A Teenager’s View on Social Media | Hacker News Reader

A Teenager’s View on Social Media

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488 pointsnicksergeant284 comments

This is weird; the author possibly met with the CEO of Snapchat more than once recently:

https://twitter.com/thatswattsup/status/546018511902867456

> Can't wait to visit my friends at @Snapchat again tomorrow :D

https://twitter.com/thatswattsup/status/545326840940740608

> Loved hanging out with @evanspiegel yesterday, he's one of the nicest and more genuine guys I've met. Thanks for having me @Snapchat!

...influencer? Hope not :(

I was teaching a lesson on cryptography to a bunch of twelve year olds this morning, and with reference to https, I asked how many had used Facebook before school - no hands, how about Instagram - no hands, how about Snapchat - half the class put their hands up. It's definitely the most popular network amongst teens in my (UK) school.

Have teens ever been an important demographic for Facebook though? It started only for college students - it wasn't until three or four years later they opened it up to everyone. [And more broadly - do we use popularity among teens to measure success for anything that isn't specifically targeted primarily at teens (e.g. a company like Abercrombie & Fitch)?]

Teenagers in high school usually see their friends every day (more so than college - where you're less likely to have all or many of the same classes as your friends), there probably isn't as much desire to use a social network to keep up with what your friends/acquaintances are doing since you're experiencing it with them. After college you're more likely going weeks or months between seeing even your closest friends or family so Facebook is probably a bit more useful/exciting when your older.

But teenagers today are college students of tomorrow, and if you believe OP, the college students of tommorow may associate Facebook with years of negative impressions that they acquired throughout high school.

That's a huge barrier for Facebook to overcome, especially when a 'cooler' competitor can expand its feature set to meet the students' long-distance relationship needs without any of the stigma that they associate with Facebook.

Alternatively, rather than imprinting into a particular social network (Facebook bad, Twitter obscure, Instagram relevant) it could be that these teens will simply migrate to a different toolset when their needs change rather than expecting a tool to be used to photoblog their party lifestyle of college years to also work as a tool to keep up with post-college life. Facebook changed over time to basically follow a particular demographic (those whose age mirrored the founder) but most of the others are built for specific purposes and have a lot more inertia behind them. Maybe being first is what let Facebook change and re-define itself, but so far none of the others seem to have changed much from the day they were launched in terms of how people actually use them (and FB itself has had numerous failures in attempts to spin off mini-pivots as individual apps.)

Yes I thought the same thing when I read his article. My teenagers are 14 - 15. I am on Instagram. The biggest difference I see is they made the transition to SnapChat discussed in this article 12 months ago. It sounds like the author sees that happening now but with the younger ones they seem to have made the move over nearly a year ago. It's funny as I follow a few of them on Instagram and it just dried up to now only doing 1 or 2 pictures per week and they're closer to the "staged" sanitized FB ones he discusses.

Uh.. Could it be that people under 13 are not allowed on Facebook?

People under 18 also aren't allowed to watch porn, and people under 21 definitely can't drink.

Fair but I was suggesting that Facebook is really only useful if you have friends but when you or your friends can't signup or their parents won't allow them to signup (in my case), there's not much reason to use Facebook.

It is kind of like not needing LinkedIn until you're in college.

There's a pretty big difference between grabbing content off some site and establishing a social media presence, surely?

No? In one case, you click a button and/or check a box to confirm you are of a certain age to see porn, in the other you enter a wrong number into a specific field during account creation.

In then end, people desire something (access to content and/or interaction), and all that prevents them from having it is being completely truthful in one spot about a question that really doesn't seem that important.

It's not very hard to lie about your age - they don't ask for any proof or verification.

My middle school aged kids have no interest in Facebook at all. Instagram definitely, and texting constantly. I'm sure Snapchat will come soon too.

From the instagram terms (http://instagram.com/about/legal/terms/) you must be at least 13 to use instagram.

I don't think that's really stopped many people. It's not that difficult to lie about your age.

>> "It's definitely the most popular network amongst teens in my (UK) school."

I'm not sure I'd put to much weight on that. From my personal use and what I've seen people seem to spend longer periods of time on Facebook. Whereas Snapchat requires seconds at a time. When you're asking who used something before school you have to remember these kids likely got out of bed, didn't have time to shower and ran to the bus :) I'd love it if you had also asked about what they did after school the previous day. Of course my evidence isn't very robust either but I don't think you can draw your conclusion from that survey.

I'm about the same age as the poster and he's captured my age groups' experience of social media, including Snapchat, perfectly. Snapchat really is that big a deal.

Except these are all just anecdotes. I'm in the same age group and Snapchat use has definitely fallen off considerably on my college campus and some of my high school friends' campuses as well.

The only thing that would prove any of this is real data, which seems to be lacking in every claim....

Re: "These are all just anecdotes" - yes, he made it very clear in the beginning of his essay:

"This article will not use any studies, data, sources, etc. This is because you can easily get that from any other technology news website and analyze from there. I’m here to provide a different view based off of my life in this “highly coveted” age bracket. That being said, I'm not an expert at this by a long shot and I'm sure there will be data that disproves some of the points I make, but this is just what I've noticed."

Yeah, except that is basically saying his analysis is worthless, in my honest opinion. Combine this with the fact that he is clearly biased towards Snapchat (just look at his personal Twitter and blog), yet doesn't disclose that fact, and you get a bad article that is taken way more seriously than it should be.

Its similar to that fake radar app that claims it detects police radar from your smartphone then at the bottom of the description says "Does not work".

edit: (To explain, I don't think the author was malicious or really at fault. I think everyone trying to draw sweeping conclusions about our generation based on this article are ignoring the "Does Not Work" warning, when it comes to the fact that there is zero sources/data behind this....)

Re: "Clearly biased towards Snapchat":

I only know a handful of people (myself included) that believe Snapchat does delete your photos. Everyone else I know believes that Snapchat has some secret database somewhere with all of your photos on it.

I don't think there is a lot of positive bias when he states that, "Everyone he knows believes that Snapchat has a secret database somewhere with all of your photos on it."

I'm not sure where your negative criticism is coming from. This is a single, very well written, anecdote. He EXPLICITLY states that there is almost certainly general data that will disprove everything he says. He makes it super, super clear that this is just a single individuals experience. If anything, he goes overboard in the opening paragraphs trying to disclaim everything he is about to write. Everyone else (including you) is free to write up their own stories, and from those many, many stories, we get a good picture of social media from the teenagers perspective. After all, the plural of anecdote is data.

The title clearly says "A Teenagers View on Media". It's not a little disclaimer at the bottom of the page that says "This is only my view". It's right in the title and opening paragraph.

Right, but I think it serves the same purpose. People willingly ignore it.

Either way, the original poster I responded to with the anecdote wasn't even the author of the article, but someone on here who provided another anecdote, but didn't give the same such warning or any indication that they knew what they were saying wasn't an actual relevant argument....

People willingly ignore it.

Then it's their own darn faults.

Well, I wouldn't say "worthless". If you're looking for a macro view of usage, sure, but again it's unfair to expect that from a piece that starts by flatly stating that's not what it provides.

What it does provide is a very clear sense as to how all of these different services end up playing very complimentary roles in an individual's life. Even if the particular services involved have a popularity that waxes or wanes, the broader picture formed by the complex decision making that resolves people's thoughts and feelings into one network or another remains fascinating. And that aspect of social media seems like it's here to stay.

So sure, this perspective may be worthless to you, but most smart people are sophisticated enough to realize that others have perspectives different from theirs. A person designing or developing social networks, for instance, would have to think about the stuff in this post very carefully if they had any hope of getting their own product into the mix. Yes, they would need the macro view too, but in the absence of the direct personal perspective (which is the perspective held by literally every single one of their prospective users), their efforts are guaranteed to fail.

Short version: if you're going to call something "worthless" be sure to include the essential qualifier "to me". Otherwise you just seem ridiculously self centered.

Sorry, that's only your opinion and as you haven't provided any real data to back it up, so it must be worthless.

> he is clearly biased towards Snapchat

You've repeated this many times so it must really have struck a nerve with you but it's not like this is a recommendation for SnapChat. He thinks it's the most used and he states so, I really don't see a problem with that even if he is best friends with the CEO.

Same age group, Snapchat's appeal has also fallen significantly. It was cool last year, but not so much anymore.

What did you replace it with?

Yes this question?

A few people in the comments are also saying they've seen a drop off in Snapchat usage at their schools, but that hasn't been reflected in the app's ranking in the app store. Snapchat has maintained a top 10 rank for the last year.

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Something I noticed growing up, even when I was a teen, was stuff like "what teens think today" seemed bullshity and something certain adults wanted to hear, which often never reflected my experiences. In this case, the HN-friendly Facebook bashing. Now as a middle-aged adult, its obvious its questionable writing. Its either PR of some kind or a half-assed article by someone with a teenage daughter and a deadline.

A proper survey or data about app store habits say a lot more than a questionable testimonial. Yet somehow, this little sub-genre of reporting still exists. Its like there's this constant adult neurosis about what teenagers and college students think, especially if your paycheck stems from the spending habits of that demographic. This neurosis lets us overlook a lot of things, the same way people looking for spiritual answers will sometimes flock to a known conman, cult, or abusive religion.

Funny how a lot of us were bright young kids, like you, but have become milquetoast adults falling for the same old tricks. Sounds like you're on the right path though. Don't become us.

This. I mean, I can understand obsessing about the teen / YA demographic if that's who you're selling to, but the idea that what they do represents some ground-shaking historical shift, and not just a (fairly well-understood) phase in normal human lives is just ridiculous.

For me, one of the most interesting things about this piece was the total bafflement with Twitter. Not that they didn't like it, they just didn't get it. At the same time, concerns about professional life were largely restricted to "Who will be the first to hire me and will my social life be used against me?"

In other words, the way that a lot of Twitter users treat the service as a huge and never-ending professional conference (with frequent flurries from actual conferences) is totally lost on people too young to have reached this stage in their working lives.

