Propel Marketing, LLC

Recently, a young Morgan Stanley intern created a bit of a stir when the 15-year old noted that teens are not that crazy about Twitter. Now, new tweet studies from the Nielson group back this up. While every one of Twitter’s user demos has seen growth in 2009, the exponential growth has occurred in the 25-54 age demographic. Why aren’t teens tweeting in proportionate numbers?

Twitter Users By Age c. of Nielson

Here’s what I think:

1. Teens use social media outlets to dialogue with groups of friends. They prefer images, videos, and real time conversation to occasional text updates, especially when they can get “real time” text updates via text messaging services. This makes sites like Facebook and content-rich social media sites more popular option for this demo.
2. Working people use social media to communicate with a network of acquaintances. They are generally busier and don’t have time for a full update or conversation. Text-based social media sites like Twitter are perfect for this demo because they aren’t overwhelming in terms of bandwidth (literal and figurative)..
3. The Nielson data set is skewed. (Who came up with “the terrible twos” to “just under-cheaper-car-insurance age” as a reasonable demographic? 2 – 24 years old. Right, those are all teens )
4. Teens do use Twitter, particularly if their friends do, too. Group participation can make even a mostly text-based site like Twitter meaningful for the teen demo.

To put things in the old instant messenger parlance (the admitted inspiration for Twitter.com): teens are chatting. People at work are posting away messages. If you want to talk to your friends about their lives, there are much better options than Twitter. But, if you want to make people feel connected to you without actually having to say very much, a 140-character soapbox may be all you need.