Teens Don't Tweet? They May Start Soon
"Teens don't tweet." Over the past few weeks, this fact has been reported time and time again by analysts, bloggers, and even mainstream media. Why the obsession with the teenage crowd on Twitter? Perhaps it's simply because adults can't believe that they, not teens, for once are responsible for the birth of an Internet phenomenon. But before all you adults get too comfortable with your Twitter dominance, take a look at the recent data from comScore. It appears that the youngest Twitter users - those in the 12-24 bracket - are now the fastest-growing segment of Twitter's population. So the kids don't tweet? Looks like they may start soon if this new data is to be believed.
Kids Don't Use Twitter
According to a recent article in the New York Times, teens are more likely to use text messaging than Twitter for keeping up with their friends. Today's teens feel somewhat uncomfortable with the public nature of the communication that takes place on Twitter, and, besides, they just don't see the point in broadcasting what they're doing to the whole world. Yet even without this age group's participation, Twitter has seen amazing success, proving the point that a new technology does not have to be adopted by this young group of users in order to make it big.
Twitter's Youth Sees Growth
Although Twitter didn't attract teens at the outset, that could still change. In fact, it looks like that change may already be underway. A newly released chart from comScore breaks down the age groups of Twitter users and plots each group's growth over time, relative to audience. The most surprising revelation from this chart is the steep incline seen in the age group 12-24. Over the past few months, this group's participation levels have been increasing dramatically.
In reading the chart, a score of "100" means that the age group on Twitter is represented in perfect proportion to how much that age group uses the rest of the Internet as a whole. Go over 100 and that means the age group is represented more heavily on Twitter than they are represented on the rest of the web. In July, those aged 12-24 scored a "121" - a score that was only in the mid-70s a mere six months ago.
Statistics Can be Misleading
But wait - a quick glance at these statistics can be misleading. At first, it appears that the chart simply shows the increasing participation levels of teens (and young adults) on Twitter. While that may be true, it's important to note that the actual number of younger users on Twitter is still much lower than those of their adult counterparts. In fact, the New York Times recently reported that only 11% of Twitter users are aged 12 to 17, according to comScore.
Plus, there's the fact that the age group 12-24 represents an odd way of breaking up the demographics. Why not 12-18 instead? The way Twitter's user base is sliced, there's no way to tell how many users are teens and how many are young adults in their 20s.
Finally, the chart is showing audience growth compared to the rest of the Internet as a whole. That's also an interesting way of charting the demographics of Twitter, to say the least.
All that being said, the data seen here is still valuable to some extent. It's interesting to see this market segment's growth, even if it's sliced and diced in this odd way. But does this mean that teens are going to start tweeting sometime soon? Let us know what you think in the comments.
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I think teens don't tweet because they are already using Facebook, which has everything they're looking for. Twitter would just be extra work for them. http://racetalkblog.com/2009/08/26/nyt-says-teens-arent-driving-twitters-popularity-no-kidding/
That is actually really interesting data. I knew it was only a matter of time before the younger generation really got envolved with Twitter.
Sarah, you are totally correct that the demographic breakdown 12-24 is useless. There is such a huge deveopmental difference between 12 and 24 that it makes the statistic meaningless. As a mom,foster mom and now grandma, I can break this down for you:
1)12-13 Your mother still tries to tell you what to do on the internets and you probably don't have a PC in your room. Maybe you are sneaking on to MySpace
2)14-16 You might try Twitter because she tells you NOT to. You might also have your own cell phone by now. You are an adolescent in full rebellion. If you are in school, you have now heard of Twitter. If you have already run away or dropped out, you are pretty tech illiterate. You are texting up a storm if you have a device. You think Twitter is pretty useless if you text.
3)17-21 You are in college, and doing whatever your college friends do. It's still probably Facebook. But if you have something to say to the adult world, you are trying out Twitter.
Now, these are only data points from my experience with family members (large extended family) and very advanced teens like Mark Bao and Daniel Bru, but they convince me that breaking the demographic down in statistics like this renders the entire premise of that NYT story meaningless.
I've never understood the obsession with this topic. Twitter is still a young network, and network growth is tied more to existing connections than a bunch of random people joining because of a marketing campaign.
Yes, it is true that the behaviors of many teens are somewhat predictable and based on what their local connections are doing. It is also arguably true that most people use Twitter to augment existing networks. At age 12 or 18, I knew a lot fewer people than I do at age 40-something. Technology aside, teenagers are inherently going to have smaller social networks, and therefore a less likely chance of being brought into Twitter through a personal recommendation.
I lay this firmly at the feet of the carriers who have been holding back progress for years (smart phone/ data plans are deliberately overpriced in Australia, so they can keep milking the SMS cash cow)
How can young people embrace twitter on the run, when they are being willfully priced out of the smart phone market (and it's not just the young people)
When they get back on the desktop, they go to where their friends are...Facebook.
