You Are Never Alone

I have again got some anecdotal "evidence" as a result of discussion of yesterday's post.

It appears that, while teenagers are hooked on FaceBook and texting on their mobiles, they are less than impressed with Twitter.

This appears to be a fairly typical response (this by a 13 year old female)

daughter: Dad, only OLD people use Twitter. 

Me: But it's used by lots of the celebrities that you follow - Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, some of those Gleek kids... 

daughter: (rolls her eyes dramatically) Da-ad, you only use Twitter instead of Facebook because it is simple. Like the smoke signals you used to send from cave to cave when you were young. 

and another

My own 15 yo daughter thinks Twitter is embarrassingly stupid.  I handed her my phone the other day as I was driving and dictated a message for her to send... it was only afterwards when she realised it was Twitter that she said "Eww, I used Twitter?!"  :-)

This time the ancedotes are supported by research.

• This report dated September 2009: Only around 15% of all the Twitter users are less than 25 years old, who would know? An official report from Morgan Stanley says that teenagers just don’t use Twitter.... people under 25 years are the main Internet users, only this group of people takes the 25% of all population; but they also just represent 16% of all Twitter. more
• In December 2010 a Pew Internet report said "Eight percent of the American adults who use the internet are Twitter users. It is an online activity that is particularly popular with young adults, minorities, and those who live in cities."
• In a post Teens Don't Tweet in mid 2009 Nielsen estimated that 64% of Twitter growth had come from the 24 to 55 year old age range

So, it may be that if you are hoping to sell Twitter to a bunch of teenagers in the classroom, that you've already lost the battle, just when you've found a technology that you like.