Presumably, teenagers have mystified parents ever since homo sapiens emerged 250,000 years ago. But never in history have youths had so many ways to isolate themselves from the adult world as they do now.

Indeed, many mums and dads fear that behind those earphones and screens, their children are losing touch with the real world.

But teenagers might not be as disconnected as their elders believe. Recent lifestyle research shows that today’s under-20s really just value technology as a means to being more connected with friends. This is about gossip, flirting and the latest music, not about withdrawing into the virtual reality of Second Life.

Older generations also tend to assume that Japan’s mobile phone-obsessed youth culture is a precursor – or early warning – of the way western youngsters will embrace technology in their lives. The Crazy Frog ringtone craze was a frightening incarnation of this possibility.

This may also be wrong. Teens do not actually care much about technology. They do not talk about Web 2.0, social networking or 3G. In fact, just 20 per cent of them consider themselves technology lovers, according to a global survey of 18,000 youths, commissioned by MTV, Nickelodeon and MSN, due for release on July 24. By contrast, 39 per cent say they do not even notice technology.

Indeed, most young people would prefer to spend a Saturday watching TV, hanging out with friends, listening to music or sleeping, in that order. That sounds rather traditional. Spending time online is seventh on the list, tied with hanging out at home, says the survey.

What youths do care about is feeling part of a community, building an individual identity and being entertained. If a mobile phone, IM or a page on Facebook helps fulfil these needs, then fine. But who cares what technology is behind it?

More important, technology is not a surrogate for real-world socialising. Meeting face-to-face remains the preferred way of staying in touch with friends. Failing that, an SMS, phone call or instant message is a second, third or fourth-best substitute for the real thing.

The dramatic change today is that youths never stop communicating with each other. Or, as the MTV/MSN researchers put it, they are constantly engrossed in conversation. Checking their mobile phones for text messages is the first and last gesture of the day for 42 per cent of teens. Over two-thirds rush to see who is online as soon as they boot up their computers. All of them communicate using e-mail or IM every time they log on.

So what can the older folk learn from these findings? What does this mean for the brands, content providers and tech companies eager to take a share of the kids’ pocket money?

The main lesson is that outsiders need to get pulled into the conversations that youths are perpetually involved in. They cannot interrupt the discussion or force their way in, but they can provide youngsters with reasons to bring them up in their conversation. Friends are now as important as brands when it comes to marketing, so outsiders need to join the community.

A successful example of this is the Meet or Delete campaign by MTV and Hewlett-Packard. This reality series, which airs on MTV channels around the world, allows students to seek friends and link with each other entirely on the basis of their hard drive’s contents.

HP’s sponsorship of Meet or Delete is prominent and the IT company is now seen as more cool by 65 per cent of the programme’s viewers, with more than half saying they would be likely to buy HP products as a result.

The “lost generation” in this emerging world could well be the mobile operators, which risk being nothing more than portable delivery pipes. That is definitely not cool.

Most likely, the operators will again forget that technology is not what engages consumers. Failing to meet the social and esteem needs of teens will surely mean failure. A notable exception is Tim, the Italian operator, whose Tribu (or “Tribe”) tariff is aimed at teenage social groups and encourages viral adoption.

Second, the business model based on premium tariffs for content would seem set to fail. Teens value the independence a mobile phone provides and they use it extensively for texting their friends. But they also have limited budgets and would rather use that money to keep in touch with friends than spend it downloading a video clip or game. That is why MTV concludes that most content will need to be free at the point of consumption.

In any case, if it is not free, the kids will work around the cost barriers. Ringtones, for instance, are often swapped using cost-free Bluetooth connections, sidestepping the purchase of the content as well as any data charges.

* MTV/Nickelodeon Circuits of Cool/Digital Playground survey