Hey, Siri, Do My Homework!

Digital assistant usage highest among teens

January 18, 2017 | Marketing

Digital assistants are becoming a part of everyday life, and many people—primarily teens and millennials—use them regularly.

Accenture polled 25,996 internet users worldwide ages 14 and older and asked about usage voice-enabled digital assistants. For the most part, younger respondents use voice-enabled digital assistants more frequently than their older counterparts.

For example, nearly a third of respondents ages 14 to 17 said they use them regularly. Respondents ages 18 to 34 are more interested in AI than older respondents, but just 23% of these older millennials use the technology regularly.

By comparison, just 14% of 35- to 55-year-olds use these digital assistants frequently, and even fewer respondents ages 55 and older do so.

Even among people who just started using them, adoption is highest among teens and millennials.

That's not to say older respondents aren't interested in AI. In fact, roughly a third of internet users—across every age group—said that while they don't use voice-enabled digital assistants at the moment, they are interested in them. But older respondents are less likely to be as interested the technology.

In general, according to numerous data sources, consumer interest in voice-enabled digital assistant devices is growing. Separate research from Strategy Analytics estimated that 1.8 million digital voice-activated devices (most of them Amazon Echo) would be sold in the US in 2016, which means 2.3% of US households owned a device by year end.

—Rimma Kats