Ubercool

Teenage Behavior

Studying teenage behavior reveals a lot about the future. While teens tend to be replicants of their parents, it’s their unconventional, non-biased nature that makes teenagers so appealing to marketers. So, are they truly the multitasking, non-brand-loyal, technology-savvy neo-conservatives as everyone paints them to be?

We know that kids are growing up faster. Mattel coined the term “KAGOY” – Kids Are Growing Older Younger” – to describe this phenomenon. That’s why so many news reports focus on the early ages at which teens begin to use cosmetics or dress “inappropriately.”

The latest teen malapropism? Taking naked pictures of themselves on their cellphones and sending them to boyfriends and girlfriends. Last year, 18 students at a Castle Rock, Colo. middle school sent around nude photos of themselves. Other cases have been reported in New Jersey, New York, Alabama, Utah, Pennsylvania, Texas and Connecticut, notes USA Today. Here are a few more contemporary, young-adult phenomena:

• DWT – A Liberty Mutual study of more than 900 teens released in July 2007, found that nearly 50% of teens admit to driving while texting. And with about 73% of teenagers owning cell phones as of 2007, according to Tween & Teen Lifestyle Report, expect the incidence of DWT to merely rise in the future.

MyDeathSpace, a tribute to deceased members of MySpace, features a growing number of examples of teen victims of “DWT” – driving while texting. More than 50% of teens report texting while driving, although a growing number of states are outlawing the practice.

• Multitasking – On average, teens perform about three to four other tasks while surfing the Internet and two to three others tasks while watching television, a study commissioned by Yahoo and the OMD ad agency reported in 2005. Some 73% of TV-online multitasking kids are engaged in “active multitasking,” defined as content in one medium influencing concurrent behavior in another, a 33% increase in active multitasking since 2002, notes a 2008 Grunwald Associates social networking study.
• Neo-Conservatism – U.S. teens appear to be more conservative than many of their global counterparts, including teenagers from India, China, Germany and France, according to a February 2006 Energy BBDO GenWorld Teen study. About half of U.S. teens qualify as “Red Teens” with strong conservative views, while the remaining half, Blue Teens, emphasize individuality and tend to reject tradition. Red Teens are more likely to believe in God (89% vs. 55% globally) and that abortion is never justified (40% vs. 12%).
• Advertising – Cultural differences also influence marketing. The Yahoo/OMD study found that teens in developing countries are more receptive to advertising than teens in developed countries. More than half of teens surveyed in Mexico and China and 68% in India agree that advertising is a good way to learn about trends and things to buy. Thirty-five percent or less of teens surveyed in France, Germany and the U.S. think so.
• Sexual Practices – In 2005, the National Center for Health Statistics released the U.S. government’s most comprehensive survey of sexual practices and found that more than half of all teenagers ages 15-19 have engaged in oral sex, including nearly a quarter of those who have never had intercourse.

If the names no longer sound familiar to you, you’re too old. Zac Efron, the star of Disney’s megahit, High School Musical, is the current female teen heartthrob. Miley Cyrus, Disney’s Hannah Montana star, displayed her teen spirit in a Vanity Fair photo that created a publicity storm, Britney-style.

• Alcohol/Drug Use – A 2007 National Institute on Drug Abuse annual survey found that the proportion of 8th graders reporting use of an illicit drug at least once in the past 12 months was 13% in 2007, down nearly half from 24% in 1996. But by the time teens become 10th graders, drug use rises to 28%, although that figure is down from 39% in 1997. Among 12th graders, drug use rises to 36%, a decline from a peak of 42% in 1997. There was a significant increase in the use of OxyContin among 12th-graders, with 10% of 12th-graders reported using the painkiller Vicodin, while 6% reported using OxyContin in the past year. Also noted was the significant increase in the use of sedatives and barbiturates among 12th-graders since 2001. Nearly half of America’s 5.4 million full-time college students use drugs or drink alcohol on binges at least once a month, according to a March 2007 study by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University. Alcohol remains the favored substance of abuse on college campuses by far, but the abuse of illicit drugs, rose from 31% in 1993 to 37% in 2005.
• Cigarettes – The good news is that cigarette smoking among teens is down. But who has time to juggle a cigarette when you have to update your Facebook profile, shop online, play videogames, or use your iPod while IMing on your phone?
• Social Networking – A survey conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project in Fall 2006 found that 55% of teens ages 12 to 17 used social networking sites. The survey discovered that older girls are most likely to have used social networking sites, with 70% of teen girls, ages 15 to 17, maintaing profiles on social networking sites, compared with 57% of boys in that age bracket. More than one in four (27%) of all students surveyed are heavy users of social-networking sites and services, reports a Grunwald Associates social networking study. That same study found that 71% of online tweens and teens connect to a social network at least once a week.

Three in four teens and tweens own at least one console or portable gaming system and plan to buy 3.1 games in 2008, up from 2.5 last year. The videogaming world is becoming tightly meshed with teen reality, making pop-culture icons out of such as videogame stars as Nintendo’s Super Mario.

• E-commerce – Nearly six out of 10 U.S. teens surveyed have made a purchase online, according to a June 2008 study conducted by OTX and The Intelligence Group. Responding online buying teens said they spent an average of $46 every month. Total spending among 13-to-21-year-olds was estimated at $120 billion in 2007, according to Harris Interactive. Apparel can be an important focus for status-conscious teens. Some of the most popular apparel sites visited by MySpace users are American Eagle, Hot Topic and Hollister.
• Texting – Several studies suggest that heavy-texting teens are more prone to disrupted sleep, restlessness, stress and fatigue. Meanwhile, the report “Writing, Technology, and Teens” shows that 38% of high-school-age students have used abbreviations like ‘LOL’ in school assignments, notes Richard Sterling, professor at the University of California Berkeley and contributor to this report.

