Survey: iPods Cooler than Beer
By Geoff Duncan
June 08, 2006
College students have spoken: iPods are more "in" than beer.
According to a bi-annual market research survey conducted during the week of March 6 by Student Monitor, nearly three quarters of 1,200 college students surveyed said iPods were "in," making them hipper than any other item in Student Monitor's list of potentially "in" topics and activities, including text messaging, bar hopping, coffee, and—naturally—drinking beer.
(OK, we admit it's possible beer drinkers were under-represented in the survey due to hangovers.)
This year, drinking beer tied for the number two "in" spot on the survey, tied with social networking site Facebook.com. (MySpace, apparently, didn't make the cut.)
Only a a year ago a mere 59 percent of students surveyed thought iPods were "in," putting the personal music players behind both beer and other drinking other forms of alcohol. And beer has been a top vote-getter for most of the survey's 18 years: the only other time it lost its top vote-getting status was in 1997 when a newfangled thing called "the Internet."