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It’s 2016 and if you haven’t noticed, everyone is concerned about the millennial. From being the prime demographic for marketers to being the main focus of researchers, this elite bunch has been bombarded with new tech, new info and new apps since the beginning of Internet time.
And while one may think that with so many options in so little time, a person is bound to malfunction from digital overload, that’s definitely not the case for the millennial. As more social media, fitness, banking and fashion apps hit the app store, these gen-y members continue to show that they can adjust and embrace apps as fast as they come.
Here are some stats to prove it. According to an Apple report updated on Statista, “Apple announced that 130 billion apps had been downloaded from its App Store” from July 2008 to June 2016. And if we look at the data closer, we see that the number of downloads each year incrementally increases from the years prior.
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To get a better idea of how well millennials are embracing new apps, recent studies show that this group is not only spending more time on their smartphones as each year passes, but they’re focusing their usage through apps versus websites.
As Dogtown Media reported on a 2015 U.S. Mobile App Report by research firm comScore, the millennial spends an average of 90 hours a month on mobile apps. And of these 90 hours, they spend “18 times longer on the top 1,000 mobile apps compared to the top 1,000 web properties.”
Since the usage hours are so high, new and current brands are constantly working on innovating their platforms in order to gain and maintain the loyalty of millennials, ultimately leading to more gen-y catering and coddling by companies. Which, naturally, has created some downfalls for the bunch.
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Because companies are fighting for millennial loyalty, this generation is currently experiencing a tech debilitation. While these young men and women can keep up with thousands of apps at growing rates, they have come to rely on the automation of everyday life.
According to data published by nonprofit Change the Equation, 58 percent of millennials “have poor skills solving problems with technology” despite their dependence on tech. And almost of all millennials don’t recognize that this lack of skill is a problem. As the report states, 91 percent of digital natives don’t believe that low computer skills hurt their ability to advance in life.
So while millennials are staying up-to-date on all the new apps released every week, they still aren’t as tech savvy as previously thought. But as long as companies keep making everyday tasks like online banking, calling a car and shopping simpler, there will be no problems for these digital natives to keep up.
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