Android isn't cool with teenagers, and that's a big problem (www.androidpolice.com)

submitted 10 months ago by L4s@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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Android isn't cool with teenagers, and that's a big problem::Nearly 9 in 10 US teenagers use an iPhone, spelling disaster for Google's mobile future

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[-] SnotFlickerman 100 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Honestly, it's a way bigger problem that kids are being indoctrinated into "keeping up with the Joneses" as such a young age.

We've officially made children part of the Conspicuous Consumption game and motherfucker, they don't have money, it's their parents money!

It's sickening and will fuck their finances their whole lives if having the best iPhone is more important than being able to put food on your plate.

I'm way the fuck more worried about these kids indoctrinated into a Capitalist hell-hole more than I am about fucking Android.

If our democratic future is banking on these kids saving us, and they're already rooted firmly up a corporations asshole, we're fucked.

[-] DeadlineX@lemm.ee 33 points 10 months ago

Nothing is new here.

This isn’t that different from when I was a kid twenty years ago. Only instead of phones (though we all had phones back then too, even if they weren’t smart), it was game consoles, or Pokémon cards, or beanie babies or whatever.

[-] M500@lemmy.ml 23 points 10 months ago

Only difference is about $1000 give or take a few bucks.

[-] DeadlineX@lemm.ee 10 points 10 months ago

Yeah you’re not wrong about that. Although some people went hard into the beanie babies. And the Pokémon cards actually.

If you were into warhammer you resigned yourself at a young age to never having money. Those things eat up an ungodly amount of money.

[-] M500@lemmy.ml 8 points 10 months ago

That’s fair, I’m actually thinking of magic the gathering at the moment. Luckily my friend was given a huge chest of cards like hundreds and hundreds of cards, so we never had to buy any.

[-] grabyourmotherskeys@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago

Check out MTG:Arena. Great online adaptation if you haven't seen it yet.

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[-] Windex007@lemmy.world 4 points 10 months ago

Assuming a new iPhone every 2 years, that's still pretty on par with historical premiums that would be being paid in the same timeframe for the "in" clothing brands. Designer jeans and Lululemons come to mind.

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[-] scarabic@lemmy.world 11 points 10 months ago

Yeah I don’t know where this guy has been for the last 70 years but consumerism came for kids a long time ago.

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[-] webghost0101@sopuli.xyz 9 points 10 months ago

Is this why me and my equally autistic partner are so decent with our money against statistical odds?

I mean i knew purchases for status where a thing but surely thats just the odd snobbish people right?

[-] LWD@lemm.ee 5 points 10 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

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[-] scarabic@lemmy.world 6 points 10 months ago

So, they’re mindless image driven consumers who are going to bankrupt themselves and their parents to the point of starvation AND bring about the end of democracy because… of which phone they use?

[-] filister@lemmy.world 67 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

You guys are hating on Android, but the reality is that I will pick Android any day.

At least with Android I have the freedom to install custom OS versions, change the default browser, sideload apps and to be honest I find Apple's anti-consumer practices appalling, not to mention their very questionable legacy, etc.

On my Android I have changed the default browser to Firefox nightly and loaded the libredirect and I am enjoying a lot of sideloaded apps, including Newpipe and it is running beautifully. I personally find Android a lot more powerful and customizable.

[-] paraphrand@lemmy.world 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

You’re a computer enthusiast. Android phones are computers.

Not everyone needs to be a computer enthusiast. It’s ok that you are though. No shade.

[-] jordanlund@lemmy.world 32 points 10 months ago

"Nearly 9 in 10 US teenagers use an iPhone"

No.

"Nearly 9 in 10 US teenagers SAY THEY use an iPhone"

FTFY.

How many actually use an iPhone remains to be seen.

[-] LWD@lemm.ee 22 points 10 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

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[-] jordanlund@lemmy.world 23 points 10 months ago

This. Self selected, self reported. Not a good survey.

[-] SnotFlickerman 15 points 10 months ago

You have literally described all surveys, good job.

It isn't like people who run surveys don't know this and take it into account, there has been plenty of math that has been sussed out to try to remove the kind of bias that can happen in self reporting.

There's reams of science dedicated to this problem, it isn't new. I'm tired of seeing this argument shat out without a shred of consideration for scientific and mathematic history of taking surveys.

[-] jordanlund@lemmy.world 15 points 10 months ago

Not all surveys, no. Just the ones where people have chosen to participate and are trusted to provide accurate information.

