January 8th, 2008
Do Youth Media Habits Predict The Future Of Media?
Fred Wilson wrote the other day about what observing his kids’ media habits tells him about the future of media — I’ve has a similar impulse to try to draw insights from observing real young people’s media habits.
But is this the best way to predict the future of media?
When I was a kid, I:
- Watched a lot of cartoons
- Watched a lot of TV generally
- Played a lot of video games
-
Never listened to NPR
- Didn’t read the New York Times
- Didn’t use any text-based communication, i.e. never wrote letters
None of these are true anymore. Most striking is I don’t watch any TV. And I spend half my day communicating in text (mostly email). When I was a teenager in the late 80s, just prior to the dawn of the Web era, I’m sure newspaper publishers we’re bemoaning that kids these days don’t read newspapers.
Yet I became a newspaper reader…except that I don’t read newspapers in print…except for my local paper that arrives on my doorstep.
Who could have predicted my adults media habits by observing me in my youth? But it’s not just that I’ve changed. Media has changed so radically in the last 20 years, it would have been impossible to predict how I would grow into media.
The digital generation is undoubtedly developing biases and habits that will carry into adulthood. But they will also grow up. They will get corporate email addresses. Time they spend on Facebook will transform into time spend answering email. They will buy homes, have kids and become concerned with what’s happening in their communities. Maybe they will trust blogs as sources of news. Or maybe they will be more wary of which sources they choose because they are more savvy about the ways of the web.
Or, more likely, as happened to me, they will adopt media habits based on technology we have yet to imagine.
My four-year-old daughter loves watching Noggin on TV, and she can click her way through the games on Noggin.com like she was born with a mouse in her hand.
But she also loves books — more than anything else — that, perhaps, stands a chance of enduring.
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So you are St Paul (When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.)
To Fred’s Wordsworth
(So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;)
Adrian,
Congratulations on the most literary reference I’ve ever seen on a blog comment, which is much appreciated by this former english major.
I think my love for newspapers began when I was about 9-years-old.
I became a huge baseball fan.
Back then, about the only way to follow my favorite team every day was to read the newspaper.
I could listen to the radio, and I often listened to the radio, and once in a while, especially when they were playing the hated Dodgers, they were on TV — but every morning, I couldn’t wait to read about my team. I loved reading the post-game commentary and quotes from the players.
I don’t think I looked at any other section of the paper until I was maybe 12 and became a paperboy for the Evening Tribune, but by then I had already published my first newspaper — a four-page mimographed one-time periodical for my fourth-grade class (next edition didn’t come out until 5th grade, and I wouldn’t be a publish again until after college).
I’ve just got to believe that that early love affair with the sports section of my home town newspaper set me up for a life-time romance with newspapers.
I’m very duel-minded about media today. I still prefer reading the news in paper, but I very much believe in the future of the newspaper.com; however, I think that duelity is one thing that leads me to push so hard for creating local news sites that just create the local news paper online.
People don’t read newspapers as much as they used to not because the alternatives are more convenient or better (they are not); they don’t them any more because they are no longer relevant to their busy, multi-faceted, more individualized lives.
Or something like that.
Kids today — if the mobile device in their hands is what turns them on to being information omnivores, then it will be the mobile device they most cling to when they’re 50, no matter what comes along later, I think.
And that brings us around to what may ultimately kill newspapers … kids today just don’t get turned on to them like they used to, so for those of use who believe in the civic value of journalism (especially the brand practiced by newspapers), how are we going to keep that craft alive and still appeal to future generations?
Do the math– books are the #1 all time media form and I don’t think they’re going away anytime soon
::: Push hard for news sites that DON’T just recreate the newspaper online … I meant.
Scott,
I have a similar experience as you. When I was a kid: I played with toys, videogames, sports… nothing involving reading. Now, we don’t watch TV and I read constantly - newspapers, magazines, web, books, the back of a cereal box - anything and everything.
The connecting string between my childhood activities and my adult activities is that both inspire me and feed my love of creativity.
Looking at the kids of today to predict the adults of tomorrow often forgets that little thing called “growing up.” Or perhaps its just… growing.
Have a nice evening.
-Dan
[…] I caught Scott Karp’s response, where he compares his kid-life with his life now. It made me think about when I was in elementary […]
Ok - here’s my tuppence from a UK perspective. I also watch my stepdaughter with interest to see if I figure out what I need to be paying attention to in the STM publishing industry.
Here’s what I see -
Colloboration online: I watched a hectic round of txting and one very brief spoken conversation which said “meet me at bebo”. She hung out with her friends at a couple of their bebo homepages. For a parent, it saves on the petrol costs I guess. Is she going to be utterly at home with the idea of collaborating online? I reckon so. There’s tons of possibilities here for grown-up use of that kind of user behaviour.
