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Eleventh Grade Tech Trends

162 points by ASquare 12y ago

misingnoglic 12y ago
I do this with my little brother (8th grade) all the time, his perspectives on the unique lives of middle schoolers (which are definitely unique in this day and age) give the technology this whole new life. Also the thing with Instagram following ratios is frightening. My brother talks all the time about following and then unfollowing people to trick them into follow you, it's all an unnecessary popularity game (I guess I was never one to understand popular people though).
- heyheyhey 12y ago
  > Also the thing with Instagram following ratios is frightening. My brother talks all the time about following and then unfollowing people to trick them into follow you, it's all an unnecessary popularity game (I guess I was never one to understand popular people though). It is interesting and the article touches on a reason Snapchat is so popular is because it gets rid of the whole non-judgmental aspect that occurs in FB/Instagram.
mhurron 12y ago
It was entirely focused on Social Media Platforms. Now, while I don't expect a high schooler to be checking the performance of their stocks, it does highlight something I've thought for a while about social media (and maybe why I don't 'get it') -- It seems entirely designed to keep the high school experience of constantly worrying about what everyone else is doing and thinks about you front and center through the rest of your life. It's like choosing to never move past the most horrible parts of school.
- jmgrosen 12y ago
  > It seems entirely designed to keep the high school experience of constantly worrying about what everyone else is doing and thinks about you front and center through the rest of your life. I think this is true if you choose to make it that way, but for a lot of these, it really doesn't have to be that way. For example, I have a small (~10) number of friends on Snapchat; we generally share tiny tidbits of our life that we enjoy, and it helps us to know each other a little better in a manner that doesn't invoke jealousy.
  - eitally 12y ago
    Agreed, and my only use case for Whatsapp is a similar social group of colleagues (most of whom are friends IRL, too) spread around the world. This kind of platform was the easiest method of staying in touch, but in an unforced passive participation way. It works well.
cwal37 12y ago
I have 5 younger siblings (ranging from early teens to early 20s [8th grade on]), and everyone in my family has a smartphone so here are some scattered thoughts. It's always interesting to see what apps they have pinned or what they use the most (snapchat, instagram, twitter). Generally with tech-related stuff I'm the most knowledgeable and up-to-date family member, but I completely miss the train when it comes to social apps sometimes. I think this is because I'm older, geographically isolated from young people, and grew up without a cellphone at all. I definitely had a phase where I was obsessed with joining things ASAP (remember Pownce?), but I feel like I've been done with that part of my connected life for a few years. I use instagram, but don't follow anyone except immediate family members or close friends, I have 0 exposure to the super popular "celebrity" accounts because I rarely use or search for hashtags. I still don't use Snapchat, and recently one of my brothers was shocked that I didn't use Venmo. A particular thing that I've found really odd is that I have trouble getting a text response from my siblings, even though I know they have their phones on them and are constantly snapchatting, or whatever. I text a lot, but maybe get one response for every 5-10 texts I send. I think the one extremely consistent app in my family is Spotify, although it's fairly rare for any of us to use its social functions. From my parents down through all the kids, everyone uses Spotify quite a bit. The younger siblings don't seem to care about or understand data limits as much. To them, the internet is everywhere, what do you mean it's not free?
- sosuke 12y ago
  I'm completely with you on the social platforms. I think school provides a certain set of situations where social networks become very important to groups and personal growth. I remember being active in IRC, forums, all manner of instant messaging and chat platforms even MUDs. Now I'm so far removed, and so far from a group think of peers, that those social networks just don't feel relevant. On text, your absolutely right, text used to be the way to get a hold of the younger crowd, but now I have 9 active chat clients installed, everyone wants to use their own network where there friends or business is. I installed SnapChat, Secret, a few others, poked around, deleted them.
- at-fates-hands 12y ago
  >>> A particular thing that I've found really odd is that I have trouble getting a text response from my siblings, even though I know they have their phones on them and are constantly snapchatting, or whatever. I text a lot, but maybe get one response for every 5-10 texts I send. text messaging for kids is what email is for the older generations now. I remember when I first starting email and I thought it was really cool. It was instant communication and I felt like I was living in a brave new world. Nowadays, I almost despise email. Too many messages, or ads, or stuff I get subscribed to, then have to remove or unsubscribe to when they don't mean anything to me. This is how it is with kids and text messaging now. Unless you're one of their 10 most important friends they text and arrange their social calendars with, you're the equivalent of spam to them. I should know, I have the same experience with my nephews. Anything about how something went like a sports event, or something that I thought was important in their life? No answer. Even stuff like, "I have two extras tickets to the Maple Leafs game, you want to go with a friend?" will go without an answer sometimes for days. The response? "Oh, sometimes I get so many texts, I forgot sometimes to reply back to people." When I spoke to my sister she said they were starting to have the same problem. Until they took my nephew's iphone away for a week and told him if they text him, it's a priority and he had better respond or lose more of his gadgets or his iphone on a permanent basis. So now they have a way of cutting through the noise to signal ratio and get a hold of him. I just don't have that much pull with them. Now, I usually just call my sister or call him directly. It's the only way I can get a response within a decent amount of time.
