Why Teens Don't and Won't Tweet

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/why_teens_dont_and_wont_tweet.php

by mmoorejones • 16 years ago

69 41 16 years ago

spazmaster• 16 years ago

Hasn't the writer heard of Justin Bieber? Who does he think his 6 million followers are? I actually think Bieber might be a big reason why more and more teenagers ARE starting to tweet. I recently did interviews with High School kids and was surprised to hear how many of them used twitter.

jonafato• 16 years ago

The author admits that some subset of teens do tweet for specific reasons. He does not really mention whether teens follow others on twitter or not, just whether they broadcast information. I agree that most of those followers of Justin Bieber are probably teenagers, however how many are actively tweeting as well as following? I think you may be arguing a point the author wasn't trying to make. His opinions were about producing information, not consuming it.

axod• 16 years ago

Just because Justin Bieber has 6m followers, doesn't mean any of them tweet.

Twitter has always been more of a 'broadcast to followers' than a conversational tool.

Timothee• 16 years ago

The first time I have ever heard of Justin Bieber was by seeing his name in the trending topics for weeks in a row. (first half of the year) So a lot of Bieber fans do tweet.

josephcooney• 16 years ago

> Twitter has always been more of a 'broadcast to followers' than a conversational tool.

Can you substantiate this in any way? This doesn't match my experiences using twitter at all.

brianbreslin• 16 years ago

Aren't there legions of creepy old dudes and women who are part of "biebernation"?

jasonkester• 16 years ago

To answer honestly, no. I don't think I've ever heard that name before.

Perhaps not coincidentally, I don't understand why anybody would use Twitter. I mean, I certainly understand why you'd post stuff to Twitter. I just can't imagine why anybody would ever read anything that had been posted there.

As far as I can tell, it's a huge population of people shouting to promote themselves. If there were actually anybody listening, that might be useful. But I don't think anybody actually is. Or at least I can't imagine a personality type who would do so.

Zak2• 16 years ago

It seems to me that a lot of people use it as a replacement for RSS. I'm not sure why a reader would prefer to consume a twitter feed over RSS, but evidently a lot of people do.

ig1• 16 years ago

A few of the reasons I use twitter:

1) Interesting links/insight, if I see someone posting good stuff on HN I might follow them on twitter.

2) Keeping track of events in the tech/startup sector, there's nothing that even comes close to twitter in terms of allowing you to keep an eye on what's going on

3) Staying in touch with people you meet at conferences, etc.

If you're a business then Twitter gives you an invaluable source of feedback, people might not complain to you when they get frustrated by your product but they may well complain on their twitter. It's also a great source for customer leads.

DanielRibeiro• 16 years ago

One use: read top HN posts as a stream (more in http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1960762)

It's great for getting news from people you find interesting (let it be Paul Graham, Tim O'Reilly, a creator of language you like). Also, many projects announce new releases on twitter (ruby's twitter gem for instance http://twitter.com/#!/gem). Best of all: you know all these updates are short.

Besides you can favorite/RT items you think are interesting for later retrieval (using delicious to save twits is an alternative, but a cumbersome one).

On the sending side, it is good if you are one of such interesting people, and whish to keep people updated. Setting up forums/google groups just to give notice of a new release is too much of a overhead when you have twitter.

These are the information retrieval and useful aspects of Twitter, and are useful even if you have no friends/colleagues.

There is also the social one, which you people make of it as they want, like a sms broacast for setting up dinners with friends. If you have enough followers, you can use it effectively to ask for information. You can use it to ask people short questions, and engage in quick conversations with people that would not otherwise answer an email.

There are many other uses. In a nutshell: twitter is what you make of it.

electromagnetic• 16 years ago

I'd argue that the logic is flawed. Studies have shown that Twitter users in general are more narcissistic than Facebook users (although rather obviously the frequent status updaters on Facebook are more narcissistic than average users) in general.

Given that teenagers are in general the most narcissistic group of all humans - seemingly by biological specialization - that they should be the biggest tweeters.

I believe the reason teens aren't bigger twitterers is because they're not being exposed to it. Online membership is a rather passive recruiting method, it's not like boy scouts where there's someone coming into your classroom trying to get you to join. Teens will have to find twitter largely on their own, which if Twitter isn't advertising to teens it means it largely won't be found until it goes viral in schools like MySpace did in its day, notably another very narcissistic site.

Teens in more affluent areas, with better phones and messaging plans are likely more twitter users simply by virtue of better access.

wyclif5• 16 years ago

Twitter is a platform built for inclusive broadcast (to everyone), and to teenagers it offers no obvious value.