My takeaway from this is not "Kids don't use Twitter, Twitter must be doomed". It's that Twitter is for grownups (mostly), and that it's normal for people to age out of some networks and into others, just like they age into and out of music, cars, clothes, jobs, neighborhoods, and pretty much every other aspect of cultural life.

I'm an adult and I don't understand Twitter either.

It's not that there's anything wrong with the basic idea - it's just that Twitter, the company, constantly wants to make it into something it isn't. And invariably fails at that.

I now use it for my geeky posts, and occasionally, rarely, to check my feed for interesting tweets from the masters of the startup scene.

Teenagers do not understand Twitter because Twitter is high school for adults.

Yes, and teenagers still operate under the illusion that "being a real grownup" is a actual thing, and not just the thinnest of veneers.

This may be true at an emotional level, but there is a fairly unambiguous criteria for adulthood, which comes when you are able to sustain your life and perhaps the life of a family.

Then again, by that criterion a 40-year-old who loses his job and can't find another one is suddenly not an adult anymore, which doesn't really seem to match what most people want the term to mean.

In all honesty, I'm in my mid-30s and I don't get the appeal of Twitter either.

I don't understand how someone can not "get" twitter but use instagram. Aren't they basically the same thing except instagram is pictures and twitter is text? That's what I thought, but I never used either.

Well, "getting" a social medium is not about understanding the data model.

I suppose you are right.

Sorry I deleted my comment. I felt it might have been perceived as a little harsh or quick to judgement. Funny, I guess the author did get one thing right, most of our generation is quick to delete anything that may be controversial for fear it'll be enshrined on the Internet forever....

It's not uncommon for journalists to cultivate relationships with insider sources. In this case, Snapchat has a history of thinking very deeply about the future of social media: for example, one of their earliest and most influential hires is a sociologist and social media theorist.

The account is now deleted (or at least renamed, breaking the links)

This is way more insightful http://www.fastcompany.com/3031259/these-kids-today

Those links no longer work. Tweets deleted?

This is filled with gems that old farts like me (I'm 30) don't have any idea about.

If I don’t get any likes on my Instagram photo or Facebook post within 15 minutes you can sure bet I'll delete it.

Super interesting take - it's as though they are posting not to show people stuff but to get people's approval for what they are posting. Simple but critically different in my opinion.

Facebook is often used by us mainly for its group functionality.

Got it, so make a better group service and bring everyone to that.

One big thing I took away is that, assuming this is representative of the demographic, they seem to not mind using multiple applications for communications. So there really is the ability to pretty narrowly specialize with functions - something I think the older generation does backwards; we want to consolidate and make services a "one stop shop."

it's as though they are posting not to show people stuff but to get people's approval for what they are posting

Yes that's what lives pretty strong in that generation - and on social media in general, I have the impression. For some that goes really far, maybe too far, and people become unhappy or even depressed if they are not seen/approved by others.

Which is like in real life, but also at the same time not quite: in real life conversations etc you show a lot of yourself because it's impossible to hide. Facial expressions, body language, meeting pople early in the morning when you're not at your best, on one of those days where the whole world is against you, and so on. In virtual life however you try to make sure that side of you doesn't show. You could call it a lie. I'm not sure if that is good, bad or neither.

I think that's more a quality of young people, not just "this generation."

I was probably like that once, even though I think I wasn't. I remember everyone around me being concerned with being "liked."

More importantly, Mean Girls and Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Wonder Years all seem that way.

Who know with kids, they make no sense in any generation. :)

Spot on. I've since forgotten about this, but at that age I do remember caring way too much about being liked and what others thought.

It was not that I was so vain - it just seemed like a reality to me. Reality seemed to be, you have to be cool like these guys / that guy / whoever or else you will never have a girlfriend and never have sex and die alone.

In hindsight, that's stupid, idiotic even. But back then that was my life. And it's still like that for teens now. Explains why I can talk to a teen and they seem like perfectly reasonable people, except 10 minutes later they go off and do something unimaginably stupid.

Maybe it's a sort of random mutation of our social genetic makeup - teens must do stupid, senseless stuff, and some, randomly, discover something great (while lots of others just embarrass or injure themselves).

Well, I'm almost 40, and I similarly feel the inherent disappointment when one of my posts is not liked by my peers. Not achieving a certain number of likes feels like social disapproval, or maybe misunderstanding.

Of course, I grew up with punk rock music, so when that happens, I just say F them and move on with my next un-liked post. (Then, the game is to see how many old friends I can repel)

First of all you have to understand that your post will be shown to very few people initially, and if it doesn't get any likes from these few people - let's say it's 10 - immediately, then it won't be shown to anyone else. One reason the newsfeed sucks, and I believe it's the reason I never see posts from the vast majority of my friends.

And then, to me, the quality of the likes matter.

I recently posted 3 different links that were all about stuff very close to my heart - things I really care about. One was a 40 minute video. It got one like, but that like was from my father - I'd trade that for 100 friends likes. One was an article I loved; it got one like, but the guy loved it so much he shared it. And this is something - if I have reached one person's heart, it's a huge success. Another one, forget what that was, but it got likes from my brother and another person close to me.

If a post gets no likes, yeah, first of all, fuck them, and secondly only 10 people saw it thanks to Facebook's clever constant optimization algorithm so F Facebook, too.

Let's be honest, I have 300 friends, the likelihood that all 300 saw a post of mine and did NOT like it is pretty much zero. The only way I can get a post with no likes is if it was only shown to a small percentage of my friends. (or if I posted total crap but I'm not, I swear ;) )

I'm 19 years old, and I certainly post for approval. Though at this point, I don't really post anything but humorous anecdotes or one-liners. In the back of my mind I'm telling myself I'm one step closer to becoming a comedian.

But I also leave up posts that don't get as many likes or comments. If I'm posting something, it's because I've spent time working on the material. I think it's good regardless. But I do know acquaintances who will delete comments they don't like and have gone to post a comment on a post only to get a "post no longer exists" message. This is only from experience on Facebook, I don't really tweet that often anymore.

> Yes that's what lives pretty strong in that generation

That's typical teenager behaviour. To the point that it's stereotipical.

There's also the awareness of the awareness : You can easily sneak into a conversation between a much older or more mature generation, to gain a different perspective on yourself. Where these conversations were relatively hidden in select circles in the past (the conversations concerning the nuances of socialization) they are commonplace now. Everyone is stuck in their own spiral of self analysis, and they are all aware that they are creating and maintaining this spiral of self analysis. In the past, we might not have been so hyper aware of the act of seeking positive affirmations and social acceptance, although humans as social animals might have instinctively/intuitively/naturally sought it out.

However, I am sure there is some philosopher 200 or 100 years ago that has noticed the same phenomena with a different generational shift of technological and emotive labeling.

The endless attention-whoring and KIRF posturing invading my newsfeed constantly is why I gave up on social media. I'm much more at ease without it.

I had to search for the meaning of the acronym, figured I'd post it here for anyone else in the same boat:

Keeping it Real Fake

I'm older than you and I definitely don't want a one stop shop.

Currently I use Facebook to see photos of my extended family, LinkedIn for work & sales, Instagram to keep up with my cooler friends, Twitter to see trending news, StockTwits to see investing ideas...

To me this is the future of social networking: many networks, each with a specialized purpose.

Would you use a personal aggregator that combined feeds from all those networks into one?

No way. :)

I use these services in different contexts.

When I'm relaxing and looking at Instagram, the last thing I want is a business article from LinkedIn or a political diatribe from Facebook.

In fact my primary problem with Facebook is that it tries to be everything to everyone.

Yes, Facebook tries to be everything to everyone. It kinda has to, more or less, for the sheer number of users.

Nilay Patel recently argued that Facebook is the new AOL, it's the portal of the 2010s. I think that is an apt description. I am using it yet also kind of just pining to drop it.

I also use it for groups and messaging. Somehow, Facebook groups are great. They're super simple, and they just work. The newsfeed on the other hand is completely broken.

Not OP, but no. I would never use an aggregator. I really don't want to view any of those services at the same time. They are all very different and require viewing at different times/different states of mind.

I am the aggregator.

And I like it when it's tedious.

Yes, I would as long as it's a natural river in chronological order.

Not saying this is what people would want, but what if the aggregator shaped itself depending on what the person was doing, where they were, time of day, etc?

I'm older than you and I definitely don't want a one stop shop.

You might not want one but "our generation" has been building them for some time. It's even Peter Thiel's mantra.

Facebook is also great for events. You can invite people you know even if you don't have their other contact info.

I think you might struggle to 'bring everyone over' to a better group service. Part of the draw of facebook is that is everyone is already 'over'.

While I agree that facebook is frequently used for events, I'd actually argue that it's horrible for events, there's just no other option.

For any given event, about 2/3 of the people will never respond to the invite, of the people who did respond it's a complete tossup who will show up, the stupid "maybe" answer which is essentially the same as not responding at all because it means "almost definitely not, but I technically could show up since I marked maybe". People often invite all their friends which includes everyone they have ever met, people that don't even live in the area or that they are close with anymore. Facebook gives you no intelligence whatsoever on the events, like "here are people you always invite" or "here are people you always invite but who never respond" etc, which would be easy to show and very helpful. There is no way to update people coming to the event on changes or anything other than posting on the event's wall, which most people will not be notified of unless they check facebook all the time, etc. etc. I could go on for so long about how shitty facebook events are, and it truly makes me sad, because really the purpose of these events is just to meet up with and have fun with friends, but the process is so frustrating I feel like it actually prevents this from happening in a lot of cases.

On that note, I am also very passively plotting out working on a better version, so if anyone is reading this and is also frustrated by facebook's crap events feel free to get in touch, hah.

> On that note, I am also very passively plotting out working on a better version, so if anyone is reading this and is also frustrated by facebook's crap events feel free to get in touch, hah.

So am I.

