Ah, youth: An eternal well-spring of energy, enthusiasm - and contradictions. The latest "YouthTech" marketing research from Voxhound underscores a contradiction in the UK: young tech users are both tired of being tethered to their devices, and yet are overwhelmingly attached to that technology. Device ownership and usage In the UK, the PC is still king with an 81% average share between male and female. MacBooks are next most popular, with Chromebooks eking out a 2% share. And a revealing 9% don't own a laptop - perhaps focusing resources on mobile and tablets that provide more flexibility. This is indicative of a trend away from the "must have" status of a full-fledged computer - those who own a tablet come in at 36%, so there's some clear overlap on the device front among teenagers. The usage results are where the most useful nuggets live. Here are some ways that the surveyed teens use their smartphones:

• 84% browse the internet 
• 42% download apps
• 26% compare prices when shopping by searching or scanning a product
• 17% check into a place on social networks

These results are a bit different than the results from the US covered this week, which found much more time being spent on the app front than on the mobile web. There's a clear opportunity to move that shopping number higher as brands continue to focus on mobile conversion. Attitudes towards tech highlight contradictions  Perhaps the most eye-raising piece of this particular report is the seeming contradictions that these young tech users have vis-à-vis attitudes toward technology. While there seems to be no slowdown of tech adoption and usage, there's an overwhelming desire by many to reduce reliance and dependence on technology. Here's how those contradictions play out - even the very teenagers that get a bad rap for being "down in their screens" are concerned about technology's impact on society:

And yet 64% of the surveyed sample agree or somewhat agree that they feel anxious without access to technology - meaning that, even though they agree that a periodic tech diet is important, lacking access to tech creates anxiety for the majority.

The contradictions continue, with the majority of respondents also actively avoiding more direct forms of communication whenever possible.

Of course, it's impossible to match the 48% of teens in agreement with the statement that people spend too much time looking at screens and not talking to each other. Nonetheless, technology has become a crutch in the sense that even teenagers realize its impact - but are still unable to truly untether emotionally from the devices.

And as far as the next generation's next generation? Like their parents, even today's teens hope their children are able to separate more from their tech:

Marketing takeaways Teenagers are not the most pressing targets for travel marketers, given their general lack of funds at that life stage. Nonetheless, for those seeking engagement in the UK, the key marketing takeaway is to focus on the "away from tech" value of a particular travel product. By positioning an activity as a tech detox opportunity, brands could leverage the disparity between those that want to take time away from tech and those that actually do. There could be also an opportunity for travel marketers to target the parents, who might actually share their children's concerns about overuse of technology. Packaging an experience that would provide that escape for both teens and their parental benefactors could prove popular. Methodology The methodology behind the research was twofold: the first portion came from a Voxburner survey of 1,544 sixteen to twenty-four year-olds between the dates of December 25th 2013 and January 14th 2014. Half were students, and half were sourced from a wider research panel. The second portion of stats on mobile came from the 400k members of YouGov's UK panel. NB: Teenagers using tech image courtesy Shutterstock.