Purchase and Use of New Technologies among Young People: Guidelines for Sustainable Consumption Education

Abstract

Traditional consumer education (CE), aimed at providing information and guidance to young people, has become insufficient to take on the challenges posed by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), specifically SDG 12. Knowledge of youth’s habits as consumers today and citizens of the future becomes essential for defining the most suitable methodological contents and strategies for effective and sustainable CE. This premise was the inception for our research project on the consumption of young people, focusing on the acquisition, purchase, and use of new technologies. Data were obtained from a sample of 994 young people who participated in activities at the Consumption School of Catalonia and completed a questionnaire. The main results revealed that young people did not include sustainability criteria in their use or purchase of technological devices, especially mobile phones: the replacement rate for mobiles was very high (1, 2, or 3 years) and the most important purchase criteria were price, technical features, and brand. These results highlight the need to propose a new kind of CE that challenges the young to think about and adopt consumption methods adopting a contextual, constructive, and complex perspective.