10 ms·
I'm also a 15 years old teenager living in Argentina, but here things are somewhat different. First, no one has a "real" smartphone, most are cheap Nokia phone
by dysoco 14y ago
I'm also a 15 years old teenager living in Argentina, but here things are somewhat different.
First, no one has a "real" smartphone, most are cheap Nokia phones with some applications for Facebook: People who have money usually buy BlackBerries, I have a Samsung Galaxy Ace (Being an Android fan) that I bought in Spain: but truth is smartphones are really expensive.
Facebook... everything is about Facebook here: Teenagers don't use any other IM service besides Facebook Messenger, they even use it in their phones.
I find it extremely painful to communicate because I need to keep a Facebook window tab opened if I want to chat with someone (Well, I use Pidgin now).
I don't even go into Facebook, the Facebook feed looks like browsing /r/funny New in Reddit, people don't post original content: Just memes copied from the internet and cristian stuff.
People tend to have a lot of friends in Facebook: I think I don't have more than 50 friends: Those who I really would like to talk with me and have access to my pictures.
What people really use here is ask.fm , I'm not sure if people in other countries use it: but the basic idea is that you create an account and people (Logged, or as Anonymous) post you questions and you answer: Then it gets posted in your Facebook.
I don't understand why would anyone want to use that service: The questions are dumb and nosense. Other questions are personal, and some people still answer that.
Nowadays most of my Facebook feed is 75% ask.fm links, it's really annoying.
Other services? Some people use Twitter, but not really; mostly teenagers following One Direction and Justin Bieber.
Blogging? Nah, no one reads blogs: they don't like reading anything larger than a couple lines of text (I think this: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-may-think/303881/ http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-ma... can be relevant).
Youtube... they like dumb vlogs and some people like gameplays, I find this kind of videos very annoying and dumb.
Oh, not even mention Mail: most of people can't remember their passwords, for me, Mail is vital.
Tumblr? No one knows what that is.
Ah, no one uses Instagram either, and I'm glad...
So resuming: Teenagers only use the internet for Facebook, and, sometimes, reading the Wikipedia (When they have to do something for school) and that's really bad: They have a wonderful tool that they don't want to use, although the language (Most of teenagers don't have a good level of English, or at least they refuse to read English) can be an impediment.
For me the internet is amazing: you can learn whatever you want, for free, thanks to tools like Khan Academy, Coursera and Udacity: But people refuse to, and the language is not the only issue. I think we should focus our knowledge into motivating the Teenagers to get interested into this, instead of developing more applications like Poke or a Facetime killer.
- yefim323 14y agoask.fm sounds very similar to formspring (http://www.formspring.me http://www.formspring.me). Formspring used to be popular about two years ago.
- prostoalex 14y agoask.fm grew more than 5000% in Latin America this past year http://www.comscore.com/Insights/Press_Releases/2012/12/Argentina_Ranks_First_in_Worldwide_Desktop_Social_Networking_Engagement http://www.comscore.com/Insights/Press_Releases/2012/12/Arge...
- SoftwareMaven 14y agoThe person who figures out how to get teens to spend their free time learning instead of socializing is going to go down in history. The answer likely lies somewhere in the socializing, but I have no idea what it is. And way to take advantage of the myriad of educational opportunities that exist online. I would have done anything for access to them when I was a kid; instead, I had to go to the (gasp) library. I think we are going to see a growing intellectual gulf between the few that take advantage of these tools and the masses who don't. There are so many opportunities that can really give somebody a significant boost; a much greater boost than was offered to those of us who didn't have much more than books in the past. And I'm always encouraged when I see the kids who do take advantage of it.
- jfarmer 14y agoI think learning is inherently social. Part of the problem is the mindset that creates a false dichotomy between "learning" and "socializing." One consequence of this mindset is the idea or impression that "learning" involves locking oneself in a room, opening a book, and sticking with it until one learns the material. An example in language acquisition: http://www.ted.com/talks/patricia_kuhl_the_linguistic_genius_of_babies.html http://www.ted.com/talks/patricia_kuhl_the_linguistic_genius...
- corporalagumbo 14y ago