deleted 12y ago
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vlunkr 12y ago
This was a good confirmation for how much I don't miss high school.
jmgrosen 12y ago
This definitely echoes what I see as an eleventh grader. Although the only social network mentioned here that I use is Snapchat, I definitely get the sense that Instagram and Twitter are becoming more popular as medium-specific apps. Additionally, Facebook feels ubiquitous (though I don't have an account anymore) but more "formal" than other options nowadays. And for better or for worse, teens love their anonymity. (Meanwhile, here I am, glued to Reddit and HN...) EDIT: Feel free to ask me anything regarding this, if you're curious. Of course, as a relatively nerdy guy, I don't have the most typical experience :)
- alexanderss 12y ago
  One thing not covered in the blog post (except Twitter) was social media or regular media where you interact with people you don't already know (e.g. Twitter, Reddit, Hacker News). Is this less common because friend-based social media is mostly photos and teenagers prefer using images to communicate? Does having a pseudonym on any of these sites count as anonymity, or is that preferred to communicate with friends anonymously? Thanks!
  - jmgrosen 12y ago
    I think Instagram (along with Twitter) is used a lot to interact with a wider base of people than just your friends, supporting your idea of image-based networks, but I don't think it has to do with their particular media. Reddit, and other forum-like sites, are popular in certain cliques (mainly tech-savvy ones -- anime/manga fans, gamers, etc.), but hasn't really broken out in mainstream teen culture. My hypothesis is that teenagers like the more personal, if you will, aspect of Twitter/Instagram/Facebook/etc. in that they are very user-based -- even if you find content based on a hashtag (say, on Twitter), who posted it is just as important as what they posted, unlike forums, where content matters significantly more than its poster. (How many Reddit usernames do remember? Now what about Twitter?) I think pseudonymity is perceived in a very different manner than anonymity. With a pseudonym, you can piece together the scraps of information someone leaves and maybe make a good guess at who that account is; at least, that's how one feels when using a consistent pseudonym, even if it's unrealistic. With anonymity, you have no sense of responsibility for your actions, because each one post is unlikely to reveal much on its own. Again, I probably have a skewed view of things, but hopefully this was at least thought-provoking!
mullingitover 12y ago
> “Only big social network with ‘albums’ for pictures…” As a decade-old flickr user, I wept. Poor flickr, they coulda been a contender.
alexanderss 12y ago
"This is huge for Facebook — it has become an ubiquitous utility. And my sister didn’t even know Messenger, Facebook’s well-regarded, standalone messaging app, existed. Couple this anecdote with the WhatsApp acquisition and Facebook seems poised to own (utilitarian and functional) communication." Given how hard Facebook pushes, and has subsequently forced Messenger onto all mobile users, his sister not knowing it exists is not good for Facebook. I'm sure the author is trying to spin it into a positive since he works there, but that's quite a stretch.
- icelancer 12y ago
  I refuse to install it. I get around to my messages when I get back to my computer. The messaging app is terrible.
  - whytaka 12y ago
    What about? It's my preferred messaging app to be honest with you. I'm curious what your pain points are.
  - alexhawdon 12y ago
    What do you dislike about the messaging app? I initially felt corralled into installing it but now I use it quite frequently to participate in small group discussions with my friends. Actually, I should clarify: it's almost exclusively one group discussion that we use to organise our social lives (last-minute day trips at the weekends, beers after work, that sort of thing). Email has become fragmented (not universal; everyone has a number of accounts), there is no group option on SMS, and Twitter is too public. There isn't a comparable communication medium in use within my social circle. I find the app experience pretty reliable and straight-forward. I especially like the option to 'snooze' chats for an hour or two (I'm trying to get some work done and my friends are all telling jokes) or until the next morning (I'm engaged this evening and don't want my phone pinging all the time). (As it appear to be relevant and give context to this discussion, I'm a late-20s English male.)
  - Mvandenbergh 12y ago
    I mean, that's nice and all, but like most things which have a utility tied to their network size, the quality of the app is largely irrelevant. If someone sends me an fb message to update me on where we're meeting, I want to see that right away regardless of my dislike of the UI.
Xcelerate 12y ago
