Why Teens Just Aren’t that Into Twitter
Do teens tweet? Or is Twitter essentially “adults only?”
Yesterday’s New York Times picked at the scab of what’s becoming a hot button debate in digital circles. The demographics of Twitter has obvious implications for marketing efforts, but, more importantly, the reasons behind them speak to the difference between teens and adults expectations of the social benefits of each platform.
The Debate
For those of you looking to catch up, the debate began back in early July when a 15-year and 7 months old Morgan Stanley intern, Matthew Robson, published his research paper, “How Teenagers Consumer Media.” The paper sought to provide a teens-eye view of media consumption and presented a well articulated vision of one young man’s observations and assessment of the landscape. The report is definitely worth a read and covers an extensive list of major and minor media platforms: Radio, Television, Gaming, Social, Mobile and more. Wow. Nicely done.
Of course, the paper being printed on Morgan Stanley letterhead, many people assumed this was an empirically validated observation. (Who says branding doesn’t work?) It was not, as Mashable correctly pointed out. But it did kick start the debate. After all, the first rule of Twitter is “you don’t talk down about the Twitter.” The second, but only slightly less well known is: “Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line.” Still surprising how many miss that last one.
Nevertheless, the phrase “teens don’t tweet,” was quickly elevated to the level of “trending topic” as observers retweeted the article and teens (who obviously did tweet) announced their existence to the Twitter-sphere.
Nielsen conducted a study of their own and reached the conclusion that teens, in fact, don’t tweet.
Researcher Danah Boyd and Ph.D student Fred Stuzman, both published excellent critiques of Nielsen’s methodologies that give us strong reasons to doubt their conclusion, but the (anecdotal at least) reality is that teens do seem to be less interested in Twitter than adults. The key question is why?
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joshua corliss…
Princess Bride
Ebyan…
I’d like to see that Nielsen graph broken down into more traditional demos. 25 to 54 is… broad.
Brian…
@Ebyan: Agreed. Their breakdowns are bizzare. I mean 2-24 year olds using Twitter? What kind of 2 year olds could POSSIBLY using Twitter?
There are all kinds of bizarre aspects to that research. I encourage you to read Danah and Fred’s critiques and analysis. I checked against the US census data and, if this study is accurate, teens DO seem to slightly under index against their US population. (10-24 year olds make up 20.7% of the US population but only 16% of tweets.) Still, 10 year olds are a bit young for tweeting and don’t qualify as teens and unless we know who in the 2-24 year old bracket was doing the tweeting, its impossible to guess.
Garett…
Great article Brian.
I agree whole-heartedly with your review and insight on the debate at hand.
Teens/Tweens, IMO, are looking to build social currency. In their world this is measured by the number of interactions and conversations started by the content they post.
In a nutshell, the popular people are those that give people something (or more to the point, someone) to talk about. The real breakdown seems to be in how much the originator of the content cares about the resulting dialogue.
It’s an interesting thing to think about…because at the core of it-it’s all about content. Without the content, no conversation is had. The bigger question to explore is the types of content being utilized by these groups. The more we know about that, the better we are in servicing these audiences with information they care about most.
Craig Elimeliah…
Teens havent established an identity yet, they rely on the peripheral content around them on Facebook to help support the identity they think they have and it evolves daily. Twitter are short truncated messages that are typically more confident and reveal much more about the Tweeter. I dont think teens are confident enough yet to be part of the Twitter conversation, but they will. Perhaps if conversations are led towards teens encouraging them and empowering them to post honest opinions they would however teens are not that honest with themselves yet. Adults dont need the flair of friends and pics and parties and stickers that FB surrounds teens with, facebook is really safe and twitter can be intimidating to them. I think teens realize that twitter is not just tweeting OH THATS SO COOL rather that you need to make the most out of your 140 and even as adults we struggle to make sure each twit counts against how others perceive us.
Ebyan…
@Craig While I agree that the more feature-packed Facebook works better for teens’ identity-creation (the picture albums/tagging alone, e.g.), I’m not so sure if teens see Twitter’s concise messages as professionals do. For example, we may be conscious of the 140 characters’ industry exposure, but most teens I know are content tweeting “OH THATS SO COOL” or “doing homework ugh lol”.
All in all, the Nielsen study raises more questions that it answers, and all we have to go by at this point is anecdotal observations of tween/teen Twitter-use.