Those Multitasking Teens

TechCrunch is reporting on a new report from Nielsen that tries to debunk the generalization that all teens are blogging, facebooking and twittering fools.
Apparently they’re doing much the same as the rest of us – except possibly it’s the rest of us who caught up to the early adopters.
Here are some of the US teen things reported by Nielsen:
1. Social networks play an increasingly important roles in the lives of teens
2. Teens consume a lot of non-connected media too, such as TV, radio and even newspapers. Of course, watching the kids I know, this might be all doe at the same time!
3. “According to Nielsen, teenagers are far from abandoning TV for so-called new media. In fact, television viewing rates among U.S. teens have actually gone up 6% in the last five years. Sure, they browse the Web a lot, but far less than you do. The average time spent browsing for an adult person in the United States comes down to about 29 hours and 15 minutes per month. While I reach that average almost on a daily basis, teens are said to browse the Web a lot less than that: 11 hours and 32 minutes per month on average.”
TechCrunch asked why teens spend less time online than adults. I’d suggest that the disconnected state of high school classrooms and the connected nature of most adult jobs easily accounts for this.
4. “if you’re between 25 and 34 years old, you watch online videos about 35% more than teens do (and they don’t have to go to the office every weekday)
5. Teenagers enjoy video games, but they don’t necessarily carry a particular interest in ones that are violent of nature
6. Teens who recall advertising are 44% more likely to say they liked the ads than adults (ok now I’m scared)
7. 1 out of 4 teens reads newspapers daily
8. one last takeaway from the report is that teens evidently have their favorite TV shows, websites and genre preferences … only they’re almost exactly the same as their parents.”
You can download the report over at NielsenWire, or consult the embedded file at the bottom of the TechCrunch post.
I think the Nielsen report shows that it’s no longer about teens and the new normal is fully here. What’s next?
For a start I’d watch for:
a. Significantly more mobile search in North America (the Jackson death created a huge mobile search spike).
b. Extra special features being added to the social networks to take them to the next level.
c. Interactive TV now that the TV broadcast system is totally digital and able to accept two-way communication. Watch for the Fall network sweeps weeks to be interactivity on steroids. I don’t just mean reality TV or the dancing and singing competitin shows. In a couple of years we’ll be choosing plotlines.
Next station arriving on the web. No one can get off this time.
Stephen
Stephen