New Media Demographics
Posted on September 30, 2008
It’s a question I’ve been asking myself often as I attend an increasing number of social media events. More often than not, these events are populated by people older than I, professionals who have jobs, homes, and children. My demographic - 18 to 34 year olds - is surprisingly absent. I’ve been fortunate to find several people who are in my age group and very active in social media, but there are few below the age of 24. I’m fairly certain I know only 2 current college students, and both of them are seniors on the way to graduating.
As I was browsing my Twitter page a few days ago, I was blown away when one of my friends posted this exchange with a college student (I’m paraphrasing):
-Twitterfriend: “Why aren’t you using Twitter?”
-Collegekid: “Twitter is for old people.”
Now this is an interesting perspective, one that I hadn’t thought about before. College students are undoubtedly on the forefront of just about every major technological advance as it happens. They’re usually the first to embrace new technology and use it toward their own ends. So why does the 18-34 demo believe that new media “is for old people”? Why haven’t they embraced it?
When Facebook opened to the general public after having been open only to people with .edu email addresses, students protested. They were upset that this one place they could congregate without the prying eyes of their parents was now open to anyone. This attitude is understandable. They’re on their own for the first time in their lives, and they want some freedom to do the things college kids do without the overseeing eye of their parents (or “old people” who may represent their parents). Perhaps this is part of the reason for the lack of acceptance on the part of college aged people. Unfortunately, this theory doesn’t explain the lack of participation from twentysomethings.
We social media denizens are certainly living in an echo chamber. Mainstreamers don’t know what social media is - aside from the occasional myspace page - or why they should be interested. They do understand that the majority of people involved would be considered “geeks,” and that can be a turn-off. Or perhaps it’s simply because this demo consists of people just beginning their careers and adult lives. It can be seen as a distraction, especially if the person’s career path has little to do with media.
So the question is, how do we spread the word and open up the echo chamber? How do we get a younger, more mainstream demographic into social media? Is this important?
Technorati Tags: social media, old media, new media, college, university, demographics, echo chamber
Filed Under New/Social Media, communication |
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i work with that demographic (minus the big cheezes) and they look at me like frankenstein when i even drop any mention of tech / social / web concept. AND it’s the marketing department too! you’d think that since most of them would get it since they are the target market. this is where it fails… or therein lies the truths… “moving too fast? what happened to the vcr?!”
remember BBSing? pre-internet phenom? only for g33ks. the 386! 486! the modem! oOoOooo 2400 baud modems? twitter is a giant “new” bulletin board system. bbsers are used to the concept and that’s probably why they’ve adopted it so well. g33ks gathered at all ages back then and well, they’ve gotten older - AGE SHIFT. right?
just a theory…
@evablue - That’s exactly my point! How do we open up this area of the social media world to younger people, non-uber-geeks, and ‘regular’ people? There’s so much potential here, and the younger generations are growing up with Youtube. So how do we show them that there is better stuff than Youtube out there?
but that’s like saying, “why can’t youth be early adopters?!”
we just have to wait for the shift to cool. it will happen because it’s inevitable. and you can wear you g33k badge proudly until it no longer becomes g33k.
the existential questions…