> Though still wildly popular, my sister mentioned that anxiety around “like-to-follower ratios” and “judgmental viewers” has been leading to less posting amongst her and her friends. There's a lot of weird things that I notice many people do (including myself) related to metrics like this. I'm 24, and a lot of my friends use Snapchat; however, they've switched to using the personal stories over sending actual messages. I really don't like this, mainly because you can see who has viewed your story. And there's a sense of anxiety where you don't want to look at other people's stories if they don't look at yours. So I just avoid it altogether. Similarly, when I first got Facebook, I never sent any friend requests. So I have about half as many friends as most of my friends have, and over time I realized "number of friends" serves as a surrogate for real-life popularity. There's exceptions; some people deliberately limit their number of friends. But for the most part, those people with 1,100 friends are the social, outgoing, and extroverted whereas those with less than 400 are the weird, introverted quiet people (myself included). So as soon as Facebook released the option to hide your friend count from your profile, I applied it immediately. I never liked the trend of "trying to be popular" when I was in high school and undergrad, and I like it even less with social media. I wish the newer social networks would design away from concepts like number of followers, and number of likes. It's somewhat disheartening when you post something like "my work was feature on such-and-such national lab's homepage" and it gets 20x less likes than your friend who posts "Shopping at the mall with my friends!!!!"
- heyheyhey 12y ago
  > There's a lot of weird things that I notice many people do (including myself) related to metrics like this. I'm 24, and a lot of my friends use Snapchat; however, they've switched to using the personal stories over sending actual messages. I really don't like this, mainly because you can see who has viewed your story. And there's a sense of anxiety where you don't want to look at other people's stories if they don't look at yours. So I just avoid it altogether. Really? I never got that feeling. While I do check to see who looked at my story, I always figured people who didn't check either don't use Snapchat on a daily basis or just didn't have the time to see it within the window. I do get your anxiety when it comes to FB's likes or IG's hearts but since Snapchat doesn't have that and is so ephemeral, I don't get any of that.
patja 12y ago
I have an eleventh grade daughter. Some of the accepted norms for her peer group that have surprised me are: Email is just for school and ecommerce. She told me that one of her friends sent her a super long text about a crisis she was having. I said, wait, a super long text? Why didn't she send an email. Laughter ensued. Nobody uses email to communicate with friends, silly Daddy. I guess that's how you get to > 3000 sms per month. Facebook is out. She feels like hers is the last grade to use it in any appreciable way, and even for them they mostly use it to manage events. Few of the freshmen use Facebook.
- lightcatcher 12y ago
  I'm not so sure about email not being used to communicate with friends. I'm currently a senior in college. If asked during high school, I would have said exactly what your daughter said, except with Facebook messages replacing SMS. At my college, all organization of student groups happens over email. I very quickly went from receiving <1 email/day during high school to receiving ~20 emails/day in college. Exposure to this mailing list culture at college (and also at during internships in industry) has made me an email person. I typically don't send short emails (~2 sentence) for social messages (I use Facebook for that), but if I need to send a paragraph to someone I do it over email. My group of friends splits our planning of events 50/50 between email and Facebook messages. I'm not sure if this is just at the college I attend or if its a more general phenomena.
  - 1a2a3a4a 12y ago
    It's like that at MIT too. I also see people do one sentence emails like "Meeting at X location EOM." I never used it in high school but now it's the main form of communication for more than one on one chats.
  - Smudge 12y ago
    I'm probably dating myself a little, but this was true for me as well. Pre-college, everyone used AIM. During college, most social communication happened on email lists, with some 1:1 communication happening through the first version of google chat ('gchat'). As in, the one with the desktop client.
morgante 12y ago
Why are we paying any attention whatsoever to a single anecdotal data point when there are literally troves of data available about who is actually using services? Facebook is about as dead as email: not at all.
- mturmon 12y ago
  You raise a good point: the post is just one anecdote. Yet, if you read the post, you have to admit it was thought-provoking. How to explain this contradiction? The reason, I suspect, is that a survey may average out all the trends and observations about specific use cases for services. You start with colors, you end up with gray-brown. Of course, billions of dollars in valuation are at stake. Facebook and Twitter among others were built very fast and are probably still open to disruption if they are not watching these trends. People are jumpy.
  - morgante 12y ago
    > You raise a good point: the post is just one anecdote. Yet, if you read the post, you have to admit it was thought-provoking. How to explain this contradiction? No, it wasn't. I personally don't like sandals. I'd happily give you lots of reasonable-sounding explanations for why I don't, but it's just the preferences of a single guy in the end. Nobody would spend more than a half-second considering whether my personal choice is relevant to the futures of the footware industry. Yet suddenly because it's the internet and teens, we think the subjective personal experiences of a couple teens is more important than actual data. It's ludicrous, and not at all thought-provoking (except in the sense that humanity's continued inability to think statistically is provoking).