We know, individually, self selected surveys have problems with validity, as do self reported surveys. Combining the two is a huge problem.

What we can't tell from this article at any rate is if it's a failure in methodology or a failure in reporting. Either could be true.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5639921/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4115258/

That being said, there IS a more accurate way to define Apple usage among teens and that would be to survey the school districts.

"How many students do you have? How many devices connect to your network wirelessly? What percentage of those are iOS?"

That still wouldn't be 100% accurate due to teachers and staff bringing their own devices, but the students vastly out number staff so the variance could calculated.

[-] eleitl@lemmy.ml 30 points 10 months ago

Teenagers. US teenagers, specifically. So definitely no big problem.

Personally for me the problem starts when there is no mobile hardware which supports free/libre OS. It is already visible in the supported hardware list of LineageOS. Large tablets, particularly.

[-] ultra@feddit.ro 11 points 10 months ago

As a teen, I'm glad I'm European. Nobody has mocked me for using an Android from 2019

[-] keesrif@lemmy.world 4 points 10 months ago

I'm wondering if it's tied to how status symbols differ per culture. Its been 20 years, but I don't remember status symbols mattering much to my environment when I was a teenager in the Netherlands. I wonder how that is now.

[-] Dkarma@lemmy.world 25 points 10 months ago

Wonder how many of these teens are buying their own phones.

[-] grabyourmotherskeys@lemmy.world 23 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

This stat seems wrong. It suggests 90% of teenagers have parents who bought an iPhone and handed it down or bought a new one for a kid (or the kid worked for a long time and saved up, etc). So many people have basic phones because of their budget that this seems way off.

Maybe I'll read the article now.

Edit - Read it but still skeptical. Study summary here - https://www.pipersandler.com/teens

[-] rob299@lemmy.world 13 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Teenagers might think they want an iPhone, but not everyone has the money for one and paying the bills. Whether they could make life changes to make more money is debatable, but the fact remains that not everyone does have $1000 to throw at a phone.

Because of this, the cheaper yet surprisingly still usable alternative, android has the larger marketshare. Since Google makes money on ads it's better for them to hand out more phones for cheap or in same cases for free, when a manufacturer makes a phone, when all those users see ads on YouTube and Google.

[-] joyjoy@lemm.ee 27 points 10 months ago

My $1200 Android phone is considered budget because it's not Apple.

[-] Skies5394@lemmy.ml 8 points 10 months ago

Definitely. Android has tiers, from flagship down.

You can get an Android that surpasses any iPhone in specs and price no problem.

[-] melroy@kbin.melroy.org 6 points 10 months ago

They just want to have an iPhone because their friends also have an iPhone...

[-] grabyourmotherskeys@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago

And if your biggest userbase is teenagers you are on shaky ground. Trends change quickly and as soon as they have to pay for it themselves it's goodbye luxury item for a lot of them.

[-] Hillmarsh@lemmy.ml 13 points 10 months ago

I actually think that Android has gone downhill in a big way, but I still won't go to Apple's closed ecosystem, and I don't care what teenagers think.

[-] tomo@reddit.azumanga.gay 8 points 10 months ago

^ this
until google completely locks down android i think androids still gonna be popular with someone
i say until because theyre totally gonna find a way to, theyre probably just waiting until they have an opportunity to since google pretty much envies apple above all else

[-] lorez@lemm.ee 2 points 10 months ago

Which company doesn't?

[-] rob299@lemmy.world 12 points 10 months ago

Yet android has the bigger marketshare.

[-] kaitco@lemmy.world 14 points 10 months ago

Yet android has the bigger marketshare.

Globally. In the US, however, which is the focus of this article, it’s about 55/45 to Apple.

[-] rob299@lemmy.world 6 points 10 months ago

meaining it's about a 50-50 split in the us. i'm still not really concerned. when you have only two smartphones, ad no one wants to make a 3rd commercial smart phone that is not based on andriod, resualts like this are bound to happen.

[-] CarlosCheddar@lemmy.world 11 points 10 months ago

I wonder how this correlates to low use of WhatsApp in the US. In South America and Europe WhatsApp is used heavily and looks the same no matter the platform but none of my US friends have WhatsApp so they rely on iMessage instead. None of them want to be seen sending green bubbles in the chat. I’ve even seen this as a side plot in a teen tv show that my wife was watching.

