Well, we knew that already! But if you want to get an overview of how Teens are using social media then the new PEW report on Teens & Social Media has some amazing facts. In November I wrote about Digital Natives in the Workplace which talked about how the stat’s below will shift the future.
93% of teens are online & 64% are creating content!
- Girls are blogging more (35% compared to 20% of the boys)
- Boys are more likely to watch & upload videos (21% vs 10%)
- Digital images – almost 90% have posted photos or videos! & interact by commenting
For communication, the cell phone is the primary choice of 70%
- 60% texting
- 47% messages over social networks
- 22% email (J. Owyang’s prediction that email is dying is showing)
(the reason that it is more than 100% is because teens use combinations of the above)
This quote is quite interesting in that mentorship is acknowledged as a key role. This phenomenon can be seen with any community no matter the age range.
MIT professor Henry Jenkins notes that, along with the rise in popularity of participatory media applications, there has also been a concurrent development of “participatory cultures” that serve to encourage all of this user-contributed content. Jenkins defines a participatory culture as “a culture with relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations, and some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to novices.”
Take away -
Reading the report is like looking into the not too distant future. In next five years the use of social media & participation in networks are going to keep increasing at an exponential rate.
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