Ownership and rights and the lack of awareness of copyright etc: I cannot help but note the relaxed attitude to using content regardless of the legalities of it. She thinks if she can get to it on the Internet then it must be ok as it wouldn’t be up there if it was illegal (I asked about this so I’m not interpreting). Thing is, she and her friends put up viral ad videos on their bebo pages that look exactly the same as the stuff that media companies scream about when it appears online. Blurring the line in order to be ‘authentic’ when marketing to your chosen demographic has unexpected consequences. By the way - she buys her music at iTunes. Growing up in such an environment - is it reasonable to expect that she and her cohort will suddenly revert to a conventional awareness of what content ownership is all about?
But overall - the thing that stands out to me is that she is in the first generation to grow up defining their personalities partly in the online space. I don’t know how blurred the differentiation between the worlds is, and perhaps that’s not important - what is, is the fact that she and her friends are natives. They didn’t have lectures or training or help notes or any of that stuff. It was just there for them to discover and use, the way a child picks up a wooden block and figures out how to stick it in the right shaped hole in their puzzle. Maybe they’ll use this site or that when they grow up, and maybe they won’t. But in looking at specific sites, does that miss the point? They will use Google (or perhaps what comes after Google if we still think that might happen soon) because Google isn’t just a site, it’s a meme. And successful memes survive and thrive.
It has nothing to do with paper or screens — it has to do with authority. And authority will become ever more specialized: Just as you wouldn’t ask a car-mechanic to perform open-heart surgery, you would not go to cars.com if what you really need is a bypass operation (let alone a generic “one-size-fits-all” search engine ;).
Hi Scott,
My four year old, seven year old, and yes, iPhone hacking 13 year, old also enjoy books most of all.
I think it has to do with the paramount importance of the story as the most effective human communication, and the book and drama tell the story most effectively. I think even more effectively than film.
Thanks for the intriguing ideas,
Steve
how many children are tucked into bed each night with their parents reading them a story from a laptop?
The question is, is there a “migration path” on which a child can take the same toolset and use them in adulthood? When there is, your media habits can grow up with you.
Yes, my playing Super Mario Bros 24×7 as a kid faded away. That’s because the old Nintendo Famicom didn’t do much except games.
However, my zest for PCs grew up with me from an old XT with a game or two. The same foundations come into play when I use the computer for “serious” things today.
I am confident that kids who are on Facebook or MySpace, and many of whom already talk about blogs, tags, RSS and such - have a “mental infrastructure” as well as know-how that will grow up with them.
It will stick even when their interests change and they’re looking for news or a job rather than their friend’s latest poke (although you never grow out of that (-: )
I read a lot as a kid - and my kids do too. But I have not continued that as an adult. I just don’t enjoy it as much as I used to.
I remember lots of cartoons and TV as a kid, but I read our newspaper as well. Today, I rarely have the time to read newsprint. I get most of my news and information online.
I believe the culture of the newspaper reader is a learned experience.
When we were young, our fathers studied the headlines and front page stories at the breakfast table, our moms followed the Home pages and we all caught up with what we missed when the evening edition hit the doorstep.
Later, when you moved into your first apartment, you got your phone, your electricity and your newspaper subscription. It was your passage into adulthood.
Gone are the days of the one income household. Mom and dad barely have time nowadays for each other let alone sitting down with a newspaper. Kids are taxied from school event to playdate. The only experience with newsprint for many kids is a classroom workshop.
Newspapers need to understand this fundamental change in their audience.
How do you introduce yourself to a youth market that has little connection to the news”paper” culture?
Newspapers have to refocus their efforts from cost cutting and old institutional thinking and reinvent the idea of a “newspaper”.
Use the strengths of the newspaper:
brand trust
expert opinion
an authoritative voice in the community
the experience and skills of dozens (or hundreds) of editors and reporters
an understanding of its community
We shouldn’t see this as a curtain call on the industry, but as an opportunity to create a new “newspaper”.
A “newspaper” that incorporates this strength, gives a community voice and embraces technology.
I don’t watch television either. Internet is the new tv.
The fact that my young children love books makes me happy. I hope that the Kindle, or a similar product, will fail in its possible goal of eliminating the paper book, even though I’d love to have a Kindle for myself (and the funds to fill its memory to burst at the seams).
Scott, good comments on Fred’s post. You and your readers may enjoy these free videos that me and my fellow futurist Glen Hiemstra have just published, called Future Talks - lots of ideas in here that relate to this discussion: http://mc.conversationsnetwork.org/series/futuretalks.html