Drop a mail: miguelrochefort@gmail.com

I don't know anyone working in tech that uses facebook. That would be like being an obese fitness instructor, your actions and your knowledge would be at constant conflict. Only explanation would be that these people are either lying or insane (psycho-/sociopath).

... what. Well, I'm in tech, and I use it. Same with my friends and coworkers. I hope you're not suggesting we're all sociopaths.

Facebook is not popular for groups because it does it so well, it's used for grouping because you can safely assume that 98% of your classmates have a Facebook account, know hoe to use it and even check it occasionally.

>> If I don’t get any likes on my Instagram photo or Facebook post within 15 minutes you can sure bet I'll delete it.

> Super interesting take - it's as though they are posting not to show people stuff but to

Just an idea: This is a single individual; basically anecdata. I have a sister who is 44 years old and who does the same thing and has been doing it as long as she's been on the internet (she started by blogging and has deleted hundreds of posts in the same way, in addition to her current FB, Instagram, etc. posts). I do wonder if this could be reduced to psychological typology or self-image though.

> "it's as though they are posting not to show people stuff but to get people's approval for what they are posting"

Which is generally how the average westerner has behaved for generations. They don't acquire and desire clothes, music, books, movies, ideas, hair-styles and gadgets solely based on best personal fit. They acquire and desire based -- very heavily -- on the opinions of those tribes they admire.

(And while teenagers and young-adults are far more susceptible to this sort of "fashion", older folks are far from immune to it.)

I'm 40. Shocking I know. But to all those who think this is just ancient (the younger they are the older that seems) I have only one response: There's nothing you can do to avoid the same fate! Except a premature death, but that would be even worse, right? Hahaha. Anyway.

I have a 21 year old friend, this is how she's using Facebook:

- Accept all friends requests. There are lots because she's cute. - Go through the feed relatively often, liking every single post. - Post stuff, see who likes it. Those friends who don't like her posts are unfriended.

Needless to say, she gets a lot of likes on her posts. It's absurd to do this, of course, but at the same time it's just taking what normal people do, and taking it to its logical extreme.

I am guessing if the Facebook engineers responsible for optimizing the news feed saw this they'd have a heart attack.

>Got it, so make a better group service and bring everyone to that.

You are going to need significant value-add to convince people to bootstrap their identities and social graph all over again. Snapchat did it by piggybacking on "people who have each other's phone numbers." Tumblr did it by not doing it - the social network is deliberately separate, and you have to be much closer to someone for them to tell you their Tumblr URL.

I will never use your service if I have to sign up, confirm my email address, add friends, convince them to sign up and actually check it, etc. Decentralization is the surest way to destroy user experience. Facebook already knows me and everyone I know in real life. Why would I not just use it?

I will never use your service if I have to sign up, confirm my email address, add friends, convince them to sign up and actually check it

Isn't this exactly what snapchat did though - except with a phone number instead of email?

Because it's hard to integrate facebook authorization with a new group app, right?

I think Whatsapp has emerged as the better group service that everyone is using. It's a little too easily brushed aside in this article.

I disagree, none of my friends use WhatsApp and I've never heard them mention it. It's all about group texts or FB chat groups. (I am 23)

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> Only, I've never heard of WhatsApp being used as anything more than an indicator that your SO is cheating on you.

How? I've never heard this. Whatsapp is on your phone like texts.

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Most plans have lots of texts but we needed international, which is an additional fee per month. Cut some off the phone bill and still can text because of it.

Unless you meant they start using it with people other than you...

WhatsApp is mostly used outside the US where SMS usage is too expensive.

Yes. Data is still way too expensive in Mexico:

$1USD = 8mb ($2 MXN = 1 mb)

In context: Daily wage is $4 USD

There was a thread posted here about the new Nokia215. SeverL people mentioned the importance of WhatsApp.

Facebook really should create a whatsapp for System 30+ -- they would dominate that market.

Whatsapp is really important in some markets. Just because you don't know anyone using it doesn't make that less true.

(Also, I use it, so now you do know someone using it!)

Please forgive me, I'm not saying no one used WhatsApp but that people in my age group, with similar socioeconomic status, that I regularly hang out with and talk to don't use it. WhatsApp is great for overseas talk and its ability to run on literally any phone but the vast majority of my friends have iPhones and the ones that don't have higher-end android phones so WhatsApp was never the "only" option for us and we gravitated to other networks.

Also understand that I am FULLY aware that I do not represent my age group nor do I represent even the "average" "young" person. I represent a small demographic but I wanted to give my views from that position.

A phone like the Nokia 215 is made for non-Western, non-first world audiences. With those audiences, WhatsApp is a bit deal. When it comes to US or other Western college campuses, maybe not so much.

I'm just saying, just because people with dumbphones or feature phones are clamoring for WhatsApp doesn't mean that people with smartphones care at all about the service.

WhatsApp I only use for when friends/family are out of the country. GroupMe gets used for any persistent groups, such as "roommates" (I am 22)

GroupMe was awesome when group SMS was shit but it's gotten much better and since everyone is one FB chat that's used more in my circle of friends. I have a few GroupMe conversations but a number have moved to FB Chat and the ones left are just a few holdouts.

Here in europe it is widely used. There might be some difference between what americans use and what europeans use. (She says that kind of in the article)

Actually the author's experience perfectly mirrors mine. International students I meet swear by it; nationals fiddle with it briefly and delete it.

Whatsapp is the primary messaging app for many of my teenage cousins. Most have it as the default message app and is a permanent fixture on their phone home screens and rarely use SMS anymore.

I recommend watching this film: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/generation-like/. It's an updated version of this equally awesome film: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/cool/.

Posting, liking, and commenting are pretty much the only means of interaction on Facebook. (Besides messages, but that's a different thing.) And since there's no "dislike" button, if you get no likes, then you don't know if people really hated it, or thought you were weird for posting it. Removing it is the easiest way to make sure you're not alienating your friends.

I think this type of thinking and the Facebook comments show a larger problem with teens, in that people are posting crap on Facebook more for external validation from everyone to tell themselves they are cool/funny/popular/in the know etc.

I'm 35 and don't post what I'm doing or showing off who I'm with every 30 minutes, and if I occasionally post something and no one comments on it, I don't care and I sure don't delete it out of some kind of embarrassment.

Going to concerts now or looking around in bars everyone is more concerned with telling everyone electronically how cool they are more than anything else and this is the real problem.

Great, another over-30 holding forth on what the "real problem" with teens is. It's really not that different from how people act in person. If you say something in a group conversation and get no reaction, maybe change the subject.

Yes change the subject. That's "leaving the post up"

If instead you immediately demand that everyone forget that you ever mentioned an uncool or not intensely popular thing, that seems more in line with "deleting the comment"

Of course, I'm over 30 so what do I know?

You don't have to make demands, people naturally forget little things said in conversations. Facebook remembers verbatim, in a searchable format. It even pushes your post into other people's "timelines" so you don't know who sees it or when. It's no wonder people get skittish, when Facebook gives them so little control over their content.

No it's not. That's bringing even attention to it. You example is more similar to deleting an unliked post, and then posting "Everyone please forget my last post. Just pretend it never happened."

Deleting a post from Facebook/Instagram/etc doesn't delete it from the memory of the people who did see it. It just prevents more people from seeing it, or those people from seeing it again. So it's almost exactly like making an unpopular statement in conversation, and then abruptly changing the subject.

Great, but I'm not so embarrassed and afraid of what others think that I need to remove it from the world less I become embarrassed (and thus less cool).

Young people now are way too concerned at impressing others and that is nothing new, but now they are able to do it 24/7 and it is an issue. They are not living their lives but have their phones shoved in their face every second vs actually interacting with others.

I am enjoying a few resturants etc enforcing a no phone policy, I wish it would become more prevalent in places where you are supposed to socially interact, with actual, real people in front of you.

Kinda exactly like HN works, very addictive!

It's not necessarily approval, but trying to start a conversation. If something gets no response after a while, it means nobody wants to talk about it so you might as well delete it.

Otherwise it feels like talking to a wall.

> Otherwise it feels like talking to a wall.

And if you do want to do that, then don't worry, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_walls is here to help.

Have you seen Google Plus lately? They just can't call it Google Groups because, well, Google Groups.

https://plus.google.com/communities

"but to get people's approval for what they are posting"

The business reason for multi-billion dollar social media companies is for brands and celebrities to get "likes". The only social sites that don't operate that way, are one dude in his basement sites, not billion dollar sites, where all the useful content is anyway.

Anyway, that business reason is going to rub off on all the participants. IBM isn't going to post everything, they're going to post likable stuff. No surprise IBMs followers have similar habits.

The "liking" feature on FB/Instagram is one of the clearest manifestations of the vanity-seeking behavior that all humans possess.

Here's my longer form take on it: http://www.techdisruptive.com/2014/05/01/vanity-sells/

Hah, you just want to get people to click that link to your article so you can get views and feel good about yourself.

[Cue reply to me saying I'm only replying so that I can see other people pay attention to me and reply to my comment.]

You get an upvote good sir!

Most infuriating thing about Facebook is that the group admin tools are just really, really shit. And it's very difficult to admin an active or, God forbid, controversial group without just being a fascist about it. I'm not saying that increasing social drama to increase page views was a design goal, but it does seem to be the result.

> so make a better group service and bring everyone to that.

Email? Works like a charm for my friends, and no vendor lock-in.

These are mostly phone apps, so to launch the app that wants their attention, they just click the notification. Doesn't matter much at all which app, or where the icon is on their screen, since it's just the one place that launches everything.

> it's as though they are posting not to show people stuff but to get people's approval for what they are posting.

I don't think it's as simple as "please like me/please approve of this" but there's also a component of "Oh, you don't like this -- I won't bother anyone else with it, sorry about that!"

many have nailed this on the head. It’s dead to us.

The next few paragraphs then go on to describe Facebook as essential social plumbing. I think an FB product manager would be delighted to hear that Facebook is "dead" in this way.

This is precisely why the most successful social network of its generation was built, first and foremost, to be a platform rather than a cocktail party.