[-] mindlessLump@lemmy.world 10 points 10 months ago

I see it as a good thing. Apple is not without faults, but anything that keeps Google from harvesting more data is a win for humanity. The Safari browser is the only thing stopping Google’s browser monopoly. Unfortunately it is forced, and 99% of Apple users probably have no clue they are holding up the last line of defense.

[-] pastabatman@lemmy.world 20 points 10 months ago

I know Lemmy has a hate boner for Google, but come on. What about Firefox, brave, opera, edge? It's trivially easy to get a browser without Google telemetry on every single platform, and because they are all standards compliant (unlike the Internet explorer days) websites will work just fine on all of them. Chrome isn't even preinstalled in windows, mac, iOS, or most (any?) Linux distros. People aren't being forced to use it, they are downloading it. I promise you this is not humanity's biggest problem right now.

[-] mindlessLump@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Definitely not humanity’s biggest problem. Chromium becoming the de facto browser creates a situation where one entity controls standards and influences how the web operates, impacting user choice and freedom, and reduces incentives for privacy and security updates.

This already happened once with IE.

I only use Firefox on desktop, but I doubt it will be a relevant choice much longer.

Edit: wrt telemetry, I was referring to the Android operating system. They collect anything and everything on users and all nearby devices.

[-] ricdeh@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago

Android does not collect any telemetry, GApps does. Pure Android as developed by the AOSP is fully free and open-source software and does not communicate with any vendor's services, which is why there are completely private Android distributions like LineageOS or e/OS. Android is NOT Google, it is developed and maintained by the Open Handset Alliance. That most people happen to run modified versions of it like Samsung's Android flavour or that they happen to have GApps like Google Play Services installed is the actual problem.

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[-] rob299@lemmy.world 4 points 10 months ago

eh, isn't safari using WebKit, wasn't that made open source at one point.

[-] BearOfaTime@lemm.ee 4 points 10 months ago

I can stop nearly all data collection on Android. I can't even change the browser on iOS. (All browsers on iOS use web kit, so not actually a different browser).

[-] Jumuta@sh.itjust.works 10 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Can people just stop fucking arguing about android vs iphone, amd vs intel, apple vs samsung etc. I'm so sick of this idiotic mess.

"this soulless corporation is better than this soulless corporation because their marketing material uses this shade of grey with white text"

I am going to have a mental breakdown if I read any more of these braindead conversations

It should be GNULinux vs Windows/Mac, Graphene/LineageOS vs Android/iPhone, etc.

People arguing corpo1 vs corpo2 have all been brainwashed by the corpos to ignore freedom respecting alternatives, and rather argue a meaningless argument because those 2 corpos are probably owned by the same shareholders anyway.

[-] Decentralizr@lemmy.world 8 points 10 months ago

I think it starts with the ads.. privacy etc. people believe that shit a s apple is good on it. That said iMessage is another things used a lot around central and North America and also in Asia. I think Europe not so much. That is why iPhone is popular. Just a thought. Not sure I am right. I use an iPhone and a pixel with GrapheneOS. Enjoy both and need both one for business and one for day to day private life

[-] rob299@lemmy.world 6 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

the thing is apple devices aren't terrible, just over priced, they are better when it comes to less ads, or are they..? on most Android phones the ads come from the apps the user use, which are likely to be the same on an iphone anyways. YouTube anyone?

. and knowing how much free money apple gets from the search engine deal on the daily and yet they still charge $1000 for phones that right there, ends my trust for that company, forget about their privacy claims after that nonsense.

[-] Decentralizr@lemmy.world 6 points 10 months ago

I honestly don’t know about much ads. I use a pretty good dns setup what already blocks most. On top AdGuard pro take cares most of the ads I would see. I use also vinegar for YouTube so I don’t see ads there haha.

On android you have with rethinkdns a pretty great firewall with a name what sounds more like a dns service. Anyway, I use apple for business, just because it works with my associates and have GrapheneOS as my daily drive.

[-] Pxtl@lemmy.ca 7 points 10 months ago

Google had the game in their hand and then they destroyed Hangouts.

[-] rob299@lemmy.world 5 points 10 months ago

Look at it like this, how many wanted the Playstation 3 when it was cool, then factor in how many people bought that at launch vs the ps2 at launch. Actual market share matter more then opinions on what's cool.

[-] kittenzrulz123@lemmy.world 3 points 10 months ago

As much as I dislike Apple I hate Google and their stupid proprietary operating system. I wish actual mobile Linux distributions like Plasma Mobile or Ubuntu Touch were actually usable.

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this post was submitted on 16 Nov 2023

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