Why Teens Aren’t Using Twitter: It Doesn’t Feel Safe | Hacker News Reader

Why Teens Aren’t Using Twitter: It Doesn’t Feel Safe

techcrunch.com

This is just a teenager stating his opinions based on what he observes in his peer group. It does not include any real data.

That said, his argument seems to almost boil down to, "on Twitter you can't choose your friends". There is no way to enforce a clique on Twitter. I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of conversation among teens is directed solely at their circle of friends, and not at the world and the common collective that Twitter seems to embody.

The reason it's unsafe is that anyone could start following you! Imagine how terrible it would be if that crazy kid no one likes started following you, showing up at your parties and suddenly people thought you were friends. Or what if that mean jock started reading your twitter feed and made fun of your love of {insert obscure interest here}? The world would absolutely end! Everyone knows there's nothing more important in life than who you take to prom.

But you can set your Twitter account to "private", approve all follows, and then your tweets are only visible to people you approve. So this doesn't hold water.

Once you do that, Twitter basically becomes a subset of Facebook, and you if you already have a Facebook, there's no reason to switch.

It's all about where your friends are. I still use ICB.

The article refers to the Morgan Stanley report, but that report doesn't say anything about anyone feeling unsafe. It says, "Teens don’t use Twitter because no one is reading their tweets", so it's not clear what that claim is based on.

I think someone is reading their tweets. And it's their parents. That is why teens avoid it, it is way easy for their parents to know everything. With Facebook you don't need to share everything with your parents, and the world, even if your parents are your friends.

To me that has to be the main difference.

For an actual, interesting, scholarly take on teens & twitter, check out Danah Boyd's work: http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2009/05/16/answers...

Thanks for this link; it appears both credible and interesting.

I read the original Morgan Stanley report, and it doesn't seem relevant to what Techcrunch is saying. It's not clear to me whether Techcrunch actually has any evidence pointing to this conclusion, or whether it's just a shot in the dark.

Barring some further information, it seems like a really strained explanation to me. I would not describe the young Internet users I see as being concerned about safety or privacy.

MySpace was both open and had safety issues. Didn't stop teens from using it.

It wasn't open in the same sense as Twitter is - you could make your profile private, and only allow people who are your "friends" to view anything besides the very basic information.

Of course, this lulled people into a false sense of security; Anna made her profile private to make sure that Bobby wouldn't read her diary, but her friend Cindy would just login and let Bobby read everything from her account.

You can make your Twitter updates private too.

If the headlines is accurate, at least people are learning an important lesson - if you don't want anyone to read something, don't put it online.

How is a 15 year old interning at Morgan Stanley?

family connections

How do you know?

Because it requires a family member in the firm in order to be able to intern at 15. When you're 17 and up you can be 'on your own'.

Ah okay. So it's a safe assumption then :]

yes. I did this myself when I was 15, my mom worked for a bank. Different country though, much the same rules.

It felt really weird being a kid amongst all the 'grown ups'. They all moved so slow :)

As a teenager the problem seems to be twitter doesn't solve a problem most teens are having (facebook status updates are good enough for them) and not enough people they care about are using it.

It's not about safety, it's about privacy. Teenagers define themselves by who they talk to even more than what they talk about.

I think it's just because there are not as many teenage social media gurus.

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