(unpaywalled version on archive.today: https://archive.ph/03cwZ)
Interesting figure that comes out of the article: 87% of US teens prefer iPhones. Also the explanations given aren’t quite surprising, I guess it’s mostly because of iMessage. Teens will feel like outcasts if they get an Android phone while their friends still use iMessage because of the green bubbles.
It’s actually hilarious how we allowed consumerism to take us this far and that we have now peer pressure over smartphones.
“You’re telling me in 2023, you still have a ’Droid? […] You gotta be at least 50 years old.”
ouch 😔
Mostly because it’s a cheap phone, but I also think it’s because Android is percieved as “uncool” by his peers.
Sometimes his old phone would glitch out occasionally and he’d say stuff like “This wouldn’t have happened if I had an iPhone!”
You can get a cheap android (but don’t have to). You can’t get a cheap iPhone.
And are you really going to get your 12 year old the latest flagship android when there are cheaper options?
If every android kid got the latest Pixel, I bet they wouldn’t be seen as “the cheap phone”.
Plus Apple’s been pushing nearly every anticompeitive angle they can. The iMessage thing is 100% intentional. It’s not that the android phones aren’t capable of working with iMessage. It’s that Apple wants to make your experience worse when something happens that doesn’t involve giving them money. Because they want you to push your friends into an iPhone, and people are dumb enough to fall for it.
I’m in my early 20’s and I just changed my iPhone for a Pixel, actually. Got fed up with a lot of the Apple crap, and the Pixel looked sick. Then again, I’m not American and I don’t use SMS anymore, so no one I talk to would ever know what OS I’m using.
The fact that Americans still use SMS is fucking bizarre. It’s like the Japanese still using fax in this day and age for some reason
The iMessage thing is 100% intentional
I’d even say that Apple targeted teens from the start, because we all remember when we were all kids how those little details mattered and how kids can be really horrible to each other about that. Them including a social differentiator inside a texting app is just evil.
Apple is the company who gave all the elementary schools free computers in exchange for putting their advertising posters up in.the hallways.
It was fully intentional.
I didn’t realize how big of a deal iMessage was until I spoke to a few US iPhone users. They make such a big deal out of it. Completely surprised me.
iMessage is by far the biggest hurdle for Android to overcome in the US. Convincing your friends to use a third party app just so you can participate in a group chat is next to impossible
And are you really going to get your 12 year old the latest flagship android when there are cheaper options?
Looking at the kids I know, I think this is definitely one of the reasons they moved to iphones. A second line cheap android is basically a free phone, which is perfect for the first phone for emergencies and such as a kid. They break or lose it, it doesnt really matter. But the experience of having a crappy phone sticks with them and they want to move up to a “real” phone, which means “away from android”. Then all the kids get iphones about the time being in contact with friends is important, and suddenly imessage can tell you who is still using the “cheap phone”.
To a degree you can override Googles choices, including running your own private Android version.
With iOS you must take what Apple gives.
I recently moved from Chrome to Firefox, so I get that. But Apple is a hell of a lot worse about it.
Using the iMessage thing to create social pressure in kids is pretty evil.
Which Android does he have? I do see this happen a bunch, a kid will have a bottom of the barrel cheap Android phone (you don’t have cheap options of iphones) and hate Android, not the fact that it’s a budget $100 phone. Get him a note 23 ultra and he won’t have those issues. Then he can show off the spen features iphones will never have
Not sure exactly what model it is, but it’s definitely a Motorola phone.
Maybe if he had a Pixel he’d appreciate Android more.
