iPhone is still regarded as a status symbol among young people

To the surprise of absolutely no one, Piper Sandler’s semi-annual survey of teen tastes and trends found that Apple’s iPhone continues to reign supreme among the demographic, with 87% of teens not only responding to the survey that they own one — 88% added that they expect their next mobile device to be an iPhone, as well. Based on that poll of nearly 9,200 teens who live in households with an average annual income of $71,000, it would thus seem that the iPhone will have a lock on Generation Z for quite some time to come (though, again, that’s not too much of a surprise).

A TikToker, meanwhile, recently decided to probe this same mentality, albeit from a slightly different perspective — if a guy is a ’10’ but he has an Android phone, the TikToker asked a random group of young women, “what’s his new rating?”

The full video is below, and you can probably guess how the exchange goes. His new rating?

“A three.”

“That’s a zero.”

“That’s horrible.”

“It’s a zero — our pictures for Instagram are gonna be terrible.”

“I feel like it’s a downgrade.”

Obviously, these kinds of responses aren’t a comprehensive representation of what every young woman thinks about a potential partner who happens to own an Android device rather than an iPhone. Their statements are, however, certainly indicative of a pervasive sentiment among young people: It’s that iPhones, never mind whether they’re objectively the best mobile device or not, continue to be seen as status symbols.

Personally, I think it’s completely asinine to judge someone on the basis of what mobile device they own, but such is the world we live in. If you’re a hardcore iPhone fan, however, you’ll want to check out our iPhone 16 guide that offers a roundup of everything we know and are continuing to learn about the new iPhone models coming in 2024, including the introduction of five models across three different iPhone categories.