I think that Facebook's NewsFeed is the biggest mess and the over-algorithmization just killed that product. People don't want to have fancy algorithms sorting their lives. Rather have people decide what they want to see. They aren't geeks like we are. I'm usually delighted when I see heat map and sorting alg based on heatmaps and heavy machine learning. But these kids? They don't care that you have there 2k developers sitting and optimizing news feed. Once you have there an ad and you start "hidding" content, you are done. Ironically, I think that it's the over-thinking of NewsFeed what set FB to this position. The worst on this is, that the guys from Twitter are doing the exact same mistake.

Simple simple simple, simplicity is the key for teens. You see these examples all around - Snapchat & Instagram & YikYak - these are all simple services. I bet you once Instagram starts introducing "smart" sorting of feed, they will be abandoned by teens in a instance.

Spot on. FB news feed is completely broken, and the only reason is that they're constantly tinkering with it - I guess to optimize for views, for staying time, for click throughs - whatever it is.

They need to show posts from people I follow in the order they were posted.

To prove the point, that's exactly how Facebook groups works. And I totally agree with the author that Facebook groups is great, certainly better than other ways of organizing groups.

So were Yahoo and AOL. If specialized apps start to show up, people may start ditching FB altogether.

Not too sure about that. All of my friends (I'm 23) have FB and while we all more or less hate it we wouldn't dream of not being on FB. It's the best way to connect with someone you meet (through friends, at a bar, etc) and you don't have to ask for a number. Just friend request, chat a little bit and if it works out swap numbers and move to SMS.

Like your parent said I see FB as "essential social plumbing", not the most glamorous or best but a necessity and way to connect to people before you go "off FB" to another app or SMS to chat/interact. The only reason I "post" to FB is b/c my Twitter posts to FB. I rarely use Twitter except from trying to get companies attention after having them ignore support requests or not having any other support at all. Multiple times I've used a websites/app's built in ticketing system only to get no response. A pissed tweet a couple days later and I've got a response within the hour... The squeaky wheel...

> we wouldn't dream of not being on FB

And 10 years ago I wouldn't dream of not having my ICQ friends. Your dreams are not the /most/ relevant.

And just because it's happened in the past does not guarantee that it will happen again. People have been predicting the downfall of Facebook for years, but it keeps growing.

It will, I can think of a ton of services I've used in the past that one day you just stop logging on. You don't even remember the last day of using them, just one day you stop. Then slowly everyone stops. (E.g., AOL, AIM, Geocities, IRC^, MySpace, and most recently Path & Instagram).

I assume the same will happen in my life for Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, etc. One day I will just stop.

^I use IRC for dev stuff now, but there was a good 5 years where it was no longer a part of my life. I was a gamer who played CS in the early 2000s.

Obviously nothing stays around forever. But there is a big difference between a trendy app that everyone uses for a couple years and then stops, and Facebook, which many people don't use on a daily basis but still keep it around because its usefulness outweighs the effort required to keep your account. I have friends who have deleted their Facebook accounts, only to come back a month later with a very basic account just because they need to keep in touch with some circle of friends that they otherwise wouldn't be able to.

Not at all obvious to the investors who value these companies at tens and hundreds of billions of dollars. They don't expect them to dissapear in 5-10 years

Seeing as how Facebook has been around for over 10 years now, I don't see how that's relevant in this case.

Reddit? Perish the thought :-)

I am not talking about the future, I'm talking about right now, at this moment. I can't predict the future but I can give my view point from this point in time and that's what I've done. I'm sorry that's not good enough for you.

Your reply was in reference to the future, so it's logical for a reader to assume that's what you were talking about.

> If specialized apps start to show up, people may start ditching FB altogether.

He mentions exactly that in the article. A lot of 10-16 year olds he knows don't even have FB accounts.

10-16 year olds also live with their parents and often "hate" them. Now that more adults are there, it's not as natural to get on Facebook as a teenager/pre-teen.

Will they join later when they move out and seek ways to stay connected with family? Who knows - but I can definitely see why they're not there yet. I'm older, but the only reason I joined Facebook was to have a way to keep in touch with family once I moved 2000 miles away to California.

You can be sure Facebook will acquire any threatening social networks.

Except Snapchat which refused acquisition so far

Probably because Facebook hasn't offered them enough billions yet. This article and author certainly seems to be promoting Snapchat well though.

Facebook could offer Snapchat 20B and Evan Spiegel wouldn't take it

Yup, just like growing up with roads and water in taps makes those invisible and boring - just part of the background.

What he's saying is that Facebook is a great contacts directory, because everyone is on it. But most of the other features are useless.

(Recently, most of the features of Facebook broke for the combo of Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, Firefox 34, and Ghostery. Messaging and notifications still work most of the time, but many of the other features just stall, probably waiting for some tracker. This turns out to be a feature, not a bug. No ads, no timeline, no crap.)

> many of the other features just stall, probably waiting for some tracker.

Ubuntu adds a Firefox extension for integrating some web sites into the desktop. It's incredibly buggy and, IME, frequently breaks on Facebook. Try disabling the extension in Firefox.

Here's another teenager's view on social media.

I don't have an account for any of these, and I don't want one. I have, let's see, HN, GitHub, and Stack Exchange. Those accounts are my online identity, which I make sure is separate from my real identity. If you want to contact me, you can email me, or if you know me in real life, you can text me. I don't feel smug about not having those accounts, but I'm not embarrassed either. Maybe it's just because I don't socialize with the "normal" people my age, or something else, but more people than you might expect understand when I say I don't have an account. I don't want them because they would be more of a time suck than the Internet already is, and no one really has trouble finding me.

I mean, you sound like a pretty typical hacker kid... which is to say, not a typical kid that people care about when discussing things like market share or teen trends.

I am the same age as the OP but also have different experiences. I've never used Instagram, and frankly don't see the point in people posting useless pictures of themselves or showing friends what they are eating now. It makes me sick when I see people smiling for their smartphones and then desperately refreshing the page/app in hope of satisfaction in the form of likes. This summarizes that perfectly: "If I don’t get any likes on my Instagram photo or Facebook post within 15 minutes you can sure bet I'll delete it." This also makes it clear to me that those social platforms are not about sharing your life with others, they are about validation and a need to be seen/recognized. Even using Snapchat, which apparently has no likes or comments, does not make sense to me then. If you use Snapchat to post pictures about how bored you are, why bother in the first place. Find something interesting to do and be done with it. There are so many important and much more valuable things that one can do than to waste time on social platforms. One thing did make me smile, though: "I only know a handful of people (myself included) that believe Snapchat does delete your photos.". Of course they delete them. It's not as if those pictures had some kind of value, right? Also: "[...] when photos are “leaked” or when there’s controversy about security on the app, we honestly do not really care.". That's the right attitude. Don't care what happens to your data and you might as well find yourself in Airstrip One some day.

20/m/europe

>In short, many have nailed this on the head. It’s dead to us. Facebook is something we all got in middle school because it was cool but now is seen as an awkward family dinner party we can't really leave.

What?

>Snapchat is where we can really be ourselves while being attached to our social identity. Without the constant social pressure of a follower count or Facebook friends, I am not constantly having these random people shoved in front of me. Instead, Snapchat is a somewhat intimate network of friends who I don't care if they see me at a party having fun.

I use snapchat to send funny images of myself to my girlfriend

>WhatsApp- You download it when you go abroad, you use it there for a bit before going back to iMessage and Facebook Messenger, you delete it. I know tons of people who use it to communicate with friends they made abroad, but I feel like Messenger is beginning to overshadow it. For international students, however, WhatsApp is a pivotal tool that I’ve heard is truly useful.

Back here we use WhatsApp exclusively almost, fb messenger when we must

>Tumblr is like a secret society that everyone is in, but no one talks about. Tumblr is where you are your true self and surround yourself (through who you follow) with people who have similar interests.

To me, tumblr is a place where hipsters post images from the internet, back on the internet

edit: added location, might be very relevant

>> Snapchat is where we can really be ourselves while being attached to our social identity. Without the constant social pressure of a follower count or Facebook friends, I am not constantly having these random people shoved in front of me. Instead, Snapchat is a somewhat intimate network of friends who I don't care if they see me at a party having fun.

> I use snapchat to send funny images of myself to my girlfriend

This exchange reminds me of a page from Phil Kaplan's excellent book of failures from the first dot-com boom (http://www.amazon.com/Fd-Companies-Spectacular-Dot-com-Flame...)

The first paragraph was a long, flowery quote from the "about us" page of a failed wine delivery service that went on and on about how they delivered only the finest wines hand-wrapped in crisp white napkins by elite French sommeliers, etc.

The second paragraph, his commentary, was: "I chug wine."

WhatsApp has far fewer users in North America than every other region of the world. It's not surprising that an American teenager studying at an American college would have no use for it.

http://www.marketingprofs.com/charts/2014/24497/whatsapp-by-...

I now know quite a few whatsapp users put I was patient zero for the local epidemic - and I only noticed its existence because a friend of mine from .sg introduced me to it.

(disclaimer: am in UK, am 31, don't have a lawn)

>>In short, many have nailed this on the head. It’s dead to us. Facebook is something we all got in middle school because it was cool but now is seen as an awkward family dinner party we can't really leave.

>What?

The author is talking about how their grandma is on fb now and on their friendlist. They don't feel as comfortable posting certain content there.

This article is slanted in favor of Snapchat.

You can be the real you, only on Snapchat!

"Snapchat isn't like that at all and really focuses on creating the Story of a day in your life, not some filtered/altered/handpicked highlight. It’s the real you."

24/m here.

Snapchat has really taken over social communication in my group of friends. It's the number one way to stay in touch on a daily basis. I went from texting 4-5k messages a month, to less than a thousand.

