The age of diversification

I just blogged about this briefly (in my Matthew Robson post), but the death of Walter Cronkite this week gives historical context to the diversification trend. As CBS/CNET technology analyst Larry Magid points out, it's not just teens whose tools for socializing, communicating, news-gathering, media-sharing, and entertainment are diversifying. He recalls a time when the nightly news on broadcast TV was how a huge swath of the population stayed informed and all ended up talking about the top stories the next day. Both the media and their distribution platforms and channels have multiplied so much that can't possibly all be seeing and talking about the same stories (except maybe those of celebrities?). We're inundated by information, misinformation, media, and devices, which means that new media literacy - the mental filter for what's being uploaded and produced as much as downloaded and consumed - is needed more now than ever before in history. "Kids - who may never even know who Walter Cronkite was – need to have a miniature version of him inside their head by asking questions such as 'Is this true?' and 'How do I know it's true?” writes Larry, who is also my co-director at ConnectSafely.org, adding: "And when they’re about to post, they need to think carefully before they broadcast their own versions of "the way it is'."

Dissing Matthew Robson (or was that Morgan Stanley?)

Time blogger Dan Fletcher is so dismissive of Morgan Stanley teenage intern Matthew Robson that he sounds a little jealous. "What exactly did Robson reveal? Well, not a lot," Fletcher reports. His conclusion is that Matthew's bosses at Morgan Stanley "need to spend a bit more time with their kids. Do that, and we suspect the revelation that teenagers like cell phones and free music will seem, well, a little less revelatory." I agree that there's much more value in listening to our own children than to Morgan Stanley about how teens use tech, but that's because the way youth use tech is highly individual. Even Matthew Robson can't tell you how your child uses technology and social media, but I can see real value in his views to marketers. The one useful bit in Fletcher's post is his link to some data at social media market researchers Sysomos, who say that 31% of Twitter's users are 15-19. That contrasts with the prevailing view, based on comScore research and anecdotal evidence from young people themselves (e.g., see "Why Gen Y's not into Twitter" and the comment under this blog post of mine).

Hey, maybe Sysomos is onto something. But what is clear right now is that the assumption that teens will flock en masse to every new social technology (like Twitter) that comes along is just that: an assumption. We make too many assumptions about how youth use tech. Time's Fletcher also made light of Matthew's observation that teens were communicating more in game communities such as Xbox Live; what I drew from that, again, was not "wow, now they're all going to flock to Xbox Live" but rather that here's another little sign of teens' communication diversification. Xbox Live, too, is a "social networking" tool, as are cellphones, World of Warcraft, and virtual worlds. That diversification is the real trend, I'm thinking. [Here's my post about Matthew Robson last Monday. Thanks to my ConnectSafely.org co-director Larry Magid for pointing the Time post out.]

Morgan Stanley teen intern on peers' media use

Though Morgan Stanley says its report by 15-year-old intern Matthew Robson on his friends' media habits got "five or six times more feedback" than its European media team's usual reports, the investment banking firm "made no claims for [the report's] statistical rigour," the Financial Times reports. It did offer clear, "thought-provoking insights" to all the hedge fund managers and CEOs who the FT said called and emailed Morgan Stanley the day of the report's release, but I'm not sure any of the young Londoner's observations would surprise my readers. Robson "confirmed" that teens don't use Twitter (though we've seen one created a Twitter worm to test its security - see this); don't watch much TV or listen to much radio, preferring music-focused social sites such as Last.fm; "find advertising 'extremely annoying and pointless'; and, as in newspapers, "'cannot be bothered to read pages and pages of text'" instead of "summaries online or on television." What is interesting in the report is that - at least in the London area - teens' "time and money is spent on cinema, concerts and video game consoles which, [Robson] said, now double as a more attractive vehicle for chatting with friends than the phone." Sounds like he's talking about Xbox Live and other gaming communities (e.g., those within and associated with virtual worlds and massively multiplayer online games such as World of Warcraft, maybe). Is that an early warning for mobile phone operators and an indicator for parents that the texting wave may crest at some point? [Meanwhile, here's a US 16-year-old's POV on why teens aren't taken with Twitter. Basically, he suggests they're less in control of who sees their updates in Twitter (I don't think he knows that you can make your Twitter profile private). For Twitter privacy, go into "Account" under "Settings" in the upper right-hand corner of your home page and click "protect my updates" at the bottom of the page so that only people you approve can see them; then click "Save" at the very bottom.]