    - grkvlt 12y ago
      > I personally don't like sandals. I'd happily give you lots of reasonable-sounding explanations for why I don't [...] Nobody [considers] my personal choice is relevant to the futures of the footware (sic) industry. Of course it is relevant. In your case, the footwear industry would like to know whether the general public likes sandals or not, in order to decide whether to make more or less of them, and what types of advertising should be purchased. We can go with the initial assumption that there is nothing special about you, as a sample, and work on the principle that you are representative of the footwear buying public as a whole. So, we now know that not everyone likes sandals, and since we know other people that also hold the same view, we can be confident that you are not absolutely unique. Of course we want to seek out more opinions, and determine more accurately how widespread this dislike of sandals is, but I would be foolish to completely ignore this data point. Similarly for teens and Internet services, the single data point here is interesting and thought-provoking because we know it isn't a freak outlier, and is instead somewhat representative of teens as a group. Since the actual quantitive information (that is, user retention and engagement at Facebook, Snapchat et al) tells us only what is happening, we must seek out qualitative opinion pieces like this to determine why. Everyone here is capable of understanding the limitations of small sample sizes and self-selection effects, and should be able to control for that. And of course, it's also just interesting to know what ones fellow human beings feel about a subject, and even important when there are business models predicated on these same humans doing things because their friends are. Network effects like that are obviously one of the main drivers for social network adoption, and thus increasing the value of a product.
samirmenon 12y ago
YikYak is sweeping our high school. It's mostly used to make fun of school administrators and bully other students. It seems much more popular with kids than Secret. http://www.yikyakapp.com/ http://www.yikyakapp.com/
- Xcelerate 12y ago
  Not just high school. I'm at a large university, and I would estimate that probably 1/4 of the school is using it. A new post appears about once every 10 seconds. However, any bullying type posts get downvoted really quickly. Or posts with personal information. The only kind of insults that stay on there are those directed at other schools, or those among the fraternities/sororities. Actually, I've noticed that when people anonymously post about depression or suicide, the response is overwhelmingly helpful. Other students post links to the counseling center website or tips that helped them personally.
- Kiro 12y ago
  What is it? I don't understand what I should enter as my "digits".
  - anonetal 12y ago
    Phone number -- I tried a zipcode, and it asked me for a "valid phone number". I didn't try entering one.
quaz3l 12y ago
Being a High Schooler myself, it is actually really cool to see viral effects first hand. For example, when I released my first simple game app, Runbow, I thought it might catch on if I just played it in class. It did, within a day, 1/3 of the students at my school had it (school of 2000). I was also featured in the school newspaper. It was a fun experience. I wrote a blog post about it: http://blog.sam.ink/2014/03/05/i-made-an-app/ http://blog.sam.ink/2014/03/05/i-made-an-app/
- deleted 12y ago
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- mandlar 12y ago
  That reminds me of my high school days where people played games on TI-83 calculators. I built a level for the Super Mario game and it spread like wildfire throughout the school.
metaprinter 12y ago
Can any of you younger folks tell me what the kids without smartphones do? Surely there are kids that don't own one yet or are too poor to afford one. Generally speaking, are the smartphone-less kids ostracized or is it taken in stride by their classmates?
- joliv 12y ago
  I'm in 12th grade and without a smartphone, because I feel like I spend enough time on HN and working on side projects already, and a smartphone would only pull me into the digital world even more. I personally don't feel ostracized, but I do feel a little isolated when everyone has their noses in their phones. My friends also get annoyed when I'm not timely in responding to their Facebook messages, although they've gotten used to my delay there.
  - mattgreenrocks 12y ago
    That's funny, because the group norm of "burying noses in phones" is inherently anti-social behavior, at least to the people in the physical vicinity. But everyone does it so it gets a free pass. In HS, I made sure not to mention that I stayed up late playing games on the Internet; that was behavior that would get me ostracized. Just goes to show you how arbitrary our standards of normal are. :) Related: I want to start a tumblr consisting of photos of groups of people in public staring at their phones. We take our phones way too seriously at the moment.
mattgreenrocks 12y ago
The drivel about Instagram ratios hurts to read. They're Internet Points: inherently worthless, and they exist to manipulate your brain's pleasure centers.
dozenal 12y ago
Something just feels wrong to me about kids being trapped in these closed, proprietary communication systems. It's like things are moving backwards.
- pablobaz 12y ago
