What brands does your teenager think are cool? Google surveyed over 1,000 teens that are part of Generation Z in an effort to find out what people of this age group think is cool. They put the results together in a project called “It’s Lit – A Guide to What Teens Think is Cool”.
Generation Z includes people who were born between the mid-1990s to early 2000s. However, Google chose to focus their research on 13-17 year olds. The teenagers were asked to rank 122 brands based on how cool each brand is.
According to the teens who took part in the survey, the top ten coolest brands are:
* YouTube
* Netflix
* Google
* Xbox
* Oreo
* GoPro
* PlayStation
* Doritos
* Nike
* Chrome
The research was conceived and executed by the Brand Team for Consumer Apps at Google. Personally, I found it a bit suspicious that Google just so happened to wind up in the top ten coolest brands (according to teenagers). Chrome, which is owned by Google, also ended up in the top ten.
But, then I learned that the research studies for “It’s Lit” were not conducted by Google. The research came from YouGov, which administered more than one study to teenagers. Other results came from studies administered by Gutcheck and Research Group (IRG).
The study also asked the teens what kind of smartphone they owned. The results were:
* iOS – 43.3%
* Android – 41.3%
* “Don’t Use a Smartphone” – 9.6%
* “Other” – 3.9%
* Windows – 3.1%
Teen Vogue pointed out some things to consider in regards to this survey. They note that a survey of about a thousand teenagers is pretty small. “Even among friends, what’s ‘cool’ and what’s ‘uncool’ differs, so it seems pretty unfair to have a questionnaire filled out by 1,000 teens determine what’s in and what’s out for the entire gen Z and millennial generations.”
In short, your teen might think that YouTube is the coolest brand. Or, he or she may have a very different opinion about what’s cool. Teen Vogue reminds teens they should take any survey like this one “with a grain of salt.” They emphasize: “When it comes down to it, if you think something is cool, then it’s cool to you.”
There is more information in the survey than I have mentioned here. Parents might find it interesting to read the parts that compare what Generation Z thinks is cool compared with what Millennials think.
Related Articles at Families.com:
* Gen X Parents Raising Connected Children
* Disney Movies Now Available on Netflix Streaming
* What Teen Girls Experience Online