Millennials sound off on wearables and news consumption
More millennials wear a wristwatch than you might think. While few of them actually consume news on wearable computers, many are somewhat interested in doing so. Apple’s recent, pre-holiday marketing push for the Watch has made a positive impression on most college students, who are more than willing to share their thoughts on the product’s strengths and weaknesses.
These observations stem from a survey of millennials conducted from mid-October to early November as part of Victor Hernandez’s 2015 fellowship at the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute.
We administered the survey online through a weekly email newsletter sent to all 35,000 students at the University of Missouri’s flagship campus. We offered them the chance to win a Visa gift card and 604 people responded. While the respondents came from a broad cross-section of majors, women were overrepresented by about 10 percent and undergraduates were underrepresented by nearly 17 percent.
Since this is a convenience sample of only students who chose to participate, please don’t look for statistical significance in our results. But as you’ll see in the following blog posts from our convergence capstone team – Samantha Healey, Chris Mathews and Lauren Slome – some interesting and promising trends emerged.
Now news organizations will have to decide whether and how to take advantage of those trends.
Wednesday: Survey: Most millennials are interested in wearables, but only 40 percent own a device by Lauren Slome
Thursday: Can the Apple Watch move from ‘cool to have’ to ‘must have’? by Samantha Healey
Friday: Millennials interested in — but not yet using — Apple Watch for news by Chris Mathews
Related Stories
Can the Apple Watch move from ‘cool to have’ to ‘must have’?
December 3, 2015
RJI Student Competition 2017–2018
This year’s RJI Student Competition not bound by topic or campus boundaries
September 5, 2017
SoundStir takes top honors in 2015 RJI Student Competition
April 22, 2015
Millennials interested in — but not yet using — Apple Watch for news
December 4, 2015








Donald W. Reynolds