This is the percentage of Canadians aged 14 to 34 that provided topbox agreement to the statement: ‘It doesn’t matter whether I watch it on TV, at the movie theatre, on my computer or on my mobile phone – it just matters that I like the content.’

This is, of course, the future of our mediasphere, a changing landscape where the consumers are often the creators and broadcasters of the content, which they expect to access just about anywhere.

And this attitude can be expected to expand. Positive response to this statement is driven significantly by the youngest Canadians (students aged 14 to 18) at 65%. This represents a 20% increase over those aged 19 to 34 and helps identify a generationally growing trend.

As well, fully 77% of 14- to 34-year-olds in Canada listen to music on their computer, while 40% watch DVDs on a desktop or laptop and 31% ‘use their computer as a home entertainment centre.’

The transfer to mobile devices, rightly heralded by telcos, cell phone manufacturers and app developers as the ‘next frontier’ of content, is also showing strong corroborative evidence, with a quarter of teen and young adult cell phone users including ‘browsing’ and ‘playing downloadable games’ as features they employ on their roving squawk boxes.

Still, this mobile transfer is not as developed as one might think. When asked what cell phone feature is used ‘most,’ it is still texting that wins the day at 58%, with only a tiny fraction saying ‘browsing’ or ‘downloadable games’ (at 1% and 2% respectively).

Hear that? That’s the sound of younger mobile users cautiously considering expanded access. Mobile content is becoming a pillar of mass communication, but how quickly it’s happening is still up in the air.

This ‘statsthought’ was gleaned from Ping, Youthography’s quarterly national study of Canadians aged 9 to 34. It was culled from a winter 2007 survey of 1,560 14- to 34-year-olds, regionally represented. Mike Farrell (partner, chief strategic officer) can be reached at mike@youthography.com.