  Although it appears there's a diverse ecosystem of competing systems. The worst scenario would have be a total domination by a single player.
nitin_flanker 12y ago
I am from India and I really feel that these technologies are decreasing the grey cells from the minds of the youngsters. Using FB, Twitter and Whatsapp like SNS is a must have for a 10th grade student. This is the time when they have to learn the basics of science and the life. If you will ask someone about Newton, they are going to stumble . However, if I ask them about FB they are going to tell the full form of acronym and as well as the use of the SNS. The time they can spend on improving themselves and their gray areas, they are spending that time on FB and other SNS and wasting it. As Patja said, email is really a big NO for them. Just two days back, one of my friend who is in her high school asked me to edit her pics. I said her to send here pic as an attachment in an email. Her reply was amusing. She was saying that she has to do extra work. I just didn't know how it is an extra work to send the same stuff over email rather than on whatsapp.
- icelancer 12y ago
  How is that any different than kids playing video games or sports? It's not like subject material in school is being replaced by iPhone games and Snapchat.
- eitally 12y ago
  Discounting the first part of your post, I do the same thing re: pics. I use Android and take advantage of Google's auto-backup to G+ feature, from which I then share pics. It's not convenient for the people I share them with, but at that point doing anything else with them becomes their problem, not mine. Editing pics on a mobile device is an awful experience, and getting pics from a mobile device to a pc to then edit is unpleasant, too. I feel her pain. To your first point, social networks are what you make of them. Don't judge. :) It's also still a fact that, especially in India (when trying to get hired by a western tech company), being able to effectively communicate using western idiom and being up to date on trends, etc, is almost as valuable as your technical chops. I can train you to program. I can't train you to work well with others.
  - nitin_flanker 12y ago
    yes you are right that social networks are what we make of them. We should not judge anyone. :) I am seconding your views. But I didn't understand that how social network can help someone to work well with others? Yeah if they are meeting personally then it makes them more socialized. However, if they are just chatting and exchanging text and nothing else then it is waste of data and as well as time.
iLoch 12y ago
I'm 20. Am I already too old for this? I use Twitter and Snapchat most days, though my contributions to either of those are limited in comparison to my consumption of others' content. I've deleted my Instagram account and haven't felt like I'm missing anything. My Facebook feed is filled with clickbait and auto-playing videos. I think people are starting to recognize that your social presence catches up to you later on in life, and as a result are flocking to semi-private networks like Twitter (via private profiles), Instagram (again using private profiles) and Snapchat. Using these networks in such a way removes the anxiety of posting to a large audience, and in some cases (Snapchat) you can easily control the audience who sees your posts. I think this is really valuable. The other commonality between these apps is that none of them require your real name - you can choose to mask your identity, or make yourself easily discoverable publicly (especially Twitter). Oh yeah, and none of these apps require that you sign in with Facebook. I think asking for a Facebook login is just about the laziest way to attempt to harvest data about your users, and it's not as though they no longer recognize this (or at the very least, it's yet ANOTHER app asking for you to associate your account with your Facebook account.) Monetization in apps of the future will rely on creative new ways of associating non-identifying data. This will mean relying more on the information the user generates vs. the information they give us explicitly (Who are your friends? Where did you go to school? etc). It should be an interesting next few years for the big players like Facebook. It's certainly been interesting seeing Snapchat rise to such success with such a simple concept. I think there's a potential to "Snapchat-ize" every major feature of Facebook into many wildly successful apps. Now, what's more important than photos?
- mbesto 12y ago
  This is good insight, thanks for sharing. > Using these networks in such a way removes the anxiety of posting to a large audience What I've noticed about Twitter and Instagram is that because they're semi-private it means people get WAY more upvotes on their content. Thus, for a younger generation, they'll flock to the networks where their voice is heard the highest. Kids get sick of "Sally Cheerleader" getting 135 likes and "SOOO BEAUTIFUL" comments from everyone else in their school. As this group ages they'll see the value in LinkedIn/FB when non-anonymity can potentially means real cold hard cash in their pockets and the cycle will repeat itself. > Monetization in apps of the future will rely on creative new ways of associating non-identifying data. I disagree. For the last 15 years we've been asking publishers to "get more creative" with advertising. All that means is that Forbes now gives you a 15 second ad before clicking through to it's content. There's nothing creative about that. I do however think many app vendors will start charging for their apps as opposed to relying on advertising in the future.
Kiro 12y ago
What's a subtweet?
indielol 12y ago
Here in India, all college communication happens on WhatsApp, except when communicating with teachers, for which everybody exclusively uses email.

