Look Grandma, my phone is off for you

Last week, he received his first email from Grandma, who lives in Germany. “I opened an account for her and taught her how to use it. Now we are communicating all the time,” he said.

Today, my 16-year-old god-daughter comes up to me, heaves a heavy sigh and says, “I just finished responding to all my birthday wishes on Facebook.”

Ah the young – they carry such burdens on their shoulders.

“Be thankful you have friends who remember,” I said. “Wait till you are 80.”

At 16, it is of course hard to imagine what life could be like at 18, let alone 80 but while my god-daughter and Grandma may be generations apart, they are united by one thing – using technology to connect.

It seems they are not alone though – in Asia, there’s an entire generation that’s growing increasingly attached to their mobile.

A new Synovate survey of Young Asians (eight to 24 years old) shows that the lives of Asia’s youth revolve around their mobile phones. Personal ownership of mobiles has increased from 60% in 2008 to 64% in 2010 – Hong Kong jumped from 82% to 87% of youth owning a mobile, while Singapore went from 80% to 85%.

Here’s a quick look at the findings of the research done with Friendster, Microsoft Advertising and Yahoo!

• 64% of young Asians surveyed own a mobile phone. Hong Kong is leading the pack with 87% ownership, followed by 85% of Singaporean and Korean youth.

• 93% of youth aged 12 to 14 in Hong Kong and Singapore own a mobile phone, above the regional average of 47%.

• Listening to music, playing games and taking photos are the key activities – about half perform these activities on their mobile. One in five (21%) also uses this device to record video.

• In Singapore, the most popular mobile phone activities over the past 7 days are SMS (82%), listening to music (57%), taking pictures (54%) and playing games (52%).

• 20% use their mobile to surf the Internet, 17% engage in instant messaging, and 15% visit and update their profiles on social networking sites.

• Top groups regionally which show exceptional online activities through mobile are youth in China and Singapore. They are the top two markets where youth use their mobile to surf the Internet (44% China, 24% Singapore), send/ receive instant messages (34% China, 23% Singapore), and email (19% China, 16% Singapore).

For the first time, the survey also asked the youths to rate what was important in lives and family came in as most important (83% regionally, 80% in Singapore).

Grandma would approve.

However I think she would approve even more if more youths joined this revolution – My Phone Is Off For You.

Featured image credit (No mobile phone sign): Ockra/iStock