If I'm walking down the street and see something I want to share, I'm not gonna post it on Facebook or Instagram because it isn't important enough and you are opening yourself up to be judged by hundreds, if not, thousands of people. Whereas with Snapchat, I can quickly take the pic, add a dumb caption, and send it to a select few people that I think might be entertained by it. Those people can then can either ignore it, or respond with their reaction or whatever. There is no pressure. No likes. It doesn't stick around for more than 10 seconds. Personally, I think they've done a great job with Snapchat. It does what it needs to do very well. Nothing less, nothing more.

Can someone explain to me why adding ephemeral messaging to FB, Instagram, etc. hasn't been done? If Snapchat is really getting so much traction because of one trivial feature, it seems obvious to offer that same feature.

My only interaction with these platforms is having done some work against their (rather poor) APIs, so I may be missing something terribly obvious.

Instagram tried to do it with direct messages, but it didn't take off. This reaffirms my opinion that you can't have a single app that does everything. A couple reasons this may be true, especially in Snapchat's case:

1. Snapchat's whole UI is based around this single feature. Its reason for existence is this feature alone, so they are able to commit way more time and focus on getting this one thing right. As soon as you open the app the first you see are your snaps. Swipe left for the camera, and left again for the contacts. Super simple. Very fast to navigate.

2. Snapchat is semi-anonymous. You can set your Instagram profile to private, but it's still not the same as having an app based around short-lived pics / messages that aren't tied to your online identity.

3. Instagram = Good photos. Vine = Good videos. Facebook = Staying in touch. LinkedIn = Career stuff. Snapchat = Random things you want to share with friends. Changing people's perception of your app is hard, if not impossible (in some cases). Just like Instagram's video feature didn't replace Vine (just distracted people from Vine, and ruined Instagrams clutter free feed), Instagram's direct feature won't replace Snapchat. Having different apps for different uses, even if purely psychological, helps people separate their social lives.

Just a guess, but I'm in my thirties with a family. I use Twitter and Instagram. I like that Instagram is keeping a trail of moments that I want to keep and return to - photos of my children, etc. I'm also likely to have more discretionary income than a teenager and to perhaps be more useful to advertisers driving money in to social networks. Maybe Facebook's changes and direction are judged only on the financial return and if each change is boosting that, then so be it.

Pretty much nailed it on the head:

If I could break down a party for you in social media terms, here’s how it would pan out:

* On Snapchat, you post you getting ready for the party, going to the party, having fun at the party, the end of the party, and the morning after the party.

* On Facebook you post the cute, posed pictures you took with your friends at the party with a few candids (definitely no alcohol in these photos).

* On Instagram you pick the cutest one of the bunch to post to your network.

I said it then and I'll say it now, FB screwed up when they pivoted to copy Twitter. FB was fun when it was more private. Zuck should've realised that once there was a critical mass of news reports of teens getting in trouble for stupid FB and Twitter posts, teens would dump the service.

Also noteworthy that Google+ didn't even get a mention, even if to mock it.

Are there people who actively use G+? To me it seems to have turned into this weird thing that tries to offer a lot of functionality but doesn't really make it clear what it actually is. It was supposed to be a social network and now it's Google's "social layer" - whatever that may mean. I personally don't even know anyone who would describe G+ as relevant.

The only reason why I "use" G+ is for photos - and that's only because Google got rid of all the Picasa albums. But the interface is so horrible I can't believe it's actually made by google. Once you got to photos it opens the most recent album by default(why??) and the option to switch to albums view is not where you would expect it(on the 3-stripe option icon that every other product got us used to), but instead it's hidden away. It makes absolutely no sense and I hate using it as a product. The only reason why I have to visit it occasionally is that Picassa(the actual tool) is fantastic for backing up and managing pictures.

G+ is where you go to talk with people who work at Google, and people who know a lot of people who work at Google.

This actually makes it relevant for me, but sure, it's not relevant for most people.

I think "social layer" means it's supposed to be integrated into every Google service. Google wanted everything they offered to be a single unified G+ experience that would dwarf Facebook. Which of course worked out brilliantly for them, especially on Youtube.

The Linux community uses it heavily.

I remember reading something similar from a Korean kid 10 years ago, she said "email is for older people". I wonder if this kid uses email? The only time I see something Google+ related is occasional notifications on my gmail interface.

It's 50/50 that I even have my friends email addresses. Facebook messaging covers 99% of the need.

But, don't you need an email address to sign up to these sites in the first place?

Some allow you to register with an SMS token and some with an FB account.

Yes, but that doesn't mean one has shared that email address with one's friends or vice versa.

People have email addresses to sign up. Once signed up, the social connections are made on the platform.

People's take on Twitter is always fascinating.

I didn't really get it at all either, until I followed people relevant to my interests. Now I can't live without it - it's an amazing source of material.

Not sure if that translates to industries outside of tech or not. It's both a source of learning and revenue. Having an audience on twitter literally™ makes me money on eBook sales and other things I do. It's a great place for "organic targeted marketing", so to speak.

Piggybacking off bcRIPster (now down voted) post, I'd be curious to know the race of the teen author and if the preferences he observed are the same across others with different ethnic and racial background. Among my 30-something and 40-something circle I've noticed that most of my white and Asian friends tend to utilize Facebook more while most of my black friends tend to use Twitter more. Instagram seems more evenly split.

This is only anecdotal of course, but I taught in a 99% African-American public high school and it seemed like most students were on Twitter. Most of those former students are obsessed with Snapchat now -- I do get a lot of the "I'm so bored" messages from them via My Story. I guess when you have to opt-in to see someone's Story it doesn't feel like you're spamming someone if you post a bunch -- your friends control the spigot.

If you look at the end of the article there is a short bio and his photo. He's a blond, white boy who's the spitting image of a young Mark Zuckerberg. To the "separated at birth" level of looking like him. Kinda freaky. :)

I have never felt so old reading a post :D

What I find interesting is the stark contrast to people's predictions from years ago. I can recall the speculation about how in a world of facebook our lives will be documented forever, and the problems that will cause. That very real concern seems to not only have been well received, but they seem to be taking precautions. Unexpected, but very encouraging!

Feeling old too. I do_not_get the need to post the highlights of your day throughout the day. It reeks of narcissism. I feel sorry for them, in my oldness.

I'm a 37 year old Instagram user. I like seeing what my friends and family are up to. Restaurants they've been to and enjoyed, things they've seen, activities with their kids, etc. I reciprocate and it gives me my own history to look back over, which I like too.

What's sad about that?

What makes it different from normal narcissism is that it is /mutual/ narcissism. Nobody would post the highlights of their day throughout the day unless there was the potential for others to respond positively to it and give you social gratification.

Disclaimer: 19 y/o who uses only Snapchat, and that perhaps four or five times a week max.

Well, lets put it this way, you never told your group of friends while in school about something cool that happened and would make you look good? Many social media interactions are that type of chatter, nothing more, but over a different medium than speech.

Sure I do that. But not a dozen (actually mundane) things daily, like the teen's "I'm about to go to this cool party". Among my friends we might mention the highlight of the week by email.

I'm curious if this demographic will outgrow that need.

And just how did you come to that conclusion when he specifically said he doesn't care if someone like Snapchat keeps his photos forever?!? Will he care when his photos start showing up in advertisements? Will he care when a prospective employer with a data sharing agreement with Snapchat's future owner accesses his document/activity history and he can't get a job?

Sigh.

I'll hazard a guess that the prospective employer (if looking at other potentials in the same demographic) will need to turn a blind eye if they want to hire anyone at all. They'll all have something stupid on there. I'm curious to see what happens when my generation starts running for office.

Given that we've seemed to reach a stage where most US politicians seem to match the profile of what one would clinically call a sociopath, I'm going to hazard a guess that they will not really care.

He's probably hoping Snapchat is his future employer, based on this article and past tweets....

They don't care, because they're operating under the assumption that it's true. According to his account, they're not putting their most private photos there—they assume that anything they post may be made public in the future.

I'm feeling like we read different articles. I never once got that concept that he was somehow protecting his privacy. He just stated that his perceptions were that some sites were more private than others. I get the feeling that his friends are still posting compromising content online, they just don't think they're be accountable for it.

From the article:

While I will save that debate for another day, it is safe to say that when photos are “leaked” or when there’s controversy about security on the app, we honestly do not really care. We aren't sending pictures of our Social Security Cards here, we're sending selfies and photos with us having 5 chins.

And I'm still not seeing it. All he's done is equated privacy with things like social security numbers. He's also indicated that he's taking privacy statements from these companies at face value. Privacy is way more than that. Him and his friends just haven't been burned yet by mismanaging their online personas.

> In this part Facebook shines- groups do not have the same complicated algorithms behind them that the Newsfeed does. It is very easy to just see the new information posted on the group without having to sift through tons of posts and advertising you don't really care about.

That part resonates with me, and I'm not young. I was an early Facebook user (2003-2004 when I was a college freshman) way before the news feed existed, and way before it starting "algorithmically" filtering and sorting. I've always hated it.

Facebook wasn't even founded until February 2004, and at that time it was limited to only Harvard University. https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=when+was+facebook+creat...

The content on Instagram is usually a higher quality. People take time to edit their photos with filters, different brightness/contrast settings, etc. ... This means the content on Instagram is normally “better” (photo-wise)

That's the OP's personal experience of course, mine is sort of the opposite: facebook has all sorts of crappy pictures, instagram has those as well but made even worse by having applied all kinds of filters most of which appeal ugly to me. Tumblr on the other hand I consider as a source for decent/pro material (as in, actually beautiful pictures taken with proper cameras). Maybe all this is because of who I'm following though.

For another single data point I asked my 15 year old son a few months back about what social media platforms he uses and was rather surprised to have him answer "Facebook is for old people" - which probably means over 20.

What else did he say?

Some evasive mutterings about Snapchat.

Really interesting views on people disliking but still using Facebook. I was walking around my college's campus a few years ago and overheard a girl saying "well, he doesn't have a facebook, so thats kind of a huge red flag to me. I dont think I'm going to keep talking to him" Funny what an animal social media has become...

