A NEW SURVEY looking at the consumer habits of Irish young people has found that the average number of Facebook friends for 16- to 35-year-olds is 360.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the older you get the less cyber-friends you seem to have.
Among 16- to 18-year-olds the average number of friends was 490, a figure that drops off to 205 for people in the 30- to 35-year-old age bracket.
The new figures from Thinkhouse, the youth communications agency, also found that the average individual clocks up 102 minutes online per day.
Prospects at the moment?
Economically speaking, Irish young people seem broadly optimistic about the country’s future.
Two-thirds said they feel that they will be living in Ireland in three years time, with only 19% saying that they see themselves living and working abroad.
When asked about their current prospects, 44% said that they feel optimistic about finding a job. Just under half (48%) said that they were currently in work, with 33% being full-time, 12% being part-time and 3% saying that they were self-employed.
One encouraging indicator was that on a ranking of things to worry about, the job market has been knocked off the top spot.
Instead data privacy is now the main concern, with 79% expressing worrying about it.
Are young people lazy?
When asked to describe young people in one word, most individuals responded by saying that Irish young people are ‘lazy’ (26%) or ‘laid back’ (20%).
The 16- to 18-year-old age group asked expressed a more positive attitude, with one-fifth describing their generation as ambitious.
What else did they find?
In terms of other future ambitions, it was found that less than half (45%) wanted to get married in the future. Around one-fifth (19%) said that marriage is not important to them but that they would like to be with someone long-term in the future.
One in three 16- to 35-year-olds said that they would like to have more than two children.
Speaking about the report, Jane McDaid, the founder of Thinkhouse, said that today’s report, “brings statistical validation to what we have been experiencing & that Ireland truly is recovering from recession.”
The survey is carried out as part of The Youth Lab division of Thinkhouse and releases results on a quarterly basis. Each quarter 500 different individuals are surveyed, with 2,000 surveyed over the course of the year.
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