Do you value your Facebook profile? Do you value it enough that you'd give up one of your senses to secure access to the site? A new study reveals that 53 percent of young people (ages 16-22) would rather sacrifice their sense of smell than give up their social networks.
McCann Worldgroup polled 7,000 people between the ages of 16 and 30 in the U.S., the U.K., Spain, China, Brazil, India, Mexico, and several other countries to find that without technology, a majority of this group would feel isolated and out of the loop.
"Technology is the great global unifier," global IQ director for McCann Worldgroup Laura Simpson said. "It is the glue that binds this generation together and fuels the motivations that define them. Young people utilize technology as a kind of supersense which connects them to infinite knowledge, friends, and entertainment opportunities."
The study also found that youth care more about connections than experiences. This generation maintains friendships differently than their parents, too. Through social media, the average teenager is "likely to manage and maintain multiple, intersecting groups of friends," as opposed to a single, smaller core group. In fact, 47 percent of respondents want others to remember them for their connections.
"This is the 'strategic generation' who effortlessly manages different identities, evaluates the usefulness of specific connections, and occasionally strips back those who no longer make the grade," the survey said.
With 500 million profiles and counting, the Facebook army is vast, and McCann's research suggests that a significant sector of the population cares deeply about their activity on the site. Fortunately, most of them will never have to chose between their olfactory system and Facebook.