Matthew Robson, a 15-year-old intern at analyst firm Morgan Stanley recently helped compile a report [76K PDF] about teenage media habits. Overnight, his findings have become a sensation...which goes to show that people are either obsessed with what "the kids" are into or there's a distinctive lack of research being done on this demographics' media use. Robson's report isn't even based on any sort of statistical analysis, just good ol' fashioned teenage honesty. And what was it that he said to cause all this attention? Only that teens aren't into traditional media (think TV, radio, newspapers) and yet they're eschewing some new media, too, including sites like Twitter.Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson has more:Teens Say "No Thanks" to Newspapers, Radio, and to Some Extent, TV
According to Robson's report (available here courtesy of the Financial Times), today's teens don't really consume any of what you could call "traditional" media. For example, notes Robson, they don't read newspapers because why bother reading "pages and pages of text" when they could instead "watch the news summarized on the internet or TV?"
"Teenagers do not use Twitter," he pronounced. Updating the micro-blogging service from mobile phones costs valuable credit, he wrote, and "they realise that no one is viewing their profile, so their tweets are pointless".His peers find it hard to make time for regular television, and would rather listen to advert-free music on websites such as Last.fm than tune into traditional radio. Even online, teens find advertising "extremely annoying and pointless".
Their time and money is spent instead on cinema, concerts and video game consoles which, he said, now double as a more attractive vehicle for chatting with friends than the phone.
Mr Robson had little comfort for struggling print publishers, saying no teenager he knew regularly reads a newspaper since most "cannot be bothered to read pages and pages of text" rather than see summaries online or on television.
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