162 points by ASquare 12y ago

I do this with my little brother (8th grade) all the time, his perspectives on the unique lives of middle schoolers (which are definitely unique in this day and age) give the technology this whole new life. Also the thing with Instagram following ratios is frightening. My brother talks all the time about following and then unfollowing people to trick them into follow you, it's all an unnecessary popularity game (I guess I was never one to understand popular people though).

heyheyhey 12y ago
> Also the thing with Instagram following ratios is frightening. My brother talks all the time about following and then unfollowing people to trick them into follow you, it's all an unnecessary popularity game (I guess I was never one to understand popular people though). It is interesting and the article touches on a reason Snapchat is so popular is because it gets rid of the whole non-judgmental aspect that occurs in FB/Instagram.

mhurron 12y ago

It was entirely focused on Social Media Platforms. Now, while I don't expect a high schooler to be checking the performance of their stocks, it does highlight something I've thought for a while about social media (and maybe why I don't 'get it') -- It seems entirely designed to keep the high school experience of constantly worrying about what everyone else is doing and thinks about you front and center through the rest of your life. It's like choosing to never move past the most horrible parts of school.

jmgrosen 12y ago
> It seems entirely designed to keep the high school experience of constantly worrying about what everyone else is doing and thinks about you front and center through the rest of your life. I think this is true if you choose to make it that way, but for a lot of these, it really doesn't have to be that way. For example, I have a small (~10) number of friends on Snapchat; we generally share tiny tidbits of our life that we enjoy, and it helps us to know each other a little better in a manner that doesn't invoke jealousy.
- eitally 12y ago
  Agreed, and my only use case for Whatsapp is a similar social group of colleagues (most of whom are friends IRL, too) spread around the world. This kind of platform was the easiest method of staying in touch, but in an unforced passive participation way. It works well.

cwal37 12y ago

I have 5 younger siblings (ranging from early teens to early 20s [8th grade on]), and everyone in my family has a smartphone so here are some scattered thoughts. It's always interesting to see what apps they have pinned or what they use the most (snapchat, instagram, twitter). Generally with tech-related stuff I'm the most knowledgeable and up-to-date family member, but I completely miss the train when it comes to social apps sometimes. I think this is because I'm older, geographically isolated from young people, and grew up without a cellphone at all. I definitely had a phase where I was obsessed with joining things ASAP (remember Pownce?), but I feel like I've been done with that part of my connected life for a few years. I use instagram, but don't follow anyone except immediate family members or close friends, I have 0 exposure to the super popular "celebrity" accounts because I rarely use or search for hashtags. I still don't use Snapchat, and recently one of my brothers was shocked that I didn't use Venmo. A particular thing that I've found really odd is that I have trouble getting a text response from my siblings, even though I know they have their phones on them and are constantly snapchatting, or whatever. I text a lot, but maybe get one response for every 5-10 texts I send. I think the one extremely consistent app in my family is Spotify, although it's fairly rare for any of us to use its social functions. From my parents down through all the kids, everyone uses Spotify quite a bit. The younger siblings don't seem to care about or understand data limits as much. To them, the internet is everywhere, what do you mean it's not free?

sosuke 12y ago
I'm completely with you on the social platforms. I think school provides a certain set of situations where social networks become very important to groups and personal growth. I remember being active in IRC, forums, all manner of instant messaging and chat platforms even MUDs. Now I'm so far removed, and so far from a group think of peers, that those social networks just don't feel relevant. On text, your absolutely right, text used to be the way to get a hold of the younger crowd, but now I have 9 active chat clients installed, everyone wants to use their own network where there friends or business is. I installed SnapChat, Secret, a few others, poked around, deleted them.
at-fates-hands 12y ago
>>> A particular thing that I've found really odd is that I have trouble getting a text response from my siblings, even though I know they have their phones on them and are constantly snapchatting, or whatever. I text a lot, but maybe get one response for every 5-10 texts I send. text messaging for kids is what email is for the older generations now. I remember when I first starting email and I thought it was really cool. It was instant communication and I felt like I was living in a brave new world. Nowadays, I almost despise email. Too many messages, or ads, or stuff I get subscribed to, then have to remove or unsubscribe to when they don't mean anything to me. This is how it is with kids and text messaging now. Unless you're one of their 10 most important friends they text and arrange their social calendars with, you're the equivalent of spam to them. I should know, I have the same experience with my nephews. Anything about how something went like a sports event, or something that I thought was important in their life? No answer. Even stuff like, "I have two extras tickets to the Maple Leafs game, you want to go with a friend?" will go without an answer sometimes for days. The response? "Oh, sometimes I get so many texts, I forgot sometimes to reply back to people." When I spoke to my sister she said they were starting to have the same problem. Until they took my nephew's iphone away for a week and told him if they text him, it's a priority and he had better respond or lose more of his gadgets or his iphone on a permanent basis. So now they have a way of cutting through the noise to signal ratio and get a hold of him. I just don't have that much pull with them. Now, I usually just call my sister or call him directly. It's the only way I can get a response within a decent amount of time.

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vlunkr 12y ago

This was a good confirmation for how much I don't miss high school.

jmgrosen 12y ago

This definitely echoes what I see as an eleventh grader. Although the only social network mentioned here that I use is Snapchat, I definitely get the sense that Instagram and Twitter are becoming more popular as medium-specific apps. Additionally, Facebook feels ubiquitous (though I don't have an account anymore) but more "formal" than other options nowadays. And for better or for worse, teens love their anonymity. (Meanwhile, here I am, glued to Reddit and HN...) EDIT: Feel free to ask me anything regarding this, if you're curious. Of course, as a relatively nerdy guy, I don't have the most typical experience :)

