We are going to kick off Youth Lab by sharing some of the research we have been doing on the all encompassing topic of… the recession. It seems on the surface the general thinking is that just because people are in full time education they won’t be affected by the current economic crisis. I mean students are protected right? They have doting parents, living at home, or in halls, and you can’t exactly get made redundant from school or uni can you? It is an easy assumption to make that the safety net of full time education saves you from ‘real life’ problems however Face’s recent Tech Tribe research results say something different.

Face’s annual Tech Tribe report gets right to the core of how youth feel about the world and the brands & products they consume. Over the next few months we will be blogging about how the recession is affecting the Tech Tribe respondents and how behaviour is changing as a result. But before we get in to individual subjects let’s look at what effect the recession is having in general…

70% of 16-25 year olds are in one way or another, a student. So it is really interesting to find out that 50% feel that they are being personally adversely affected. Those over 21 and entering the world of work obviously feeling it more than those younger than them. Only a quarter of students feel like that they have not been affected at all by the economic downturn.

The above stats provide a great platform for some of the other research Face has conducted for the Tech Tribe report. It allows us to put the recession in perspective and will change some peoples automatic assumptions of youth. Stay tuned.

Tags: Money, Recession, Tech Tribe