Commentary
The Sun Sets On Social Media
- by George Simpson , Featured Contributor, August 14, 2009
While many aspects of social media may well endure, teens are no longer building their lives around Facebook. I can say this because I have three teens in my family and I watch closely how they consume media, even though I realize that their media habits are like an iceberg, with most of it hidden from view. The oldest, soon out the door for college, hasn't sent an e mail in five years; nor, I can confirm, has he answered any. He has gone totally mobile. His whole media world is totally contained in his pocket. For him it is all about texting and less often actually talking on the device. He goes online only to check out a video recommended to him by his friends and to shop. He never reads a newspaper, never sees TV news and so has only a vague sense of what is going on around the world, and is quick to try and validate/defend urban legends.
His little sister is just now starting her Facebook career, but she is much more circumspect about what she puts there, and who she connects with. She is far more about video chat. She has no clue about world events beyond celebrity and entertainment. She has upgraded her mobile so that she can start to text more. She knows more about mobile apps than either of her parents. I predict that she will be all mobile within two years.
The youngest still thinks his PC is a primarily a gaming platform. He hasn't bothered in three months to charge the mobile he so desperately couldn't live without. He knows about Facebook, but hasn't established a page yet. If they would interrupt x-box games with breaking news, he'd be the smartest kid on the block. But they don't.
None of them know much about or care anything about Twitter or My Space or Bebo or any other social media platforms. They don't care about blogs. They've never read this column in nearly a decade that I've written it. Although they WILL complain if I get their ages wrong on my Web site.
They will not depend on desktops the way we did -- in fact, all three have already moved to notebooks so they can walk around the house with them. They would rather watch a download or DVD than they would live TV because they can stop it and resume it at will. All three are heavy DVR users (although the youngest still likes to watch commercials; he thinks they are funny).
They haven't read the magazine subscriptions their parents have foisted on them. But two of the three of them are voracious book readers, the youngest preferring his mom's Kindle to paper.
But I digress. I said early on that I thought social media was overrated -- from the millions of blogs (now long abandoned) that served no useful purpose -- to virtual worlds where people tried to pretend their lives were more interesting than they really are, to networking sites where the under employed set upon those with jobs. Yes, teens will flow in and out of Facebook-like social media for a while, but only until they get their mobile legs. Older folks who set up shop on Facebook need desperately to get a life.
This is insightful, true. But don't underestimate the value of the older folks on Facebook, they could be some of the same folks who turn into the Home Shopping Network
Let's face it. The older we get, the less we can SEE on that teeny screen called mobile, even with glasses. Others have suggested netbook phones.
I occasionally email my 23-year-old niece. When she doesn't answer that, I call her. When she doesn't answer my voice mail, I text her. When she doesn't respond to that, I send her a message through her Facebook page. When she doesn't respond to that, I am forced to conclude she communicates with no one, ever.
If teens don't use email, is ALL their communication through text--and phone? It's novel and all, using your voice to interact with people, but will it last?
So true, all of it. My 20 year old daughter only texts me now. And if I want a response from her my best chance of getting one is to text her. She never responds to a voice mail so for kicks I sometimes just leave a really really really really long one, saying whatever I want knowing she will never listen to it; but that only placates me, it does nothing to improve our communication.
She has lately gone to avoiding the numbskull boyfriend's phone calls, cause he does the same to her.
What it all adds up to is a very rude method of living one's life (and this is my own daughter I am talking about). Finally we had words, uncommon I know, and I suggested that she had finally gone too far.....will it stick? Dunno.
As she enters the work force I would like to think this type of behavior would subside, and it is of course not the way I raised her. However, I have no control over the rest out there who are essentially endorsing, validating, and/or modeling this same kind of communication management.
So now I understand some of the problems we are having with customer service.....I no doubt get the cold shoulder when I call with a complaint or am in need of a service I was promised when I'd signed on for something because I've interrupted a text or a download.
My suggestion is that they all be supplied a healthy dose of adderol, for say a year.....have their electronics taken away from them intermittently to check of their real addictions and then slowly take them off their meds and see if they've returned to some sort of equilibrium.
You know, resort to a Pavlovian sort of thing. They don't get their toys back until they start showing a more human side to their nature.
Great article. Interesting that someone hasn't sent or read an email in 5 years...that will surely change when he gets to College and out into the work force. Its just the way it is...
Also, I don't think social media is ending per se, it is just evolving like everything else. I like to think all of this is just "Interactive Media." We all consume media differently and every channel will inevitably evolve. There will always be social media in some form or another, whether it be online or mobile - but who knows what the next big thing will be...
While I don't buy in to the idea that "social media is overrated," it is fair to say that some social media platforms definitely are. Using and following some platforms can be time-wasting ventures. The Brave New World is where the barriers between these platforms are broken down, and integrate seamlessly with one another into one "super medium" with many portals where users can engage using the platform they are most comfortable with. One example is the integration between Facebook and Twitter.
The idea that users can be content creators, receivers and the medium itself (the defining paradigm of Social Media) is only going to accelerate. It is the medium that will change.
Great article, but you miss one important fact and that is Social Media is connected to Mobile through various applications. So, while the move to mobile devices is undeniable, it will have little affect on the continued growth of Social Media. In fact, it will continue to provide rocket fuel for that growth. Especially as smart phones continue to take over from phones designed strictly for voice or texting.