alexanderss 12y ago
One thing not covered in the blog post (except Twitter) was social media or regular media where you interact with people you don't already know (e.g. Twitter, Reddit, Hacker News). Is this less common because friend-based social media is mostly photos and teenagers prefer using images to communicate? Does having a pseudonym on any of these sites count as anonymity, or is that preferred to communicate with friends anonymously? Thanks!
- jmgrosen 12y ago
  I think Instagram (along with Twitter) is used a lot to interact with a wider base of people than just your friends, supporting your idea of image-based networks, but I don't think it has to do with their particular media. Reddit, and other forum-like sites, are popular in certain cliques (mainly tech-savvy ones -- anime/manga fans, gamers, etc.), but hasn't really broken out in mainstream teen culture. My hypothesis is that teenagers like the more personal, if you will, aspect of Twitter/Instagram/Facebook/etc. in that they are very user-based -- even if you find content based on a hashtag (say, on Twitter), who posted it is just as important as what they posted, unlike forums, where content matters significantly more than its poster. (How many Reddit usernames do remember? Now what about Twitter?) I think pseudonymity is perceived in a very different manner than anonymity. With a pseudonym, you can piece together the scraps of information someone leaves and maybe make a good guess at who that account is; at least, that's how one feels when using a consistent pseudonym, even if it's unrealistic. With anonymity, you have no sense of responsibility for your actions, because each one post is unlikely to reveal much on its own. Again, I probably have a skewed view of things, but hopefully this was at least thought-provoking!

mullingitover 12y ago

> “Only big social network with ‘albums’ for pictures…” As a decade-old flickr user, I wept. Poor flickr, they coulda been a contender.

alexanderss 12y ago

"This is huge for Facebook — it has become an ubiquitous utility. And my sister didn’t even know Messenger, Facebook’s well-regarded, standalone messaging app, existed. Couple this anecdote with the WhatsApp acquisition and Facebook seems poised to own (utilitarian and functional) communication." Given how hard Facebook pushes, and has subsequently forced Messenger onto all mobile users, his sister not knowing it exists is not good for Facebook. I'm sure the author is trying to spin it into a positive since he works there, but that's quite a stretch.

icelancer 12y ago
I refuse to install it. I get around to my messages when I get back to my computer. The messaging app is terrible.
- whytaka 12y ago
  What about? It's my preferred messaging app to be honest with you. I'm curious what your pain points are.
- alexhawdon 12y ago
  What do you dislike about the messaging app? I initially felt corralled into installing it but now I use it quite frequently to participate in small group discussions with my friends. Actually, I should clarify: it's almost exclusively one group discussion that we use to organise our social lives (last-minute day trips at the weekends, beers after work, that sort of thing). Email has become fragmented (not universal; everyone has a number of accounts), there is no group option on SMS, and Twitter is too public. There isn't a comparable communication medium in use within my social circle. I find the app experience pretty reliable and straight-forward. I especially like the option to 'snooze' chats for an hour or two (I'm trying to get some work done and my friends are all telling jokes) or until the next morning (I'm engaged this evening and don't want my phone pinging all the time). (As it appear to be relevant and give context to this discussion, I'm a late-20s English male.)
- Mvandenbergh 12y ago
  I mean, that's nice and all, but like most things which have a utility tied to their network size, the quality of the app is largely irrelevant. If someone sends me an fb message to update me on where we're meeting, I want to see that right away regardless of my dislike of the UI.

Xcelerate 12y ago

> Though still wildly popular, my sister mentioned that anxiety around “like-to-follower ratios” and “judgmental viewers” has been leading to less posting amongst her and her friends. There's a lot of weird things that I notice many people do (including myself) related to metrics like this. I'm 24, and a lot of my friends use Snapchat; however, they've switched to using the personal stories over sending actual messages. I really don't like this, mainly because you can see who has viewed your story. And there's a sense of anxiety where you don't want to look at other people's stories if they don't look at yours. So I just avoid it altogether. Similarly, when I first got Facebook, I never sent any friend requests. So I have about half as many friends as most of my friends have, and over time I realized "number of friends" serves as a surrogate for real-life popularity. There's exceptions; some people deliberately limit their number of friends. But for the most part, those people with 1,100 friends are the social, outgoing, and extroverted whereas those with less than 400 are the weird, introverted quiet people (myself included). So as soon as Facebook released the option to hide your friend count from your profile, I applied it immediately. I never liked the trend of "trying to be popular" when I was in high school and undergrad, and I like it even less with social media. I wish the newer social networks would design away from concepts like number of followers, and number of likes. It's somewhat disheartening when you post something like "my work was feature on such-and-such national lab's homepage" and it gets 20x less likes than your friend who posts "Shopping at the mall with my friends!!!!"

