I’m fascinated watching the news as our friends at Facebook struggle and a whistleblower has been let loose with thousands of pages of documents, some particularly damning about the fact that the company totally understands the toxic effect that their products are having on the mental health of teenagers even as, at the same time, they continue to press ahead with the development of Instagram for children!
With that in mind, I had a brilliant conversation with Callum yesterday over lunch after a bike ride during the holidays and I was just reaffirming my views on social media but taking into consideration the opinions of an ‘expert’.
Callum is almost 14 and uses way, way too many electrical devices for my liking but then I’m nearly 50 and simply don’t understand (apparently).
I try my best to mitigate the impact and effects of this but I literally am trying to hold back a tsunami with a sheet of A4 paper.
Just for the record though, some time ago I blogged about what I felt was happening with social media and how it was being used through different generations and Callum was able to confirm this direction of travel as we move forwards.
Callum has just entered his teenage journey and his preferred media channels to access are the following:
- Instagram - he uses this for information and is one of his main sources of information gathering, particularly for the world of professional football and the world of professional basketball which are two of his favourite subjects.
- Snapchat - to be absolutely clear about this, snapchat is used by Callum’s generation as a WhatsApp and nothing else.
- TikTok - TikTok is used to act as fast access of memes, developing culture and inspiration (however his generation decide to classify that).
- YouTube - is on demand television where they can find any amount of information on any subject they want based on peer pressure, cultural memes and how the wind is blowing at the current time.
Contrast this with Callum’s older sisters, Rosie who is 17 and Grace who is 19.
Grace now uses Facebook for information (Rosie a little bit) and they both use Instagram for communication. They both have snapchat but only because they feel they have to and neither of them uses anything to do with TikTok.
Neither of them consume YouTube the way Callum consumes YouTube.
Consider that with my wife’s social media usage or yours if you’re the same age as me and understand the pattern of change.
If you plan to use social media marketing in your business then you better understand that the cost of that will increase and increase and the only winner is liable to be Facebook.
Twitter has already been sidelined in its ability to provide in your face ready player one style epilepsy marketing the way that Instagram is obviously doing at the moment.
If you slide through an Instagram feed (I did this at the weekend as a short experiment) there is an advert every two or three posts and it’s now (at least for someone like me who doesn’t do this very often) difficult to tell the difference between what is what.
Callum’s generation do not use Instagram to portray their lived and in fact it looks a lot like the 13 year-olds are stopping doing that.
So, the 30 somethings who are using it to show their smile or their holiday or their perfect wedding will soon be overtaken by the developing older teenagers who will be more private and who will not showcase their life but will only begin to use it for the gathering of information.
These are tumultuous times indeed but understanding there is always someone much cleverer than you and much more tech savvy too steps ahead desperate to get the money out of your pocket in this amazing and hyperactive game of FOMO.
Blog Post Number - 2899
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