Americans 18-34, aka Generate C, are hyper-connected

'Generation C' is 23% of US population but represent larger percentages of digital behavior

You probably heard of Baby Boomers, Generation X, and Millennials. Well, there's a new generation in town, at least according to Nielsen and NM Incite, a Nielsen/McKinsey company, which released their first ever "US Digital Consumer Report."

Nielsen coined the term "Generation C" to describe the super-connected 18-34 American age demographic, or those "born sometime between the launch of the VCR and the commercialization of the Internet." The latest Census information reports that Americans 18-34 make up 23% of the U.S. population. However Neilsen's data shows they represent a disproportinately large percentage of online activity.

Generation C makes up 27% of people watching online video, as well as 27% of people visiting social networking/blog sites. They are 33% of the people who own tablets and 39% of people who use a a smartphone.

Their ownership and use of connected devices makes them incredibly unique consumers, according to Neilsen, representing both a challenge and opportunity for marketers and content providers alike. The report is chock full of interesting information and, incidentally, entirely made of infographics for easy scanning. I would highly suggest taking a look.

One of the most interesting break-downs was a series of graphs showing how digital behavior by Americans occured across mobile function, brands, and category of online activity.

For instance, 13.4% of the time spent on mobile devices was used text messaging, 11.1% on an Internet browser, 5.3% on email/IM, 5.5% on social networking apps, and 55.8% in a catch-all, "other apps." Online video time was spent a whopping 44.7% on YouTube, 10.7% on Netflix, 6.9% on Hulu, and 32.2% on "Other."

Some other interesting stats: 274.2 million Americans have Internet access, 165.9 million people watched video during the trial period, and 169.6 million visitors to social networking sites or blogs.