How Teens are Using Social Media

People spend a lot of time and energy trying to understand what young consumers are doing and what it means for the future of media consumption. When I was at the entertainment technology center, we often interviewed college consumers, ran studies, packaged up their responses, and created opportunities for executives to meet a section of the consumers of the future.

Here’s a really thoughtful article on how [some] college teens are using social media — written about teenagers by a teenager.

But before you treat that as gospel, here’s another great read by Dana Boyd, a preeminent researcher on these issues, who wrote the book on “the social lives of networked teens”:

Among other insightful things, Dana reminds us that “it’s hard to generalize about a population that’s roughly 16 million people strong. They are very diverse and, yet, journalists and entrepreneurs want to label them under one category and describe them as one thing…” Furthermore, according to Dana, “Teens’ use of social media is significantly shaped by race and class, geography and cultural background.”

Read Dana’s article on Medium.