Teens and social media

I saw a really great post on our company site today called why teens don’t use twitter.  It seems young people find Twitter to be deficient in many ways and shun the platform.  Coincidentally, I was sitting with my 11-year old niece yesterday as she logged on to her email account for the first time this year (she’s an active Google chat user so it’s not like she’s a techno-neophyte).  She had 166 unread emails and she was both surprised and unconcerned.  And to complete the marginalization of that particular communication vehicle from her life, she decided to send her friend an email and in the process turned to ask me, “Why do I have to write a subject?”

Email, Twitter, and probably many other tools many of us find indispensable border on useless for the youngest social media generation.  Facebook, Google Plus and other more robust social media platforms are where the young play, almost exclusively.