College Students - Stats

College Students Wield Connections, Concern and Consumer Clout

Alloy sent over the summary of their latest College Explorer research,
which shows how much college students have changed in the past four
years (they are way more wired). I'm pulling out the key stats below:

They are totally wired

- Close to all students (93%) report owning a cell phone (up 15 points from four years ago)

- Digital camera ownership has just about doubled since 2003. Today,
64% of students report owning one and 16% cite intention to purchase
this year

- In 2003, 17% of students owned MP3 players - and the iPod was not
yet a staple - today more than half (58%) own one [my BusinessWeek
Online piece on Apple should be running tomorrow btw]

- About one-third (28.9%) of campuses now offer blanket wireless
coverage and almost two-thirds claim to have a wireless strategy plan
in place (this has doubled from four years ago)

- Down with desktops: there was a 21 point increase of laptop ownership in the last two years alone (63% today vs. 42% in 2005

More students = more money to spend (or more debt to rack up)

- A 14% increase (from 2003) as 13.3 million students head back to
campus with $198 Billion in consumer spending power (up 31% from 2003)

- Three-quarters of students now report employment during the year

- 56% of college students are female, about 1.1 million more than reported in ’03

They're influencers

- 27% choose to stay in touch with friends via social networking
site over face-to-face communication, at 11%, or over phone, with 23%
reporting

- More than half (54%) of college students (ages 18-30) visit a social networking site in a typical day

- 25% actually claim they have “never” visited a user-generated site

- 66% of students are learning about brands, products and services from their friends

- 61% report being influenced by word of mouth WOM (up 48% from 2004)

- Students cite they are most likely to look to friends for advice for movies (60%) and electronics (48%)

- More than half of students claim they played the deciding role in
recent decision to buy a computer (57%), a digital camera (57%), or a
cell phone/PDA (66%)

Some of them want to make a difference

- 35% of students reporting they feel that people their age have the
greatest ability to impact positive world change and up from last year

- 37% cite they are more likely to purchase brands that are socially and environmentally responsible (33% in 2006)cc