Is it any surprise that our future social dialog will be heavily influenced by text messaging? David Crystal, a University of Wales language historian, believes that the written language will resemble text messages by 2020. “The Internet is fostering new kinds of creativity through language. It’s the beginning of a new stage in the evolution of the written language,” says Crystal. Leave it to our tech-savvy offspring to take us there first.

Ubertrends: Time Compression, Digital Lifestyle, Unwired
Value Propellants: Multi-Functional, Speed, Convergence, Connectedness, Freedom

10 comments July 3rd, 2008

Social Engagement Media

A major trend is sweeping through our media universe. It began innocently enough with Friendster in 2003, which came from nowhere to become the celebrated buzz of 2003. But Friendster was quickly toppled from its social network pedestal by an even faster moving phenom: MySpace.

When Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. acquired MySpace in July 2005 for $580 million, the move received a lukewarm reception in some financial circles. Now that MySpace has more than 200 million member accounts, making the popular social net larger than Brazil, the fifth largest country in the world, and each account costing a mere $2.90 each, those nay-saying nitpickers are signing a totally different tune.

But there’s an even faster-growing social net among us. Facebook, which was conceived as a university-only digital meet market, unlike MySpace, which traced its roots to music trendsetters, has soared from 10 million in September 2006, just prior to Facebook opening its ivory gates to everyone, to 40 million this week, more than quadrupling its member base.

If your inbox is anything like mine, it’s being clogged by Facebook “friend” requests, reflecting the groundswell in popularity that this social network is currently enjoying. How is it that an upstart was able to wrest away the crown of “hotness” from its massive social brother?

Simplicity is clearly a core Facebook strength. Unlike MySpace’s cluttered spaghetti-code interface, Facebook is a breath of fresh air, far more elegant and easier to use. While Facebook wins in the digital cosmetics department, it still needs to create that essential “community” feeling, which neither MySpace or Facebook possess, perhaps due to a lack of content leadership from above.

Still, when Facebook CEO and Founder, Mark Zuckerberg announced on May 25 that Facebook would open its interface to outside developers, thereby allowing third-party applications to enhance the Facebook experience, the Palo Alto-based company discovered an age-old technology tactic that dates back to dBASE days, for those who can remember that far back.

Zuckerberg dubbed the move of opening up the Facebook architecture through an “API” (application developer’s interface), akin to creating a “Social Operating System,” or SOS. The tactic has worked beautifully. When I attended the Facebook Developer’s Garage a few weeks ago, the electric atmosphere in the way-too-small room at company headquarters had the air of a revivalist meeting.

Facebook’s popularity is being propelled by the people in this room, Facebook application developers, who overwhelmed Facebook’s corporate office in Palo Alto at the “Facebook Developer Garage.”

That feeling of exalted exuberance was cemented by “Lee,” from venture capital firm Alta Partners, who exhorted the troops with a cheer that knocked the room down: Join the Facebook bandwagon. This company will IPO in late 2008 with a valuation of more than $100 billion! Tying your fortunes to Facebook will pay off handsomely for anyone smart enough to ride on the company’s coattails.

While casual observers might see this type of cheerleader chant as only another manifestation of irrational exuberance, they’re forgetting that Facebook, and all those thousands of other social networks already online or in the planning stages, are being propelled by a fundamental shift in the rules of social interaction.

What Bebo, Friendster, MySpace, Piczo and the Facebook avant garde have already discovered is that social networks can put network building on steroids, giving you a Barry Bonds-like edge in a world of wimpy non-social netters. And if the Internet can be blamed, in some respects, for driving many a consumer into an asocial cocooning corner, it’s quite evident that social networking is the anti-dote to uncivilization, to paraphrase that Club Med’s famous tagline.

It’s this fundamental shift that makes social networking so incredibly exciting. It’s also what is fueling an onslaught of new social nets, aimed at every conceivable niche. Already, Johnson & Johnson has forked over more than $10 million for social network Maya’s Mom. And VantagePoint Venture Partners announced that I had led a round in social network Multiply, aimed at boomers.

We think this only the beginning. What will make this trend explode is the discovery of marketers that of social engagement marketing, the inevitable outflow of the social engagement media world will fundamentally help rewrite the rules of social engagement.

It’s that kind shift in consumer values that will help vault this trend into the global limelight. If Lee’s forecast is any indication, social networking could one day make Google’s IPO look like a day at the beach. Such a feat can only be possible if Facebook succeeds in changing some fundamental social interaction values.

And there’s plenty of evidence that such a change is already underway. About 260,000 daily users send a virtual toast via the “Booze Mail” application What might want one to send others a drink they can’t consume. Well, it may find its roots in a college-driven prank, but like the old saying goes, “it’s the thought that counts.”

Facebook already offers more than 4,000 applications, since announcing its program May 25. “Booze Mail” lets you send friends a drink. Apps like this, and others like SuperPoke! and FunWall, point to a revolution in social engagement.

There’s no question that our social dialog is undergoing a sea change shift, as the foregoing suggests. We can’t wait to see how the world will evolve around this new social interaction. Social engagement media have arrived and things will never be the same.

Add comment September 13th, 2007