Social Media brands and platforms will come and go but their primary elements represent a change in the way people connect and converse that is platform agnostic. We must incorporate the ability to listen and respond into any marketing, especially mobile, if we want to be in front of the consumer.
wow ... stopped reading when the author decided that because his kids no longer spend as much time on FB ... that this is true for the world ... how about real data ... I mean this is all about metrics and if one SM fades another comes along ... no, the world is all about connection and Social Media is just beginning ... see time spent with or number of new venus and platforms being developed or try the JP Morgan study 'Nothing but Net' ... Sunset is hardly where the numbers point
For goodness sake, will the world stop turning if our children do something other that tweet or Facebook or send email? Do your kids communicate verbally or only text you (if you sit down to dinner together)? Can they write using paper and pen or have your schools abandoned handwriting? Maybe they should take up knitting or carpentry if the only skills they have come from fast twitch musculature born of video-gaming and texting. Have you considered teaching them how to catch and skin a fish, or forage for food, to get them through their lives?
"Social Media" is not an all-encompassing term - and those of use who are knee-deep in it understand that there are distinct user-groups for the various platforms. Twitter, for example, does really well with 35-45 year olds and is not even a blip on the teen radar. Teens live and die via texting. Teens have also migrated from Facebook when their parents (and grandparents) jumped on board.
While the original post seems to give "Second Life" some continuing, albeit smaller, credibility in the UK, it has not been "top of mind" in the US for some time.
While adults use social platforms to expand social networks (business, old friends, former co-workers) teens know who their networks are and are not interested in expanding them - just constantly communicating with them.
While we marketers look to "mobile" as the emerging platform, I'd bet technology will provide today's kids with a whole new hardware set by the time they become prime consumers. Who ever heard of Kindle a decade ago?
Cheers. This article and every comment are fascinating.
I'm sure the evangelists out there don't concur. But as
someone who teaches on the college level, my students, 60 of them thus far, seem to be growing disinterested with
Facebook. Don't seem to care about Twitter. But if someone chopped their thumbs off tomorrow they'd have no way to communicate (texting). Like everything else in life, the young discover, and adopt, the old follow, and the young move on. I think the point of all this is that mobile is where the young are headed now...I guess that means I'll be there in 3 years. Can't wait.
Having sold multiple media (broadcast, etc.) for the past 16 years, on the streets with start-up businesses to National corporations, I agree that ALL of the above medias have their place/users/advantages. FB, Twitter, Mobile Mktg., E-mail, etc. While in the world as we KNEW it, NO media was the answer for everyone and did not prohibit others from succeeding. The key, I believe, is evolution. As short as 10 years ago, many clients weren't interested in Internet, etc. Everything is evolving at lightning speed and successful outlets will design applications, systems, networks that will keep up - no matter how technology changes.
When I was a kid, people were saying that young people wouldn't listen to radio anymore. They listen less as a percentage of media consumed in each generation, but then they were saying that radio was dead in 1947 when TV hit the big time with the Howdy Doody Show. Contrary to the talk about the death of radio, I remember listening to the American Top 40 with Casey Casum long after color TV became king.
In continental Europe, texting (called SMSing) has been the norm for the past 5 years at least in the 18-35 crowd which is tech savvy and which doesn't tend to wall itself off into sub-groups. Last month, I finally got my Mom to use SMS so she can get me in "real time" even though I get email on my mobile phone almost as quickly as texts (the author's children should have email and text integrated on their phone).
The college crowd seems to still be posting the most on Facebook even if the 25-35s tend to post more serious stuff often related to their business or industry. My entire North American extended family is posting away on Facebook across 3 generations (the great aunt generation - 90+ - will probably not ever start). The youngest nieces and nephews post the most.
Since Twitter is really broadcasting - it is blogging - younger people tend not to have the confidence to believe what they have to say will be of interest to the general public. If you care about that young person's career, you will want to convince them otherwise and help make them an expert in at least one field so they can take on the world with that and not feel they need to run and hide among a few people whom they may not even remember 10 years from now.
Nobody owes a 20 year old college tuition if they're not making a serious effort to communicate with the world in a manner that will end the parental payouts immediately after graduating.
The good thing about Twitter blogging is that you don't have to flesh out a long diatribe if you just want to make a point or two about something (although Twitter could monetize by allowing us to lengthen our tweets to a long blog article to be continued on another page if we want to).
The current Twitter web interface and available apps would frustrate many young people who will want to see the photos and video integrated like Facebook and not just via links.
If you showed Twitter to an 18-25 year old with the free Power Twitter plugin for Firefox, they would see embedded images and be able to watch video from within the interface...and they would probably understand Twitter to be a kind of Facebook Lite (without much of a profile). Right now, the regular Twitter interface (or Tweetdeck for that matter) would appear to them like radio.
Maybe older people would not have caught on to Twitter the way they did if it had been "complicated" early on by embedded video and images.
Older people "understood" the idea of writing text tweets and seeing a wall of text from themselves and their friends with the occasional images and video visible only after clicking on links.
I believe Twitter's success was in being too simple for young people but just right for the older crowd...at first.
The interesting aspect is the move toward mobile platforms. As pointed out in my blog post I believe that there will be huge changes in the future dgital environment - But I don't think the teenagers acting today, reflect how they will act in a couple of years ( G*** forbidd if we all continued to act like tenagers!
My point is that B2C with a young target group always have to be alert to rapid changes. B2C in more mature target groups will have to look into more long term changes, and B2B will have to focus more on ROI for businesses, to see what is important to be aware when it comes to trends.