Am I way off track?
Quantcast still shows minimal usage among teens:
http://www.quantcast.com/twitter.com#demographics
Surprisingly (or not), it's the teens who have figured out first that Twiter is not all that interesting.
Ages 2-11. Good to see those barely old enough to read (if they can) tweeting now. I don't recall seeing anything in regards to COPPA on Twitter. Is it legal for seven year olds to publicly plaster stuff without their parents consent?
if you break it from k-2nd, 3rd-5th, 6th-8th, 9th-10th, and 11th-12th graders, you might get some dataworthwhile.
Once children learn the power of twitter, they'll learn how to use it. But all the same, I'd just as well not have my kids broadcast everything they do all day long.
It almost makes us grateful for the text messages we hated a couple years ago
WTF are kids aged 2 doing Twittering?
Even my whore of an ex-wife tweets:
http://twitter.com/filthyrichmond
Teens don't use Twitter because Facebook offers this functionality plus a ton more. Teens are tweeting; they're just using Facebook to do it. Without all the extra functionality that facebook offers, Twitter comes across as stupid to teens because its too simple. However, the only reason Twitter is used by adults is because it is easy to understand and participate right out of the box.
Twitter = Facebook for Dummies (social media training wheels)
Twitter solved two problems:
1. How do we make the facebook/myspace experience less complicated? Just offer one feature: 140 character messages
2. How can we get more people to blog? Restrict entries to just 140 characters - Writing traditional blog entries takes too much time and dedication.
What these data gatherers above should track is the amount of adults moving from Twitter to Facebook because these adults are incrementally understanding how to use more features (photos, links, apps, ect..) and incrementally realizing why these additional features are valuable to them
I'm an adult who has been on Twitter since December 2007. My impression is that there were few kids on Twitter in 2008 because it was being used by people who were already sophisticated social media users and who had a blog/website. I see Twitter as both a leading edge information source and a networking tool.
For only social needs, I would agree that Facebook would suffice for most people. A lot of those leading edge adult Twitter users are paying more attention to Facebook these days because of evolving functionality and demographics.
@LindaSherman
@Ben McFerren - think you've got it backwards. Twitter is to instant messaging as blogging is to email. ie, it's mass broadcast IM.
@The World In General: This whole 'teens don't tweet' meme is nonsense. Have a look at this:
http://twitter.com/RyanSheckler
That guy's a 19 year old skateboarder. Nobody on earth would follow him other than teens. He has 841,139 followers.
pamela rosenthal reached similar conclusions based on more rigorous analysis a few weeks ago: http://pamelarosenthal.wordpress.com/2009/08/05/teens-dont-tweet-not-true/
worth reading to see that people are still thinking beyond the headlines once in a while
I'll use my 18 year old daughter as an example. SMS and Facebook are her preferred methods of communication - the same goes for her friends. Last month, she had 12,300 SMS messages and she has over 2,000 Facebook friends (we have moved twice, so she has different elementary, middle school and high school friends.)
Zero tweets. Twitter, like e-mail, makes no sense to her. Text messaging provides the same basic functionality as a Direct Message. Facebook gives her more flexibility to communicate at a more highly engaged level with message threads and full multimedia integration.
She seems to think the bottom line is that Facebook is for personal friends and Twitter is for professional or more distant friends. Right now, she only has personal friends, so Facebook covers her needs. When she graduates from college, she suspects she might use Twitter - she has an account just to reserve her name.
I would have to agree. I have pretty much segmented Facebook as personal friends and Twitter for my professional friends. Many are on both, which works well.
cannot actually put up any restriction, can we?
Ryan
Often the adoption of technology points to incapacities rather than advanced capaciites. For example, mobile phone take up in the UK was largely driven by a landline network that was horrifically expensive, poor quality, and charged by the second.
I thought the point of Twitter was connecting SMS to the internet. It's like a temporary injection of intelligence into the otherwise closed mobile networks. Twitter will be irrelevant in the future as the mobile phone networks become obsolete because they are slow, closed, and expensive. At the moment they are bucking convergence. There isn't a huge difference between 'micro-blogging' and a 'status message.'
I question the relevance of teens in the 1st place, much as I question the idea that young people understand digital media significantly better. We can all despair that *no*one* seems very capable of adopting an internet application that doesn't happen in a browser. It isn't old people that are driving the allegedly simple bus.
We also have the challenge of explaining how we ended up with all these closed AOL-style gardens of internet like Facebook. Facebook itself is for people who find blogging, email, IM, and address books too complicated. Henceforth, let us each publish the same thing in 47 different places. That way it will be 47 times easier to find everything ;-) No one is saavy. We're all idiots, slightly out of sync with each other.
This will definitely push Twitter into the mega mainstream.
I think it could be a good thing because updating tweets can be addicting sometimes.. It is good that teens communicate through texting rather than tweeting