Prevention Works!

Generation Y: How Marketers Are Reaching Children

Born during a baby bulge that demographers locate between 1979 and 1994, they are as young as 5 and as old as 20. At 60 million strong, they are the biggest thing to hit America since the 72 million baby boomers. They are called Generation Y, Echo Boomers, or Millennium Generation, and whether you are marketing a new brand of jeans or a prevention program, understanding who this generation is will be the key to reaching them with your message.

With the number of children in America larger than at the peak of the Baby Boom, the market research industry is now focusing more and more on how to reach this generation. The Nickelodeon/Yankelovich Youth Monitor, now in its seventh year of reporting on the trends of Generation Y, recently released the findings from its latest study.

Key findings about Generation Y:

• This generation is more racially diverse; one in three is not Caucasian.
• Seventy-four percent of kids have friends of a different race or ethnic origin.
• One in four lives in a single-parent household.
• Three in four have working mothers.
• Fifty-nine percent have a TV in their bedroom.
• Sixty-five percent report regular in-home computer use.
• The Generation Y medium of choice is the Internet.

The top worries of 9- to 17-year-olds include:

• Not doing well in school
• Not having enough money
• Getting cancer

The marketers who have been successful in capturing Generation Y’s attention do so by bringing their messages to the places these kids congregate--such places as the Internet, snowboarding tournaments, or cable TV. If you want to reach Generation Y, you must understand both who they are and where they are. Using marketing research while developing prevention programs--much like corporations use such research to develop advertising campaigns--can help you reach the intended audience and ensure the success of your program.

For more information on the Nickelodeon/Yankelovich Youth Monitor, visit their Web site at http://www.yankelovich.com.

Sources: Generation Y: Today's teens--the biggest bulge since the boomers--may force marketers to toss their old tricks, Business Week, February 15, 1999.
Marketers Following Youth Trends to the Bank, The Washington Post, April 19, 1999.

To receive a complimentary copy of this PreventionAlert, call SAMSHA's National Clearinghouse for Alcohol and Drug Information (NCADI) @ 1-800-729-6686, TDD 1-800-487-4889 (for the hearing impaired.) PREVENTIONAlert is supported by the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, and may be copied without permission with appropriate citation. For information about PREVENTIONAlert, please contact CSAP by phone (301) 443-0581 or e-mail gensley@samhsa.gov