Just over a fortnight ago, Matthew Robson had never worked in banking. This was mainly because he was 15 years and 7 months old and attending a comprehensive school in South London.

Today he is the talk of Tokyo, Wall Street and the City. Fund managers, CEOs and analysts are poring over his report, How Teenagers Consume Media, which he wrote last week while on work experience at Morgan Stanley.

In it he laid out the world according to the teenager: a confusing place where the PC is a radio, the games console is a telephone, the mobile telephone is a stereo and text-message machine, the DVDs are pirate copies and no one uses Twitter.

Sitting at home in Greenwich yesterday, he explained that he was only relaying the daily conversations of the 200 teenagers in his year and thousands of others across the country, translated into language that bankers would understand.

“Most teens would say the same things,” he said. “We talk about this kind of thing at school quite a lot. Though the way we talk about it you probably wouldn’t understand it.”

His mother, Sheila, interrupts. “Do your voice!” she said.

He would rather not.

Gaining a place at Morgan Stanley to explain teenage media consumption to the world required a little luck. It was not just what Matthew knew, but whom he knew, or rather, whom his dog, Rudolph, knew.

In January Rudolph, a three-year-old whippet, was being walked by Matthew’s mother in Greenwich Park when he became friendly with the dog of Patrick Wellington, a senior financial analyst at Morgan Stanley. His mother and Mr Wellington began chatting about her son’s struggles to get a work experience placement.

“We had tried many places, mainly in the local area,” said his mother. Matthew had written to local businesses, solicitors and banks including Lloyds TSB and all had turned him down.

So he wrote to Morgan Stanley, which offered him a two-week internship and two weeks ago on Monday he set off for the bank’s offices in Canary Wharf.

“The first day was quite scary,” he said. “But it was really interesting. By the second week I felt I understood what a bank did.” He had been placed in the bank’s media and internet research team. Mr Wellington had given him a list of things to do and then gone on holiday. His report on how teenagers consume media was compiled in a day.

“I texted a few friends to get ideas,” he said. He believes his report represents the collective wisdom of about 300 teenagers.

Teenagers do not listen to the radio, he wrote, preferring online streaming sites, nor do they ever buy music. Games consoles “now... connect to the internet, voice chat is possible between users... one can speak for free over the console so a teenager would be unwilling to use a phone,” he wrote.

He told The Times that at home he usually communicates with his male friends while blowing up terrorists on the action game Call of Duty. “You use a mobile phone if you want to talk to girls,” he said, as “only about one in fifty girls plays computer games.”

Girls are a lot more prone to spend their time on social networking sites. Matthew uses Facebook but his accounts with Piczo and Bebo have lapsed and Twitter is strictly for the elderly. “It’s aimed at adults,” he said. “Stephen Fry is not particularly cool. Also, for the cost of one tweet you could send quite a few text messages.” As no teenagers followed each other’s profiles, tweeting was “pointless”.

He believes cost is a critical factor in the teenage market as “no one has any money”. “Eight out of ten teenagers don’t buy music,” he said. “It comes from limewire, blogs or torrents.” Meanwhile, pirated DVDs generally cost £2 and go on sale even as the films are in the cinema.

His supervisors thought the report “one of the clearest and most thought-provoking insights we have seen” and published it. Matthew, meanwhile, finished his internship and went on scout camp.

The bank said that the response to his report had been enormous — generating six times the usual level of interest.

Trisha Jaffe, his headteacher at Kidbrooke School, Greenwich, said she was “not at all surprised” at his success. “He’s a very reflective young man,” she said.

Last night Matthew said he was now considering a career in investment banking. Then he had to go. He had homework.

The world according to Matthew Robson aged 15 and a half

Radio With online sites streaming music for free they do not bother, as services such as last.fm do this advert free and users can choose the songs they want instead of listening to what the radio presenter/DJ chooses

Newspapers No teenager that I know of regularly reads a newspaper, as most do not have the time and cannot be bothered to read pages and pages of text while they could watch the news summarised on the internet or on TV

Internet Facebook is the most common, with nearly everyone with an internet connection registered. On the other hand, teenagers do not use Twitter

Music They are very reluctant to pay for it (most having never bought a CD) Teenagers from higher income families use iPods and those from lower income families use mobile phones

Directories Real directories contain listings for builders and florists, which are services teenagers do not require. They can get the information free on the internet

Viral/Outdoor Marketing “Most teenagers enjoy and support viral marketing... Teenagers see adverts on websites (pop-ups, banner ads) as extremely annoying and pointless...they are portrayed in such a negative light that no one follows them.”

Cinema Teenagers visit the cinema more often when they are in the lower end of teendom but as they approach 15 they go to the cinema a lot less. This is because of the pricing; at 15 they have to pay the adult price. Also it is possible to buy a pirated DVD of the film at the time of release, and these cost much less than a cinema ticket

Mobile phones The general view is that Sony Ericsson phones are superior, because of their long list of features, built-in Walkman capacity and value

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