Teens Don’t Tweet
The *groundbreaking* report released by Morgan Stanley this week highlighting teenagers’ use of technology was actually pretty predictable. Teens don’t tweet or read the newspaper. Yawn. I am often told by my colleagues that I’m the only person they know who still gets a paper (the WSJ), so its not surprising that younger generations get their news online (if they even read it at all). Also, most articles I’ve read have quoted the following from the report, “Teenagers don’t use Twitter [because] they realize that their ‘tweets’ are pointless as no one is viewing their profile.” Nobody is viewing their profiles because they are probably tweeting about inane things that nobody cares to read, but the critical and overlooked point is that teens don’t tweet because anyone can view them! The reason they use Facebook is because of the privacy settings and controls, which they can use to limit what their parents, teachers, etc. can see. Twitter is an open community and thus not attractive to teens who want privacy. Twitter can of course add more advanced privacy settings (which I imagine they will) but the value proposition is in their open searchable community.
