Yesterday, Mashable reported Nielsen’s latest Twitter numbers with the headline Stats Confirm It: Teens Don’t Tweet.
This gained traction on Twitter turning into the trending topic “teens
don’t tweet” which was primarily kept in play all day yesterday with
teens responding to the TT by saying “I’m a teen” or the equivalent of
“you’re all idiots… what am I, mashed potatoes?”
I want to unpack some of what played out because I’m astonished by the misinterpretations in every which direction.
We have a methodology and interpretation problem. As Fred Stutzman has pointed out, there are reasons to question Nielsen’s methodology
and, thus, their findings. Furthermore, the way that they present the
data is misleading. If we were to assume an even distribution of
Twitter use over the entire U.S. population, it would be completely
normal to expect that 16% of Twitter users are young adults. So,
really, what Nielsen is saying is, “Everyone expects social media to be
used primarily by the young but OMG OMG OMG old farts are just as
likely to be using Twitter as young folks! Like OMG.”
We have a presentation problem. Mashable presented this report
completely inaccurately. First off, Nielsen is measuring 2-24. My guess
is that there are a lot more 24-year-olds on Twitter than 2-year-olds.
Unless Sockington counts. (And she’s probably older than 2 anyhow.)
Regardless, the Nielsen data tells us nothing about teens. We don’t
know if young adults (20-24) are all of those numbers or not. If all
16% of those under 24 on Twitter were teens, teens would be WAY
over-represented in proportion to their demographic size.
We have a representation problem. The majority of people are not on
Twitter, regardless of how old they are. Those who use Twitter are not
a representative percentage of the population. Geeks are WAY
over-represented on Twitter. Celebs and celeb-lovers are WAY
over-represented on Twitter. Newshounds are WAY over-represented on
Twitter. And while Joe the Plumber has an account on Twitter, I doubt
it’s him. Age is not the right marker here.
We have an interpretation problem. Saying that 16% of Twitter users
are 24 and under is NOT the same as saying that 16% of teens are on
Twitter. We don’t know what percentage of youth (or adults) are on
Twitter. If you want to compare across the ages, you need to know what
percentage of a particular demographic is using the technology.
We have an impression management problem. There are teens on
Twitter. Thousands of them. Saying “Teens Don’t Tweet” gives the wrong
impression because there are plenty of teens who do tweet (as they so
kindly vocalized on Mashable and on Twitter). Still, just because they
suddenly became vocal doesn’t mean that those who are there are
representative of teens as a whole. Furthermore, the presence of teens
on Twitter doesn’t mean that Twitter is a mainstream tool amongst
teens. It’s not.
Given all of these problems, I immediately dismissed the Nielsen
report and the Mashable post as irrelevant and meaningless. Then it
became a Trending Topic. So while I had a million things to do
yesterday, I spent 6+ hours reading the messages of the people who
added content to the trending topic, reading their posts about other
things, going to their profiles on other sites, and simply trying to
get a visceral understanding of what youth were engaged enough on
Twitter to respond to the trending topic. What I found fascinated me.
I’m still coding the data so you won’t get any quantitative data just
yet, but I want to give you a sense of my impression.
Teens On Twitter
The majority of teens who responded to the Trending Topic simply
responded to the statement “Teens Don’t Tweet” by noting that they were
a teen and they tweeted. Others just noted that the trending topic was
dumb. Many didn’t know why the term had become a trending topic, were
unaware of the Mashable article or Nielsen study, and thought that
Twitter chose the trending topics. (I was in awe of how many teens
commented that Twitter was stupid for making such a lie a trending
topic. Some thought it was Twitter’s attempts to tell them they didn’t
belong. One did ask if it was a trap to get teens to come out of the
closet about their real age.)
Many of the teens who responded to the TT were not American or
Canadian. I saw bunches of Brazilian teens, some Indonesian teens, and
a smattering of teens from Europe, China, and Mexico. Many of their
Twitter streams mixed English and the local language of their country.
English dominated the responses but I did see non-English responses to
the English trending topic.
About half of the teens included a link to a non-Twitter page in
their bio. The pages were really mixed. Among the SNSes, MySpace
dominated, but there were some Facebook links and links to Piczo and
Multiply. There were also links to YouTube, Blogspot, LiveJournal,
Deviant Art, and personal homepages.
Very few of the teens put their age in their bio, although quite a
few made their age available in the content or through links. Teens
posted messages like “I’m 16 and I’m on Twitter.” And birthdays are a
big enough deal that I was seeing things like, “I can’t wait until I’m
16 and can get a car. Only 3 months to go!” And of course there’s
MySpace.
Most of the teens on Twitter followed on the order of 40-70 other
people (with fewer followers). Who they followed included a smattering
of other teens and a collection of big names – celebs, bloggers, geeks.
There wasn’t much discussion on their feeds about the number of people
following them but they frequently highlighted how many tweets they
had. I was surprised by how many of them would write a tweet saying
nothing more than “this is my 1207th tweet!” Their content is primarily
phatic in nature with an eye for updating as often as possible.
The most salient visceral reaction that I got when looking at the
teens’ Twitter streams was that teens on Twitter seemed to fit into
three categories: 1) geeky teens, tech teens, fandom teens, machinema
teens; 2) teens who are in love with the Jonas Brothers/Miley Cyrus,
musicians, or another category of celebs; 3) multi-lingual foreign
teens with friends/followers around the world who seemed to participate
in lots of online communities.
While I can’t make any meaningful conclusions until I spend more
time with the data, it seems to me that the teens on Twitter – or at
least the teens responding to the trending topic – are not
representative of teens as a whole. That’s not a bad thing. They’re
geeks and passionate creators and trendsetters and pop culture addicts.
I don’t get the sense that they’re dragging their friends into Twitter,
but rather, focusing on using Twitter to engage with other people who
share their interests or people that they admire.
Anyhow, I’m continuing to track this but I thought I should just
report out what I’m seeing in case it’s of use to anyone but me.
Be warned: This blog post was written in brain-dump style to get
some general impressions out there while I analyze the data. My goal is
to give you a sense of what I’m seeing, assuming that you aren’t
staring at thousands and thousands of tweets by teens. Please don’t
interpret it as a “report” or a “study” or anything other than what it
is: a blog post.
(Image source: learnscience.com)
