes an iPhone for being locked down and then runs stock pixel ROM with like a couple pirated apps and a shady web blocker on it
And the stock file manager on iOS/iPadOS is more than enough to do any kind of reasonable file management.
My mom was given an iPhone as a gift years ago, so I remember my reaction to this. When you connect it to a computer, you can only see the photos folder. So you can’t even drag-and-drop music there. How is this “more than enough”? Maybe something has changed, I don’t know.
But if you need better performance from sideloaded emulators or virtualization host or programs of those sorts which apple doesn’t allow on the App Store…
You just spoke in favor of not being so strict, lol. But also there are far more common cases where this can impact regular people, such as bank apps being deleted due to sanctions. I personally don’t use mobile banking, but that’s pretty important for a lot of people, isn’t it?
Do you really trust that ad block developer with permission to inspect network traffic on your device and potentially modify ui elements to block ads (but maybe more)
If its code is open to be inspected by anyone - why not?
and then runs stock pixel ROM
That’s not the only alternative. I personally don’t yet use a smartphone properly so haven’t tried, but there are options for custom, more private OSs. Also pixels are pretty expensive so not the best comparison for “common” user.
I really can’t agree when you say Pixel phones are expensive. Just look at the value proposition for the 7a. It is currently $444 on the Google store with all the features of the 7 except for a slightly smaller screen and just slightly worse water resistant (we’re talking literally one step down). The closest competition would probably be the Zenfone 10 in terms of value,
$444 is pretty expensive for me. More than half a price of my LAPTOP. Most people I know cannot really dish out this much cash for a phone. Maybe it’s different in the West.
But if you need better performance from sideloaded emulators or virtualization host or programs of those sorts which apple doesn’t allow on the App Store, you will have better luck on android.
It seems like one of the differences is, is your phone a tool to run your life or is it your playground? Those are very different requirements that ought to be separate
My phone is a tool to run my life, so it is important to just work. Similarly, my laptop is pretty vanilla because I want it to just work, my router is out of the box because it’s critical for my network to just work, and my home automation is a default install on a physical box because it is a tool I need to just work. For playtime I have a lab network, and servers and a rPi cluster and VMs, and a bunch of old equipment I could resurrect to varying degrees. I can play all I want, without destabilizing my tools
In this case, it really is the children who are wrong.
We’ve let Apple buy its way into our school systems. Of course kids are going to gravitate toward iPhones. Part of their schooling every day from Kindergarten is using iOS.
I don’t know what you’re talking about. My kids school is all Chromebook and I think many are these days.
I’m sure it varies by state and maybe district, but around here, it’s iPads K-5, then MacBooks 6-12.
That sounds really expensive.
Seriously there has never been so many different options for tech in schools these days.
When I was in school the computers were all original macintoshes with the school upgrading to the iMac G3’s in the early 2000. (I loved the design of those computers except that damn hockey puck)
9-12 was MS office and Windows 2000/XP though
Now the same school uses chrome books, windows 10, google workspace and classroom and the only apple products are just a cart of iPads they let kindergarten and first graders use
I think Apple marketing has a role in it. Their commercials and packaging gives the iPhone an elitist aura. Kinda like a calone, jewelry, fancy watches, fancy cars.
Because Apple did a dick move and targeted with paid influencers that segment of population because they are the most succeptible to fashion trends and easy to manipulate due to their natural tendency to buckle to peer pressure in order to integrate and feel accepted?
Not really relevant. The majority of teens isn’t able to make an informed decision about which is better anyway, and in fact none of the 2 is recommended anyway unless you count in AOSP-based distributions (based off of the open source Android without Google apps), then Android wins of course. But when you compare iOS vs. proprietary Android, it’s like comparing 2 different forms of diseases.
So yeah while statistics are interesting it’s important not to interpret too much into some. Like, “majority of teens dislikes Jazz music”. Well, it doesn’t really matter whether they dislike it or not. Popularity doesn’t represent quality necessarily. Sometimes, but certainly not always.
In Germany the mobile landscape is more “diverse”, I’d say closer to 40%/60% iOS/Android from my own observations. And since we “care” “more” about privacy in schools or public institutions (we still care plenty little but I guess Germany is on average at least known for being a country that does more for data protection than others, so maybe that counts as something?), it’s also probably less iOS infested, although I do know that some schools and public institutions do use iOS devices. But I don’t think everyone does.
You’re approaching this entirely as a contest of what’s the best kind of phone. Of course a survey of teens is not a great way to decide that.
However it’s incredibly important to any company whether their product is / isn’t liked by the younger generation that’s coming up right now.
Old customers die off and younger ones grow older and wealthier, so you’d better pay attention to what the youngs think, because it will inform your business.
Android enthusiasts can refute this result a million ways, but there’s no question that this headline is not great news for Android.
I don’t think so. Android has been marketshare leader for a long time. Maybe iOS is massively popular in USA, but outside of USA it isn’t. Also, as long as marketshare has a sort of “critical mass” it’s fine. Look at OSX for example, it has around 20% marketshare and that number is still high enough that it can’t be ignored. So I think both are here to stay whether they have 20% or 80%.
This is a US survey. It isn’t relevant to this discussion that India is 96% Android. Now you seem to be approaching this from a “who will win global market share” angle. Again, that was never the question here.
This is an ill omen for Android’s fortunes in the US. Not a dramatic death knell or anything like that. But certainly a bad sign. And whatever happens around the globe, the US is an important market. If you can’t accept that much, then you must be defending some deep biases.
P.S. And by the way it’s incorrect to say that iOS isn’t popular outside the US. Many of the worlds most developed markets, like France and Germany, are, like the US, a lot closer to 50/50. Android’s global lead is due to extreme budget phones in massive developing markets like China and India. So yes, Android has global market share, by virtue of capturing the least profitable and least influential markets in the world. Many rightly say that that is a battle not worth winning.
Also I question the accuracy of this data anyways, according to the article it’s only a sample size of a little over 7k people. Also anecdotally as a current college student I have not had any exclusionary behavior towards me as an android user, and know that some of my friends also use Android but tbh it just doesn’t come up in conversation either.
A important thing, that a lot of people here seem to forget: teenagers are more likely to be influenced by fashion trends, than reason, but they aren’t stupid.
I dunno, I’d call that one of the definitions of stupid. Not that they are necessarily overall stupid, but IMO being influenced by fashion trends without reasoning about it is a stupid trait (in kids or adults).
I have no issue with iPhones, but I’ve never owned one, and have no intention of buying one in the foreseeable future. “It just works” has never appealed to me as a marketing tactic. I want to know how things work, and have access to get in and play around with things.
After getting an iPhone for my mom, and running into multiple issues just setting up the account, including an apparently rare known UI bug*, I can’t say I am convinced by the “It just works” slogan.
I really don’t see the difference in experience for an average person buying any big brand android phone vs an iPhone.
*something about an old account re-setup not working on the phone and apparently some steps had to be done in the web interface. The phone UI was just giving an unspecified error and I had to dig deep into Google to find out wtf is wrong. A non-tech person would have no chance of solving it on their own.
My beef is with Apple playing the good guy when anyone with half a brain knows they are just as bad as everyone else. Their whole ecosystem lock in without caring about anything else is what really gets me. They are literally opening up their users to potential privacy issues because they would rather force people to use an iPhone than implement basic RCS capabilities.
