Teens believe that Android phones are for old people and parents only

According to the Wall Street Journal, most teens these days see Android handsets as an old technology. For example, a 20-year-old content creator by the name of Abdoul Chamberlain posted a video back in April that said, "You’re telling me in 2023, you still have a 'Droid? You gotta be at least 50 years old." For those who came to be a smartphone fanatic recently, the 'Droid brand was used by Motorola for its early Android handsets, and the first Motorola Droid, released in 2009, is widely considered to be the first real iPhone challenger in the U.S.

The line was known for the robotic-sounding 'DROID' announcement it would make whenever the phone received a new notification to share. Chamberlain's video called out Android phones as the kind that only parents would own. Even though Android users point out that there are Android models that have better cameras and battery life than the iPhone, Chamberlain will not stray from iOS.

In high school, the teasing gets worse as Android users are taunted for being "broke" and "medieval" by other students. And when an Android user crashes an iOS chat on iMessage, all of the features that are available when the whole group is using an iPhone, including higher-quality images, read receipts, typing indicators, end-to-end encryption, and more, all disappear. And the texts typed by the Android user in a group appear in a green text bubble, the modern-day equivalent of the "Scarlet Letter."

According to Statcounter, in the U.S. iOS leads Android by a 57% to 42% margin. A study of 7,100 teens conducted last year by U.S. investment firm Piper Sandler found that 87% of teens own an iPhone and that same percentage of teens plan to buy another iPhone when it comes time to replace their current device. Being an iPhone snob is a U.S. phenomenon as worldwide Android owns a leading 71% slice of the global smartphone pie compared to 28% for iOS.

Ironically, Google's own messaging system for Android uses a platform called Rich Communication Services (RCS) which delivers certain familiar features like end-to-end encryption, typing indicators, read receipts, high-quality images, and blue text bubbles, but only when all of the parties in a chat are using Android. But should an iPhone user slip into the group, guess what happens? All of these features go away and the outcast iOS user will be seeing his words typed inside a telltale green text bubble.

Yet, you never hear about a group of Android-totin teens verbally attacking the parents of an iPhone user for making too much money. And speaking about the insults, teens apparently do not know that some Android phones are more expensive than an iPhone. For example, the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5 starts at $1,800.