(I started this as a reply to John Thomson’s post “Blogging no longer a hit with teens, but quickly realized that it’s less about what kids don’t do —blogging— and more about what they do —social networking.)
They don’t email.
They don’t tweet.
And now they don’t blog?
What *do* they do?
From the Pew report:
- 73% of wired American teens now use social networking websites, a significant increase from previous surveys. Just over half of online teens (55%) used social networking sites in November 2006 and 65% did so in February 2008.
- 62% of online teens get news about current events and politics online.
- 48% of wired teens have bought things online like books, clothing or music, up from 31% who had done so in 2000 when we first asked about this.
- 31% of online teens get health, dieting or physical fitness information from the internet. And 17% of online teens report they use the internet to gather information about health topics that are hard to discuss with others such as drug use and sexual health topics.
- less soapbox (hence less interest in long formats, such as blogs and email)
- more connections and interest in the knowledge and information that their peers feel is important (social networks)
- more quips (short formats, such as status updates and comments), but they don’t want these to be public — they want to control who sees them (thus, not Twitter).
These 12-17 year olds will become our students for the next 5-10 years, and the habits that they have formed will guide them as they enter into our universities. So, we should pay attention and try to meet them half way rather than force them into a system designed by (and thus according to the habits of) Academic Technologists who are a generation or two older (I include myself here).
I don’t have a set of implications in a clear and concise form that I can post here, but I invite people to post their ideas and observations into this conversation.
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