As a 25 yeah old I feel like I've completely missed this second wave of social media.<p>- Facebook is all old people that post horribly made memes and highly ignorant content.<p>- Tumblr is...what is tumblr again?<p>- No one I know uses Snapchat...plus what would I even send to other people "hey, bro! check out this cool bowl of cereal I'm eating".<p>- I've been with my significant other for 6 years so tinder, etc. is something I've never had to use.<p>- I do use Twitter.<p>- I also use instagram but only as an artistic outlet, not just random photos of daily life. I have a clear strategy for how I use my instagram account.<p>- I browse reddit but most of the time the quality of the content is extremely low.<p>- I use more industry specific social media like Github and Dribbble but are those even considered social media? Is HN social media?
Flawed methodology. If you use Instagram 21% of the time, Facebook 20% of the time, and other apps less than that, the study puts you firmly into Instagram bucket despite you using Facebook with the similar frequency. There is no accounting for people who use more than one app, which is what most people do.
I'm old so I've missed the Snapchat wave...but I've slowly been getting into Instagram, after having initially dismissed it since I used to spend enough time on Flickr. Most of the students I know use Instagram regularly, as do many of my friends my age, even the ones who were once big FB users and have since dropped out.<p>I like Instagram's "feel", and I imagine Snapchat's is similar. Its main point of sharing is tied to a low-friction hardware feature (using the mobile camera, then picking a filter) and so just posting something, anything, is easy. Unlike a banal Tweet, a banal Instagram photo just sits there to be looked at, and so you don't have to worry too much about being judged harshly (with Twitter, most novices fear that the format constrains their "deep" thoughts to superficialities...which is partially true)...And even if photos are worth a thousand words, their domain is relatively constrained. It's hard to stumble onto political/divisive content the way you can on Facebook or Twitter, and there's less room for content-sharers to bloviate about their lives (since some of them are confident in their visual skill to think that their photo alone says it all). You can just lazily browse the stream, contribute something if you feel like it, then get back to life. So for an older generation that grew up in the age when blogging was hot...there's a kind of appeal in having online social networks being so loose and "shallow"...then you can get back to real life and not be so obsessed over how all of your high school friends are now married with two beautiful babies and living in a perfect house according to their Facebook feed.<p>The effect of this ephemeralness is probably different to the younger crowd, though, who may have less incentive/discipline to peel away from their phones.
I really don't understand why teens would need facebook, and why people are always surprised they don't use it more. They see most of their friends on a daily basis. They have different communication needs. Maybe once they get to college I would expect that to change.
The Tumblr part where the kids are saying "I'm a huge nerd" or "I'm a big geek" made me unnecessarily angry. Why did being a nerd have to become a trendy thing? I remember when my love of C++ and Calculus wasn't something to brag about. I guess I'm just old.
Images like that concert photo really are unnerving. Instead of actually just having fun, people have become more concerned with letting everyone know how much "fun" they're having. It's so strange to me. "See how cool I am? Aren't I special?!?!"
I'm going to ask:<p>Why do we care what teens use?<p>- They don't make significant purchase decisions<p>- Ad-views are mostly wasted on them<p>- The interactions and contexts they like at their age, they likely grow out of before you can monetize the longterm relationships<p>Why are we chasing after the teenage fools gold. Owning a communications channel that is used by adults making significant purchasing decisions on a regular basis while doing work via you channel seems to be <i>infinitely</i> more valuable.
They may not use it in the same way, but the fact that they are using them to make life decisions is pretty huge:<p><a href="http://time.com/3762067/college-acceptance-instagram-high-school/" rel="nofollow">http://time.com/3762067/college-acceptance-instagram-high-sc...</a>
Teens are a separate subspecies of human. Eventually they metamorphose into adults. Trying to write apps to appeal to both is an exercise in frustration.