According to a survey conducted by TCS on 12,300 high school students (aged 12-18 years), India’s young generation is hooked onto Facebook and other social media channels. The survey also revealed that the majority of the youngsters have access to mobile devices.
As many as 85% respondents said they use Facebook, while 79 per cent said they own a mobile phone. More than 40% said they use their mobile phones to access the internet (compared to 12 per cent in 2009). The survey also revealed that the IT sector is the preferred choice of career for these youngsters with 34% of them voting in favor of IT. Other popular career choices among the youngsters were – Engineering with 30% , Medicine with 11% and Media with 7.5%.
“The survey highlights the increasing relevance of concepts like social networks and mobility devices, which can be used to drive collaboration, creativity and productivity among young employees inside the enterprise,” –  Ajoy Mukherjee,  Executive Vice President and Global Head HR, TCS.
He also touched upon the fact that India’s next generation professionals use social media in their daily lives and approach their academic and social lives way differently than their predecessors and therefore there is an urgent need for companies to try and accommodate these mediums in the corporate environment in a manner that can help to create and nurture new opportunities for the next generation.
“With increasing penetration of broadband, smart devices and social networks, the way students today conduct their academic and social lives is changing. As an employer, we need to understand how to leverage these trends to create engaging careers for tomorrow’s professionals,” – Ajoy Mukherjee
It remains to be seen how TCS and other IT giants decide to incorporate social media channels in the workflow of their organizations, because the fact is that most organizations today prefer monitoring their employees social media activities and there have been cases where employees have faced the wrath of their employers for posting something negative about their organization. Therefore it will be interesting to note how these top IT firms are able to find a fine balance between employee monitoring and at the same time employee engagement in social media activities in the corporate environs. Mr Mukherjee also added that,
“While these new trends need to be incorporated, there is also a need for organisational values to be communicated. Compensation plans and employee engagement plans need to be designed keeping in mind these new trends,”
The study revealed that when it came to Facebook usage among youngsters, Delhi and Mumbai ruled the roosts with Delhi reporting the second highest usage numbers (95.63%). Delhi youngsters also have the second highest ownership of mobile phones (86.27%).
Also, the responses reveal that youngsters prefer Internet access over their mobile phones (58.98%) compared to Laptops (58.08%). Tablets are also a hit with the youngsters as 21.9% respondents said they access Internet over their tablets while 10% revealed they actually owned such a device, which might suggest that some of them use tablets belonging to friends and family.
Voice call remains the preferred mode of communication for Delhi students with 62.27% voting in favor of it. E-mails, IMs and SMSs all got 55% votes. These figures could suggest that online communication mediums are fast catching up with voice calls and might actually overtake them in the foreseeable future.
