Teens Don't Tweet

So what gives?  Teens parade through my office texting.  They have iPhones that accommodate the latest Twitter apps.  But teens don’t tweet.

So why might this be?  And is there something about Twitter that’s less appealing to the younger set?  To me it would seem to be the killer app for the young social networker.  Perhaps that’s the problem.  Teens aren’t social networkers.  They’re social, but ‘building a network’ beyond their short-term needs or their cell phone’s address list just isn’t a priority.

And after querying my own patients and tapping into an expert panel of followers with teens, I discovered that

1.  Texting serves the purpose of most teens – No Internet access is necessary and other applications such as Facebook may meet their needs.

2.  Twitter is for old people – It’s perceived as a “tool of the elderly.”  This view is widely supported by teens.  See this piece in the Times of London about Matthew Robson and his Morgan Stanley analysis of media use among teens.

3.  Twitter fails on critical pubertal mass – Twitter hard to enjoy if there’s no one to follow.  See number two.

4.  Transparency isn’t the strong suit of adolescence – Broadcasting your thoughts to the world requires an intact sense of self that the nascent teen mind lacks.

So perhaps some of this acceptance or rejection of Twitter is about human development.  Perhaps understanding how social media meets the emotional and developmental needs of a given demographic will help us understand why they adopt certain tools and applications.  For more on this, check out this post by David Armano where he details the life-cycle of socialization and networking. 

The Armanogram below contrasts the role of networking in social activity across the ages.  Socially motivated interaction as opposed to professionally motivated interaction dominates early and late in life.

While I never contemplated the absence of teens on Twitter before a few days ago, it actually makes perfect sense.

Comments

[Dr. Gwenn]

Great post! The Morgan Stanley intern's perception is 100% accurate and the only teens I've seen on Twitter are the ones who have a budding business or are authors put on their by their publicist, with their parent's consent.

Having a very social teen at home who is a queen bee in social networking, and chatting with her friends, I've come to the conclusion that Twitter is just not a platform that allows teens to communicate they way they actually communicate. It really has little to do with development.

What I've learned is this:

1. They don't want to be limited to 140 characters.
2. They don't want their tweets read by adults they don't know and don't want to know.
3. They "find it pointless". I was told "why do you want to talk to all those people like that?"
4. They want to connect me to friend, not me to world.

Teens think about their immediate needs and immediate need to communicate. It may really be that simple.