Preppies or techies, they are all tech-savvy

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: What do teens want? Tech, tech and more tech. From the latest cell phone and game system to a new Apple i-something and a virtual apartment, technology increasingly defines the lifestyles of teenagers, marketing experts and company executives say.

That was the major theme of the “What Teens Want” conference in Manhattan, as advertisers sought insights into a tech-savvy and globally connected generation that is remaking the image of the typical consumer.

“Technology is starting to define what’s cool in a way that fashion used to define what’s cool,” said Tina Wells, CEO of Buzz Marketing Group. For teens, “as long as it’s technology, it’s hot.”

Technology also has turned advertising upside down, with companies scrambling to adapt to Internet video, digital video recorders, mobile media devices and online social networking. It’s a fast-moving, tech-heavy world that teens take for granted. “They’re just so receptive to new technology in ways that we find hard to understand,” said Jeremy Wright, global director of mobile brand strategy with the European handset maker Nokia. “They’re the early explorers in mobile technology.”

“Teens have adopted text messaging as a second language,” said Jordan Berman, executive director of media innovation for AT&T Mobility, the wireless division of San Antonio, Texas-based AT&T Inc.

The teen marketplace breaks into “tribes,” Wells said. She said two of them are Preppies, the popular kids, and Techies, who “five or six years ago were called nerds and geeks.”

“As times have changed, these are really cool kids,” she said. “They’re the ones that know about an iPhone 18 months in before an iPhone comes and they teach a Preppie how to use it.”

Citing an unfinished online survey, which so far includes about 680 US participants, she said 65% of US teens plan to purchase one or two tech items this summer before heading back to school. More than half say they will buy tech items when they can afford them and only one in 10 is happy with the tech gadgets they have, she said. Of the teens, Wells polled online, 93% say they prefer the Internet to television. Wells’s research also found 57% of teens prefer Facebook over MySpace, 71% choose text messages over instant messaging, and 65% would rather use a Mac computer instead of a PC. That’s a sign of brand strength since far fewer teens own a Mac, Wells said.