The author does not seem to realise that the Protected tweets feature is an option that obviates those objections, and makes Twitter function in the "circle of friends" manner the author desires.

AgentConundrum• 16 years ago

What do protected tweets do that a Facebook status update wouldn't? Public tweets have added value over Facebook statuses for some people, but I don't see where protected tweets would.

wyclif5• 16 years ago

Nothing, but I was responding to the article stating that Twitter is for broadcasting whereas Facebook keeps updates from being public.

joelmichael• 16 years ago

Twitter is more "public" than Facebook, and so serves a different purpose. Teenagers become adults.

wyclif5• 16 years ago

Not if you protect your tweets.

ghaff• 16 years ago

At which point they pretty much serve no purpose.

wyclif5• 16 years ago

Does HN really need another Facebook vs. Twitter submission? I don't think so.

borism• 16 years ago

You're right. However this post gives a little more than that - an insight into social media as percieved by millenials from one of their own. Nothing new, but not entirely irrelevant.

antigua• 16 years ago

Who cares? Teenagers don't have money.

Zak2• 16 years ago

A quick google search reveals this claim to be false: http://www.marketingcharts.com/interactive/teen-market-to-su...

andrewcooke• 16 years ago

Why is this only true of teenagers? Seems like the argument applied to most people. My parents don't tweet for pretty much the same reasons, for example.

coliveira2• 16 years ago

My own experience is that 99% of tweets are spam, which means that it is hard to find credible people using it.

For example, in technology the few people that have something to say are lost in the flood of spammers. By the way, I don't think that using twitter as a ping service for sites such as HN is helping the matter.

In Facebook at least you can rely on your real life connections, so the level of signal/noise is much better.

sandipc• 16 years ago

"In Facebook at least you can rely on your real life connections, so the level of signal/noise is much better."

why don't you just only follow accounts on twitter that don't spam their followers? I agree that there is a lot of spam, but most of that shows up when you search for a trending topic/hashtag. Those trending topics usually get popular (obtaining 'trend' status) before the spammers take over.

coliveira2• 16 years ago

Of course, that's what we do. But the problem is finding those people. Facebook provides a way to find your friends. A normal search on twitter will reveal 99% of spammers and 1% or real people.

baddspellar• 16 years ago

I understand why teens might not tweet, but I thought this sentence was strange: "Teens' lives are entirely built around their actual friends. Quite simply, why would teenagers bother using Twitter when Facebook exists, and offers so much more?"

Since when have all of a teens' (or anyone's) Facebook "Friends" corresponded to real "Friends". Oh, I know some are, but really, most are not.

lwhi2• 16 years ago

I think it's foolish to take the position of spokesperson for a generation.

Talk about yourself and your own group of friends by all means, but don't speak for everyone your age. It's not realistically possible to speak for the majority without a lot of research.

yason• 16 years ago

The author had apparently just earned his/her 5th age bit. When you're sixteen you don't necessarily have many things about which you can speak with authority, if you wish to do that. Your peers probably come closest.

(The fifth bit is the one that turns black and white into shades of grey. The sixth bit will bring colors. I don't know about the seventh bit yet.)

lwhi2• 16 years ago

I think the seventh brings bitterness and resignation ;)

huherto• 16 years ago

3D? :) That is a nice metaphor.

p_nathan• 16 years ago

Restated, the author's argument is as follows:

-- Twitter is a subset of Facebook for the purpose of communicating with real life friends. Facebook does the job better, too.

-- For other purposes, Twitter gains in value, but not a lot.

nir• 16 years ago

These type of articles seem to come from a basic assumption that non-teens do tweet.

There's a gap between both MSM and the blogosphere and reality here. The blogosphere is attracted to Twitter since it likes new technology and constant self promotion. MSM is like the parents of a teen, trying to relate to their world and hanging to some band name etc they picked up.

In reality, Twitter plays a much smaller part in people's lives than it does in ReadWriteWeb or CNN.

joshfinnie• 16 years ago

This is a very true statement. My geek friends and I tweet all the time, but I was trying to get my girlfriend to sign up and she outright refuses. It is easier as geeks here to see the benefits of services like Twitter, but in the real world (and also in the teen world) it just isn't that important.

chaz_littlej• 16 years ago

These articles tilt me to no end. Who cares if teenagers don't tweet, really. My parent's don't like Kanye - so what. It certainly doesn't mean they won't ever tweet, if that's the underlying concern.

patrickaljord• 16 years ago

Given that Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga are constant trending topics, it's safe to assume that teens do use twitter, lots of them.

Why Teens Don't and Won't Tweet

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