Am I in the minority by thinking a 19 year old college student is not what people think of when they hear "teens?"

I felt the same way but his take seems pretty spot on for me, in Chicago all college students use yik yak and groupme when I mention whatsapp they don't understand why I'd want to use it over text or groupme.

Okay, I'm 22, that's not much older than this guy. I know a lot of 18 and 19 year olds. How does it look to me?

Facebook: most people use this primarily, but about 1 in 5 people does not because they object to pervasive surveillance/got frustrated by the newsfeed reordering/dislike Zuckerburg personally/are just asocial. Facebook Messenger is the main way of communicating with people who have it. You also use it to communicate with people who don't have Facebook Messenger by the indirection of using Facebook Messenger to talk to someone who might have their phone number. Instagram: I know a total of maybe two people that use this at all, and they have their content copying to Facebook which is where most people see it I think. Twitter: Not a lot of people use this, with the curious exception of the Facebook objectors, who mostly use this. Snapchat: I know a few people who use Snapchat but I don't think anyone takes it seriously. Of course that's kind of the point. General assumption is that snapchat users are trading dickpics and just not sharing with the rest of us. Tumblr: A lot of people are tumblr users but in sort of a "guilty pleasure" way, you don't discuss it with people you're trying to win the respect of. Perception is that it's mostly [furry]porn and SJWs. Admittedly this is roughly correct. Yik Yak: Took the campus by storm. Most people use it exclusively to either complain about faculty, ineffectively try to find a date, or to make fun of the former two. Openly mocked, but in the way that makes other people install the app just to see what's being joked about, so I guess that's a social strategy. Medium: Maybe a handful of CS majors even know what it is.

Yeah, I go to a small engineering school and my social group is primarily in CS. I'm sure this impacts my experience a lot. This is exactly my point: I think social media/application/etc usage is far too specific to social groups, institutions, and even geographical areas for it to be remotely useful to work off of anecdotes. Here Facebook is absolutely king, but I can imagine a "trendier" population (not Engineering students) might have a certain ire for it. I think Instagram isn't widely used just for lack of having achieved critical mass in this particular student body, there may (and probably will) come a day when that changes.

This is probably part of why "what teens are into" reporting seems so ridiculous. It's based on a shallow look at one group of people, and behavior varies far too much between groups. Broad statistical data would be far more useful for marketing purposes, but the results would still ring hollow for many specific peer groups.

Not surprised insta isn't popular among your engineering group. It's like twitter but for photos.. it's very visual-based. a lot of artists and celebs are on it.

also seems to be the home of pretty girls posting selfies and getting validation from that.

it's like a cooler, more upscale version of facebook. Insta is hugely popular from what I'm seeing

"Facebook is dead to us but we use it for X,Y, and Z." I found this kinda funny. Obviously it's not dead to you if you use it for a variety of purposes. Seems like friends I have with teenage kids are mostly on Facebook. Now it may not be their primary outlet. But "dead" seems to be a bit of an exaggeration.

"its dead to us (as a means of expressing ourselves)" is how I read that particular quote, and it certainly resonates with me as a twenty something male. I'm sure it's even more true for younger people. It's necessary because of how ubiquitous it is but I'm not sure that (in the context of social media) is necessarily good news for Facebook.

I wonder if the teens who favour Instagram and Snapchat today will nevertheless age into people who get more out of Facebook as they get older.

When you're young, most of the people you know and think about are still right there around you and you see them almost every day. You haven't left too many people behind yet. But that changes quickly over time and an increasing proportion of the people you know and care about, the ones you met at a particular place and time in your life, are no longer close by. Being able to keep in touch with those people's comings and goings and relationships and family lives to the (relative) depth afforded by Facebook probably becomes more attractive and more valuable.

So although Facebook may be losing its original stomping ground to simpler, more targeted alternatives, perhaps both Facebook and its active user base are maturing together.

> I only know a handful of people (myself included) that believe Snapchat does delete your photos. Everyone else I know believes that Snapchat has some secret database somewhere with all of your photos on it.

It takes a special kind of stupid to even consider the idea that the photos are _really_ deleted.

Well, then I guess you're calling a majority of the population (including doctors, lawyers, artist, musicians, etc) "stupid".

What you really mean is someone who doesn't understand how technology (and tech companies) work.

This could easily be mitigated if we enforced privacy laws saying that if you tell someone something is deleted, then it must actually be securely deleted. They might even be on the books already, just enforce them.

If something goes online, it stays online. Proxies, long term caches, archives, you name it. Relying on privacy laws of secure deletion would be the same mistake.

Delete buttons should really be labelled as "hide stuff from everybody except us."

First of all, my comment was meant in the context of the article which is the use of technology by _teenagers_, not the general part of the population. And even so, yes people should know better, privacy has a big place in the public debate nowdays.

When I heard 'teenager' I was thinking 13/14. Like a middle school or young high schooler, not a college freshman.

Why is everyone seemingly falling over themselves in a rush to discredit this guy?

Most people on here refuse to incorporate any non-objective knowledge into their world view. An anecdotal article like this causes malfunction.

He uses facebook as a directory service occasionally, the same way us "old people" use linkedin.

Observationally my kids are a little younger than him and facebook is dead to them. My wife is still addicted. They used to complain about family tagging them in pix (especially embarrassing-ish such as anything from when they were little) and now they don't even care, nobody uses it.

"Not too many people talk about it." - thats not pinterest, thats reddit and 4chan. Everyone is on baconreader and clover, and just like fight club, rule one is no one talks about fight club (or 4chan or reddit).

17/M/Argentina

I'm not really into Social Networks, I guess you can tell by the fact that I'm on HackerNews. However I can provide some insight in what's the panorama in the other half of the world.

Facebook is still king, everyone uses it, everyone has it. I use it exclusively for groups (school group, friends group) since it's easy to post questions or info in there and make sure everyone reads it. I also use it to chat with people (although via Pidgin, I barely go to facebook.com). I do see however a huge ammount of traffic in my feed. So I guess it's not going anytime soon.

Whatsapp is hugely popular. Everyone uses it, even for work related stuff. I'm not sure why it's not as popular in the US/Europe (I guess because of iMessage?) But calls/SMS are barely a thing, everything is Whatsapp now. Sadly, I'm not a big fan of it, it's great for sending quick messages and talk something in a group, but people here use it for everything which means I have to get my hands off the keyboard and type in a tiny touch screen to talk with someone. You usually get randomly added to Whatsapp groups too, where you get invited to parties and stuff like that, I'm not a big fan of this either, since it's really easy to miss a message. However, I reckon my social life has improved considerably since I got Whatsapp because of all the invites I get now.

Twitter has gotten very big lately too, I started using Twitter about 3 years ago, and I mostly use it to follow tech people and get news, probably the same way most of you use it. However, my friends use it as some kind of Facebook. They tweet everything they are doing, and they also maintain conversations using it. I think this is silly, I don't know why they do it, you can know everything about someone by just reading his Twitter feed.

Instagram is not huge but it's catching up. It's mostly used by girls and hipster/cool/popular guys (not sure how to describe them). I never go there and I really don't care.

Snapchat/Tumblr/YikYak are not even thing, heck, I don't even know what YikYak is supposed to be.

I wish more people would start using IRC, but well, I guess that's not happening.

I wonder if I'd have a Facebook if I was a teenager today.

It's hard enough not having one now, and even though I was never one to give in to social pressure, I wonder if it would be simply unbearable.

I went through college without a Facebook, but I made one shortly after graduating and I've been using it more and more (about 3 years).

I now realize that in retrospect it was a huge mistake as I missed out on a lot. I think on a certain level, if you don't have a FB, people won't make the extra effort to try and contact you. Its most important social function is turning acquaintances into friends

So just as a PSA, please please use Facebook. Even if you don't like it and you think they're a horrible company, you won't appreciate how much you're hurting yourself till it's too late

I never had a FB account. I'm 39 and married. Exactly what am I missing out on?

I use email and text message for most correspondence, and have LinkedIn mainly as a virtual Rolodex so I can get in touch with old friends and colleagues.

I don't get what I'm missing. Maybe I'm just in the wrong demographic?

I made an account back when it was popular, and used it hard for about six months, then evaluated if it did anything for me. Answer, no, so deleted.

The kids had a fad of facebook about a year ago, they guilt tripped me into rejoining, they used it hard for a couple months, now its dead. It was weird because all the people who used to use FB, stopped. Its very quiet...

I'm 37 and married, also never used Facebook. I think the difference is that we probably have established social circles and can also get drawn into more via a partner who may use Facebook.

I think OP is referencing going through high school and tertiary study without Facebook and I can see their point.

22/m/europe here

- Facebook

Everyone uses it and there is peer pressure for you to have it. Everyone talks about deleting their account but never does. I rarely use the website or the app but I use Messenger everyday to talk with foreign friends (mostly in the US)

- Twitter

Used to have an account a few years ago, but it just wasn't my thing. Extremely popular though its ux seems to have dropped a lot

- Snapchat

Not really a thing, most people I know barely know it exists. Used it for a while a year ago but it was a fad for me.

- Tumblr

Not really a thing anymore for me, but it seems to be really popular for people between 12-16

- Instagram

I might be the minority here but I mainly use it for photography. Has replaced Flickr and Tumblr for me

- Whatsapp

#1. SMS charges were too expensive until a few years ago so it exploded (I think we are the biggest market in europe now, so you might guess where I'm from). Biggest downside is the lack of group control, you can get added to any group without your permission and it is 'poor form' to leave. I have a couple of them on mute and rarely read them.

- Telegram

Seems to be gaining some use since Whatsapp got acquired by Facebook though I personally don't use it. Seems redundant to have two IM apps when everyone is on Whatsapp anyway

Models most of my use, however I like WhatsApp a lot. I used it when I still had a Windows Phone (iPhone 6 now) and I needed a better messaging app that went over the web than facebook because I had horrible service on campus. It's a very capable, simple, reliable (or used to be anyways), and feature filled messaging app which I wish more people used. iMessage does most of what WhatsApp does though for talking to iOS users and it has a desktop app so I use that more now.

