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This isn't something new. When I was a teenager there was a whole load of pre-social-network blogging platforms, then along came Myspace, then Bebo, then Facebo

• coldcode 13y ago
  Exactly, its like saying teenagers don't use email. Everyone they care about is close by, you want to keep in close contact. Once you get past college many of your friends are very distant and you need slow asynchronous methods to keep in touch. Both my age friends from college and the next generation I met volunteering at a local university use Facebook for that exact reason.
  • hnriot 13y ago
    Teenagers don't use email. They use iMessage.
    • andybak 13y ago
      So no-one in the 13-18 age bracket owns anything other than iOS devices?
      • freshyill 13y ago
        iMessage is free. It works on Macs, iPhones, iPods and iPads. I don't know what the usage stats are like, but those factors are probably worth a lot to teenagers who either have to pay their own phone bills, or have to convince their parents to do it.
      • kunai 13y ago
        I'm fifteen and nearly all of the time use PGP-encrypted IM/email to communicate.
        • login1234 13y ago
          calling bs on that right now
          • mikehotel 13y ago
            I believe kunai but agree that use of encryption in messaging is very atypical, regardless of age.
            • kunai 13y ago
              I'd say that's mostly due to outside use. If your friends don't care about encryption, you would never use it. Since I have an extremely small social circle, I can afford to use encryption because I can actually convince people to use it.
    • sib 13y ago
      I have a 13-year-old daughter. She and all of her friends use email. Also iMessage ad WhatsApp. And they pretty much all have Facebook profiles as well.
    • superuser2 13y ago
      In my experience we send "email" type communication almost exclusively by Facebook messaging. I have never in my life written or received an email from someone in my age bracket intended to communicate. When my classmates and I use email, it is to share attachments or to communicate with adults. iMessage is just slightly nicer SMS. Very common in Apple-heavy social groups and not that useful in others.
• threeseed 13y ago
  Odd because the growth of Instagram would suggest 13 year olds also like to comment in a way that is not disposable. It's almost like 13 year olds are people too and don't operate as one homogenous block. I really think it would be better for everyone to stop pretending that they understand what EVERY 13 year old needs, wants or does.
  • leoedin 13y ago
    Reflecting back on the comments I made through most of my early teenage years, almost everything was disposable. The fact it didn't feel like that at the time is almost irrelevent. How many teenagers today will look at their instagram comments as a 21 year old and consider anything other than a vaguely interesting window into their former naivety? Obviously there will always be exceptions. This isn't really about teenage prodigies publishing great works though, it's about teenagers chatting to each other.
• Dewie 13y ago
  > Their messages are disposable nonsense Like most Facebook status updates? :)
• nwzpaperman 13y ago
  Once upon a time, Facebook was a quasi dating site with photos and commenting restricted to a person's sphere of influence. Today, Facebook is an advertising platform. The end.
• mdellabitta 13y ago
  I probably still have Friendster, Orkut, and Tribe.net accounts. A lot of attempts have been made at what Facebook finally became successful at.
• zooka2 13y ago
  I didn't know facebook was complex, but I'm glad to hear young people are moving away from it