This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American
Thank you for your input as no less than 100 readers were kind enough to participate in my not-so-scientific survey of what is least important to them, when given a choice to give up one item ranging between a TV, vehicle, laptop/tablet, and a smartphone.
I know my Social Science Surveys professor from grad school would probably rip his hair out if he looked at my biased questions and the suspiciously perfect number of 100 respondents (no tampering, promise!), yet my intent was not simply data collection but three-fold:
First, I wanted to get to know my readership better, and to help you understand the community you are interacting within as well;
Second, I wanted to lay the groundwork for future blogs on the links between new technologies and changing behaviors;
Third and finally, I wanted to contrast these results with the results of a very similar survey car-sharing company Zipcar conducts, most recently in January 2014.
On supporting science journalism
If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.
So how do the results from our survey and Zipcar’s survey stack up against each other?
From our survey results seen here to the left, we see that 68% of respondents rank their TV the lowest, which is pretty intuitive given how much we watch shows and what not on our smartphones, as well as laptops and tablets. Surprising to me was that people would rather give up their smartphone than their vehicle or laptop or tablet.
If we can compare that to Zipcar’s findings, which tends to rank these products by age category, I can divine that the readership of this blog extends past Millenials, which is neither here nor there, but the big finding from Zipcar is simply this: new technologies are changing our behaviors, and this varies by age.
So if Millenials, which is to say future people, value MP3s over MPGs (in the words of Zipcar’s President Mark Norman) then what are the implications for future energy use? What role do ICT and new technologies have in enabling changing behaviors and with it, a transformed energy landscape?
More on this in the next post as I look into the drop of future people with drivers licenses.
For now though, what do you think?
p.s. In a nice juxtaposition, see fellow blogger Sheril Kirshenbaum discuss the age split in opinion of allowing natural gas exports.