I almost refuse to use facebook except to share select photos/videos privately (only me + tagged people) and message people who I haven't talked to in a while. Groups are usually never useful and I use other things.

Twitter is great, tumblr is good but not for me, snapchat isn't for me (too obvious you're taking a photo of your self), and instagram still makes me feel the facebook "it'll never die on the internet once uploaded" scary feeling.

Many of those younger than me (10–16 years old) who I've talked to about this matter don’t even have a Facebook — Instagram is all that they need.

As a 15 year I totally agree, but Hacker News is one my favorites site because I just love discovering new things on the web(That's the only reason I visit HN)

Also Facebook simply "Stinks"

While an interesting article I'd take it with a grain of salt and not try to make generalizations about others' social media use.

The author seems like he's on the high end of social media use.

As a 22 year old male I check Facebook occasionally to see what my friends and family who live in different areas are doing, and that's about it.

I'm amazed how many people here say "everyone is on facebook". Edit: Maybe it's like that because you've molded your social circles to fit those of your own socioeconomic status?

From my closest 20 friends (all of them I've known for 5+ years), 7 use facebook, most of them use IRC and the rest are on WhatsApp. I've never made any new friends through facebook, as a matter of fact, the posts made by people on facebook push them further away from me, because I'm a cynical bastard and their shameless self-promotion is disgusting to me and I see through their bullshit.

To me, facebook always seemed like a public display window of your life, to show off those old high school classmates that nowadays you live in the cool downtown hipster district and you've gotten laid. Nothing to do with actual friendships or socializing.

24/m/finland

> "Another point: tagging. I don't have to constantly check Instagram to make sure I wasn't tagged in any awkward or bad photos. That’s because you can't see them on my profile, making the whole experience seem way more private."

The fourth tab on every Instagram profile allows you to see just this...

That's true. They do give you more control than Facebook though. More privacy settings, and restrictions on who can tag.

https://help.instagram.com/186952328121982/

Is NOT sharing even an option with a dozen social networks to chose from?

I wrote a response to bring up some important questions that Andrew's article brought up.

https://medium.com/@sozh/the-sunset-question-1855a3ed80d

As a slightly younger teen (17), I have a completely different view of Twitter. I'm not sure if it's unique to my specific area, but quite a significant number of the people around me are on Twitter and use it to communicate funny things they see, or just share opinions (I guess the author approaches this with "complain/express yourself"). To me, I go on twitter to see what people are saying about any given event, especially sporting events. At other times, I will find memes or jokes or just anything that is somewhat funny. Overall, the three groups that Andrew brings up aren't really complete.

To be fair he did say these were all just anecdotes. He just phrased the descriptions in a way that seems "matter of fact" and everyone seems to be taking that and running with it.

For example, as someone else in here mentioned, this is more like "A North American Teenager's View of Social Media".

I bet he hasn't even heard of QQ, which has over 1 billion users. His lack of understanding of WhatsApp says a lot because as someone else mentioned WhatsApp has the least penetration in North America, but everywhere else it's the lifeblood of online social interactions.

> WhatsApp- You download it when you go abroad, you use it there for a bit before going back to iMessage and Facebook Messenger, you delete it. I know tons of people who use it to communicate with friends they made abroad, but I feel like Messenger is beginning to overshadow it. For international students, however, WhatsApp is a pivotal tool that I’ve heard is truly useful.

Perhaps the title should have been 'A North American Teenager's view of Social Media'

Edit: Minor re-wording

Fair, but probably true for predominantly all articles posted on HackerNews. Especially in the startup culture, I feel it's pretty much assumed.

I really don't like these "Teenager's view of social media' type posts. All of them make the mistake that teens only have time for two or three apps and that the teen demographic is very homogenous. I get a little disappointed when a post like this then gets reported as the demise of Facebook, because that's not really an accurate observation.

Looks like I better write a response post.

I'm 30 and I use GChat/Google Talk/Hangouts (they're all the same thing) all the time. So does almost everyone I know. Haven't seen it mentioned here.

We don't really care if that data gets exposed to/by the NSA. It's mostly like "I'm off today whats up" or "Want to hit the bar after work?" type stuff.

In Germany I got the feeling that most younger people rather use WhatsApp for its group functionality, than Facebook.

> "I have yet to ever hear of a hot post on Secret that everyone’s talking about"

I get the feeling Secret's redesign strategy is just being Yik-Yak for the post-college crowd. I'd imagine the location data is more valuable/marketable for working people in big metro areas than incomeless students.

>The only time I ever hear this application is for the joke, “Aye you got Kik?”, normally seen as someone trying to “spit game” to attract a partner. It’s really difficult for me to describe it here but it isn't super relevant.

This paragraph is mystifying. Can someone explain what he's talking about here?

The only time the author hears about Kik is in the quoted joke. In the joke, the admirer asks the object of their affection if they are a user of Kik, rather than asking directly for their contact information. Kik is really difficult for the author to describe on Medium. Luckily, Kik isn't super relevant to the author.

I wonder how the usage progresses as you age. What's important at 15,20,25, and beyond are different. Not different demographics but the same people as they age through the different demographics. In other words how consistent would the diffeent media options change with time....

Another anecdote for file: I spoke with an early-twenty business student, also studying in Texas. Snapchat and GroupMe were their preferred chat programs.

I personally prefer WeChat for its Group Voice chat. This was developed in Shenzhen; Mandarin is notably tonal so voice is a selling point.

I can see why group service is popular among teenage crowd these days. One of my friends who is in school has college wide fb group to ask questions about classes, etc. I have seen her mostly being active in groups when logged into fb.

My response:

A 1980 Teenager's View on Social Media https://medium.com/@brianstorms/a-1980-teenagers-view-of-soc...

This is actually a really refreshing post. I have to give Yik Yak another try. Secret didn’t do much for me. But its always important and interesting for peeps to see what’s going on, even if we’re getting old :)

It is interesting to see that for example in Germany WhatsApp is really the most important chat and group discussion instrument -- ahead of all other messengers. I wonder where this difference comes from...?

For teenagers in Europe, WhatsApp is #1. As FB is used by their parents and grandparents, it got uncool.

But recently Snapchat is heading to get #1 as now their parents are using WhatsApp too.

The same happened with MySpace. FB is like the late MySpace, everyone is on it, mainly some late adopters still regularly post new baby & cat pics - the difference is FB might be too big to fail, and can innovate or buy new services (Instagram, WhatsApp).

Wow, this is the truth! I hope the product guys at these places are reading.

I'm surprised that with all those less popular social networks listed, Google+ was not. I'm pretty sure Google+ has a higher user 'population' than YikYak, WhatsApp, GroupMe, etc.

WhatsApp has over 700 million users and I'd bet a much higher percentage of active users than G+ (although that is just a guess).

I have not even heard of the others though until now.

The Twitter point doesn't make much sense.

As a senior in high school, I see nearly everyone having a twitter account and using it pretty often. It's pretty popular.

Reading this article makes me feel old. I'm just on my twenties and the only service mentioned in that article in which I have an account is WhatsApp.

Just tried Yik Yak after reading this. In SF's FiDi, appears to be mostly dudes looking for gay hookups. Am I doing it wrong?

It just takes posts from 10 miles around your location. If you are in a location with primarily homosexual population, I'd imagine you'd get mostly posts like you did.

I live near a university, so all I see is drinking, smoking, classes, roommate drama, and hookups.

SF doesn't have a "primarily" gay population. It might be higher than other cities on average, but it's by no means the majority and certainly not in the financial district.

My guess is here there's isn't much for office workers to be sharing with strangers -- it's kind of a weird premise unless there's some specific city wide event like a parade or a terrorist attack. Thus the next logical reason for (gay male) strangers to interact is to hookup.

Trying a social app because you read about it on HN? Yes, you are definitely doing it wrong.

Just shows how shrewd Zuck was in acquiring Instagram.

This post is exactly in line with what I see my daughter and her peers doing.

I am curious that if they don't write things about them on FB, how could they find out who one is on FB?

An American Teenager's View on Social Media

There, much better now.

A North American Teenager's View on Social Media

Even better. Though I'm sure someone from North America could improve on that title.

FWIW, I thought it was a very well-written piece which outlined some of the subjective pros and cons of various social media. As someone who doesn't spend any time on any of the social network sites and who barely uses a smart-phone, I found it to be quite informative.

Edit: After posting this comment, I used a search for the word "North" and saw that quite a few other commentators had already made the same observation.

American is predominantly used to mean a US national or more generally "a person born, raised, or living in the U.S."

Canadians, who are "North Americans," are predominantly culturally similar to Americans.

Mexicans, who are also "North Americans", are not culturally so similar to Americans.

So your deliberate "confusion" about the word American produced an even sillier result: "A North American (excluding Mexicans) Teenager's View on Social Media"

Fair enough. I tend to consider Mexico as Central America so I was thinking of Canada and the US as North America. For what it's worth, I live on the other side of the Atlantic - and it's been a long time since I did geography in primary school.

While it's an interesting article, I think he's being a bit hyperbolic in translating his local experience out to a generalization.

This isn't simply a 19 year olds experience. It is a white, suburban, middle-class, male attending a conservative university in a culturally regressive state. If nothing else, he's about as radically distant from an urban minority as you could get to the point where I'd imagine it is really impossible for him to have any perspective into other demographics and how they use these tools. I value his opinion, but it's important to take it into context.

Atleast he attempts to hedge his lack of experience in his opening statement.

It is a white, suburban, middle-class, male attending a conservative university in a culturally regressive state.

Which is the demographic that all of the services in question care about (except whatsapp) - which kind of proves the point.

>Which is the demographic that all of the services in question care about (except whatsapp) - which kind of proves the point.

Hahaha, no way that is true man.

