Source: Nielsen, Mobile Youth Around the World
There are any number of ways to measure how independent teenagers are around the world. How many live away from their parents. How many are employed. How many pay their own rent. But here, courtesy of the market researches at Nielsen, we see another way to get at the question: How many teenagers pay for their own cell phone plan? We see that the more northern European and BRICK countries are more independent than the southern European countries of Spain and Italy. The United States ranks almost as low as Spain and Italy.
Now, it’s somewhat reasonable for your parents to pay your phone bill when you’re a teenager. How about when you’re a young adult, age 20-24? Here, the United States comes in dead last in the sample. Perhaps this is further evidence that in the US, millennials are pretty much screwed without the parental safety net?
Source: Nielsen, Mobile Youth Around the World
To get occasional notifications when we write blog posts, sign up for our email list.