Why young consumers adopt interactive technologies

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide an explanation for why young consumers adopt interactive technologies. Design/methodology/approach – The data analysed in this paper was taken from a series of in‐depth interviews and two online surveys initially conducted for the 2005 and 2006 Lifelounge Urban Market Reports. Findings – The results suggest that five key values held by young consumers explain their adoption of interactive technologies. Following the explanation of each finding is a vignette of how the social networking site MySpace utilises interactive technologies to enable young consumers to convey their values. Originality/value – This paper fills a gap in the literature by providing a values‐based structure of why young consumers adopt interactive technologies.