Also, bcRIPster, I believe your comments provide a valuable POV, that thing about the demographics, it hadn't ocurred to me. Thanks for posting and don't take the witch-hunt personal, remember that karma is given for people that spend all their time here, they don't reflect the holder's knowledge or politeness. Most of the downvotes here are just another way of saying "I don't like what you say but I'm uncapable of coming with an intelligent response on to why I don't agree with your opinion, hence I'll just downvote you (and absolutely everything else you post afterwards)".

Thank-you... beyond that I just learned from another user that even though I've been using this site for years I have never seen a down vote option, so I always suspected it was a mod activity. Now that I know it's just other users doing it I don't feel so bad. Thanks for the kind words :)

See my post below this one. The numbers don't lie my friend.

I'm going to argue that. Many of these services are targeting a more diverse crowd. If they were only targeting this kids demographic, they would be limiting their growth potential out the door. Especially given that the growing base of users of these tools are international users.

Also, I'm going to argue just against my experience with urban teens living in more diverse communities which doesn't really align with this kids experience.

Agree in principle, disagree in execution. Pretty much any app maker (whatsapp aside) starts with a skewed market: people with smartphones. iOS makers even moreso. These people trend toward being white and middle/upper class. Now you need to narrow to who buys shit on their phones. Again that demographic skews younger. [1] [2]

So right away, if you want a successful smartphone app in the U.S. then you need to target, urban white men between 18-29 with at least some college and 75000+ a year in income.

I think as you say more people should target international etc... but people build toward the problems they have and the language they know. Whatsapp is killing it because they broke out of the mold. So yes, they should for many reasons, but if you just follow the money then who you target looks very homogenous.

[1] http://www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheets/mobile-technology-fac...

[2] http://www.voxburner.com/publications/6766-who-makes-in-app-...

What you say makes sense when you're selling a product. With most of these applications, their potential money making product though is the back-office data they collect on the users themselves which they then sell to brokers or data warehousing services, or provide to targeting advertisement firms. From that stand point you simply want the largest installed user base you can get.

A successful smart phone app based on these metrics is the one with the largest user base. You get that user base by providing a simple to use product that quickly addresses a need for the largest number of people, rich, poor, white, black, etc...

Now, if you're talking about targeted applications like certain types of gaming apps. Or apps that provide an extended retail experience? This is when you talk about focused demographics.

You get that user base by providing a simple to use product that quickly addresses a need for the largest number of people, rich, poor, white, black, etc...

Totally agree here.

A successful smart phone app based on these metrics is the one with the largest user base.

This is where we diverge. An app is only as successful as what it can make money from. Having a billion people use something and they don't generate revenue from it is worthless in the long run - bloated investments not withstanding.

A reliable proven to be profitable user base is what consistently makes money - the facebooks etc... are extreme outliers that got lucky with monetization after growing the userbase are not really cases to be emulated.

I'm not sure of what the divergence you're indicating is. I agree that an app with no monitization is worthless for sure. A bloated app user base where you aren't monetizing your users is a money sink.

Granted there are other cases of revenue models that we may not even be aware of that are in play. For instance Twitter initially was making money off SMS bulk transactions. They would buy SMS network blocks in volume and sale broadcasting blocks to marketers at a markup which was lower than outbound texting rates. There was good money in the margins here for a time. They don't like to talk about it publicly but they still admit that the service was built around a focus on SMS... https://blog.twitter.com/2010/introducing-fast-follow-and-ot...

This is why for a while they also tried like hell to push people to take Tweets over SMS instead of having pulling them from the web via a web browser or other web based client. Smartphones unexpectedly gimped this business model for them.

There are boutique companies today that still are trying to eep out business around this model such as this one... http://www.fabit.com/products/mobile/sms/websms/overview.asp...

...now I'm just rambling...

Ok mods, I'm concerned that I have made some valid criticisms on this article as have others in their comments, yet mine is being down modded into negatives.

I'm left feeling this is immature and punitive for a joke I made on a prior news posting where I complained about the down modding.

Would someone like to explain just how my criticism is so much more severe as to warrant attack over the other criticisms?

> attending a conservative university in a culturally regressive state

I didn't downvote you, but I feel like I could have without any guilt. Have you been to Austin? Or any urban center in Texas? They are probably more conservative than Berkeley, but they're definitely blue areas. Especially Austin. I mean, Houston's mayor is a lesbian! See if you can pick out Dallas, Austin, and Houston on this map:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/be/2004_US_e...

And substance aside, terms like "culturally regressive" are unnecessary and inflammatory. And your post has an overall dismissive attitude of someone who is just expressing himself. He makes it extremely clear that it's just his opinion.

So maybe there is a downvote brigade, but I'm not in it. And they're redundant if you ask me.

I imagine Texas is a lot like Oregon. Super Blue in the cities, and super Red when you drive out. But really it's hard to characterize an entire state, especially the 2nd most populated one in the U.S.

I don't know. Every Texan I've ever known likes to name drop Austin to defend their state to the point where it's like saying they've got a black friend so they can't be racists. Or, they let a gay guy hug them so they're not homophobic.

At some point it starts to make you cross-eyed :P

I'm sorry, I'm know I'm poking this subject with a stick. I hope everyone understands the satire and frustration of my statement.

No. Honestly I haven't been to Austin and I have heard good things about it but I did spend a few years living in the DFW Metroplex area (Arlington and then later in Plano). I have on the other hand have had bad personal experiences with UT graduates being rather full of themselves clueless about the real world. As well as white middle-class 19 year olds thinking they're social media experts because they posted a blog post.

Texas in general has always left a bad taste in my mind and their political and religious exports don't do much to change my opinion.

I always love how Austin get's thrown out as some amazing counter to excuse the rest of the state.

> UT graduates being rather full of themselves clueless about the real world

Sounds like a large portion of graduates from any university.

>As well as white middle-class 19 year olds thinking they're social media experts because they posted a blog post.

From the article: >That being said, I'm not an expert at this by a long shot and I'm sure there will be data that disproves some of the points I make, but this is just what I've noticed.

He clearly states otherwise.

All that proves is that his Journalism instructor told him to be sure to include boilerplate CYA to deflect criticism of his article. If he really felt this way he wouldn't be so declarative of his opinions.

Complaining about downvotes is the surest method of accumulating more. It's an observation I've made over the years, not an indictment of you.

Honestly, I expect it's exactly as you say. It's just got me in a bit of a mood this morning.

I think that the downvotes have nothing to do with the joke you mention. Your comment doesn't add any value to the discussion, we are aware of the things you highlight.

Good! Good! Then I wholly expect to see every comment that is stating an obvious concept to now be down modded off of this site. That's really healthy for discussion.

You understand that users are the ones downvoting you, as a relatively inactive user you don't have a downvote button but many of us do and don't like complaints (about downvotes) or broad generalizations ("culturally regressive") that don't add to the discussion.

I was with you until you started attacking an entire ethnicity.

Thank-you, I did not realize that. I feel a bit better now about the down votes in that light.

As for you last comment though... are you sure you meant ethnicity? Maybe you meant demographic?

And seriously? WTF!

Please re-read the HN guidelines. They ask you not to post comments complaining about being downvoted.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Thanks and no worries. It's just been one of those days. :)

20 year old college student in the US here. He got a lot of things very right, but also from my experience some things very wrong:

Instagram: No one uses it. Maybe 10% of students have one and those that do spend little time on it.

Facebook: It's not as uncool as it sounds. If anything it's had a resurgence lately. Maybe people post less content to their profile these days, but post on each other's timelines and use the messaging system more than ever. As smartphones and connectivity continue to improve, there's less and less incentive to use texting over Facebook. Also, I don't know what he's talking about with groups. No one uses those.

Snapchat: I would say it is currently the biggest one. (People spend more time on Facebook but care more about Snapchat.) However it seems to be losing momentum at this point. Since introducing the story feature, there has been a constant and continuous shift away from the original, more personal uses and towards a more Twitter like document of daily occurrences through stories. Less back and forth dialogue, less creative art, etc. People are also fed up with ads and gimmicks like messaging and sending money (???).

GroupMe: Never heard of anyone using anything but Facebook for this purpose.

Venmo: Not sure if it really qualifies as a social network but it's trying to and it deserves mention. Everyone loves documenting their restaurant expenditures and there seems to be a strong culture of wittiness in generating the captions.

This kid doesn't even know that when he uses WhatsApp or Instagram, he's using Facebook.

Facebook the product vs. Facebook the company.

By that logic, if you're using an Oculus Rift, you're also using Facebook.

I find this all exceedingly strange - why should we care about a teenager's opinions, right or wrong? Kids don't make money, and they spend relatively small amounts of parent/student-loan money. Moreover, all signs point to a difficult job market for new graduates, kids moving back home for extended periods, etc, so the argument that they will soon spend money doesn't resonate. Why then is this demographic so coveted? Heck why do these kids have smartphones at all?

I begin to suspect that youth-obsessed culture is actually a temporary phenomena. The reason it happened in the 90's and 00's was that this was the dawn of the consumer internet, and college kids were the first adopters (a fact that is itself a confluence of educational theory and the enthusiasm/capability of computer science academics)

Against this, we could say that college kids are a better demo for this stuff because they are so pure, in the sense that they aren't constrained by jobs or other income production - so they are at a magical junction between articulate and irresponsible, like having a society of our own "id"s running around. If we can please them in their primordial state, then surely that will have resonance in the hearts of the middle-aged who's youthful lusts still exist under rocky layers of life's harsh requirements.

I like that he's less concerned with a company storing his Social Security Number (or credit card, name, address... things governments/companies ALREADY HAVE) than the photos and thoughts he's choosing to share only with his closest friends.

Dunno how to quote: I only know a handful of people (myself included) that believe Snapchat does delete your photos. Everyone else I know believes that Snapchat has some secret database somewhere with all of your photos on it. While I will save that debate for another day, it is safe to say that when photos are “leaked” or when there’s controversy about security on the app, we honestly do not really care. We aren't sending pictures of our Social Security Cards here, we're sending selfies and photos with us having 5 chins

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