Last week Morgan Stanley (MS) published a paper written by a 15 year old intern in their UK office exploring teen media consumption. Morgan Stanley concedes that to not be “claiming representation or statistical accuracy” given the casual nature of the report. It is interesting to compare this paper’s beliefs to “How Teens Use Media,” a recent teen study conducted by Nielsen on a global basis. The two studies have substantial differences in certain areas, three of which I highlighted three in the following chart.

These discrepancies probably stem from the fact that the Morgan Stanley paper is basically inferred from a single perspective while the Nielsen study is worldwide survey. Furthermore it is probable that the UK cultural nuances differentiate the Morgan Stanley paper; it is also possible that it is skewed towards the younger end of teens since the writer is 15.

Still the personal nature of the Morgan Stanley paper gives it a certain appeal; it is filled with anecdotal nuggets, granting personable insight into how and why teens use media.

• “Teenagers visit the cinema more often they are in the lower end of teendom… this is due to pricing; at 15 they have to pay the full adult price, which is often double the child price.”
• “Many teenager use YouTube to watch videos (usually anime which cannot be watched anywhere else)…”

What is truly needed is a more thorough study of media consumption, directly comparing all age demographics from Preteens (10-12) to adults. The Nielsen Three Screen Study comes close to this, but the youngest demographic included is 18-24. It would also be greatly useful to categorize the media consumption not by age, but by birthdate, and to also conduct the study annually in order to judge how generational media consumption evolves.