How Old Are You? And what social media do you use? (Media Meditation #5)

While being in college and learning more and more about social media I have noticed the wide range of differences in use by different age groups. I have seen this mostly through comparing teachers vs my parents, which are the same age group but use social media differently. I also have noticed how my sister that is 24, my brother who is 18 and myself who is 21 and how we use social media differently.

Here is a brief list of age groups and how they use social media differently. For more information go here.

Ages 12-25: Mobile oriented social media tools, uses text messaging often. Goes on social media sites such as Facebook, YouTube and MySpace. This age group loves videos and and anything with text she be as short as possible.

Ages 25-45: Most popular social media tool is e-mail. Facebook Twitter - Uses Blackberry or iPhone apps. Likes less text in blogs and on websites and enjoys video.

Ages 46-55: Uses Web about 90%of the time. Rarely uses text messaging. They will read and use blogs but rarely a microblog. They will probably print out articles online, they are textual and aren't visual through images and video.

Ages 55 and over: Media consumption habits - Radio, TV, Print News. When they use social media they like to work inside a framework such as Facebook.

This reminds me of the Book Feed. One Example would be when Violets father tells Titus about when he decide Violet needed a Feed. He went on an interview and they tried to chat with him on his feed but he didn't have one. He was older, behind the times, and that caused him not to get the job (pg 288). The feed was a necessary tool to have if you wanted to get a job and interact socially. Imagine if you met someone who didn't have a computer. No Facebook. No E-mail. Nothing. Wouldn't you think it was a little odd?

Only my teachers that are in the field that requires it seem to be really up to date with social media. My mother, whose job is running a restaurant only got a Facebook when I went abroad because it was easier to see my pictures and see what I was up to. She had to adapt to my use of social media to interact with me. Once I got home she barely used Facebook anymore. It was only until she decided to run for Council at Large that she got someone to make her a political page on Facebook and she started using it again.

My Sister, who is only 24, three years older than I am, feels like she is behind the times when it comes to social media. I came home for Thanksgiving and she asked me about Twitter. She works at a PR firm and they mentioned it. I had to explain to her what it did and how you could use it from a business point of view. She took notes. But even I feel like if I blink my eyes I could be behind the times. First I felt it with Twitter, and not that I have Twitter, Google Wave came out. I just got my invite but I have no idea how to use it yet.

And my little brother uses Social Media a lot differently then both me and my sister. He uses social media through video games, it allows them to have live chats with different people around the world. He also uses his cell phone very often to use the internet.



So, moral of the story if I want to be able to get a job when I graduate, especially in the marketing field, I better not blink.