heyheyhey 12y ago
> There's a lot of weird things that I notice many people do (including myself) related to metrics like this. I'm 24, and a lot of my friends use Snapchat; however, they've switched to using the personal stories over sending actual messages. I really don't like this, mainly because you can see who has viewed your story. And there's a sense of anxiety where you don't want to look at other people's stories if they don't look at yours. So I just avoid it altogether. Really? I never got that feeling. While I do check to see who looked at my story, I always figured people who didn't check either don't use Snapchat on a daily basis or just didn't have the time to see it within the window. I do get your anxiety when it comes to FB's likes or IG's hearts but since Snapchat doesn't have that and is so ephemeral, I don't get any of that.

patja 12y ago

I have an eleventh grade daughter. Some of the accepted norms for her peer group that have surprised me are: Email is just for school and ecommerce. She told me that one of her friends sent her a super long text about a crisis she was having. I said, wait, a super long text? Why didn't she send an email. Laughter ensued. Nobody uses email to communicate with friends, silly Daddy. I guess that's how you get to > 3000 sms per month. Facebook is out. She feels like hers is the last grade to use it in any appreciable way, and even for them they mostly use it to manage events. Few of the freshmen use Facebook.

lightcatcher 12y ago
I'm not so sure about email not being used to communicate with friends. I'm currently a senior in college. If asked during high school, I would have said exactly what your daughter said, except with Facebook messages replacing SMS. At my college, all organization of student groups happens over email. I very quickly went from receiving <1 email/day during high school to receiving ~20 emails/day in college. Exposure to this mailing list culture at college (and also at during internships in industry) has made me an email person. I typically don't send short emails (~2 sentence) for social messages (I use Facebook for that), but if I need to send a paragraph to someone I do it over email. My group of friends splits our planning of events 50/50 between email and Facebook messages. I'm not sure if this is just at the college I attend or if its a more general phenomena.
- 1a2a3a4a 12y ago
  It's like that at MIT too. I also see people do one sentence emails like "Meeting at X location EOM." I never used it in high school but now it's the main form of communication for more than one on one chats.
- Smudge 12y ago
  I'm probably dating myself a little, but this was true for me as well. Pre-college, everyone used AIM. During college, most social communication happened on email lists, with some 1:1 communication happening through the first version of google chat ('gchat'). As in, the one with the desktop client.

morgante 12y ago

Why are we paying any attention whatsoever to a single anecdotal data point when there are literally troves of data available about who is actually using services? Facebook is about as dead as email: not at all.

mturmon 12y ago
You raise a good point: the post is just one anecdote. Yet, if you read the post, you have to admit it was thought-provoking. How to explain this contradiction? The reason, I suspect, is that a survey may average out all the trends and observations about specific use cases for services. You start with colors, you end up with gray-brown. Of course, billions of dollars in valuation are at stake. Facebook and Twitter among others were built very fast and are probably still open to disruption if they are not watching these trends. People are jumpy.
- morgante 12y ago
  > You raise a good point: the post is just one anecdote. Yet, if you read the post, you have to admit it was thought-provoking. How to explain this contradiction? No, it wasn't. I personally don't like sandals. I'd happily give you lots of reasonable-sounding explanations for why I don't, but it's just the preferences of a single guy in the end. Nobody would spend more than a half-second considering whether my personal choice is relevant to the futures of the footware industry. Yet suddenly because it's the internet and teens, we think the subjective personal experiences of a couple teens is more important than actual data. It's ludicrous, and not at all thought-provoking (except in the sense that humanity's continued inability to think statistically is provoking).
  - grkvlt 12y ago
    > I personally don't like sandals. I'd happily give you lots of reasonable-sounding explanations for why I don't [...] Nobody [considers] my personal choice is relevant to the futures of the footware (sic) industry. Of course it is relevant. In your case, the footwear industry would like to know whether the general public likes sandals or not, in order to decide whether to make more or less of them, and what types of advertising should be purchased. We can go with the initial assumption that there is nothing special about you, as a sample, and work on the principle that you are representative of the footwear buying public as a whole. So, we now know that not everyone likes sandals, and since we know other people that also hold the same view, we can be confident that you are not absolutely unique. Of course we want to seek out more opinions, and determine more accurately how widespread this dislike of sandals is, but I would be foolish to completely ignore this data point. Similarly for teens and Internet services, the single data point here is interesting and thought-provoking because we know it isn't a freak outlier, and is instead somewhat representative of teens as a group. Since the actual quantitive information (that is, user retention and engagement at Facebook, Snapchat et al) tells us only what is happening, we must seek out qualitative opinion pieces like this to determine why. Everyone here is capable of understanding the limitations of small sample sizes and self-selection effects, and should be able to control for that. And of course, it's also just interesting to know what ones fellow human beings feel about a subject, and even important when there are business models predicated on these same humans doing things because their friends are. Network effects like that are obviously one of the main drivers for social network adoption, and thus increasing the value of a product.

samirmenon 12y ago

YikYak is sweeping our high school. It's mostly used to make fun of school administrators and bully other students. It seems much more popular with kids than Secret. http://www.yikyakapp.com/ http://www.yikyakapp.com/

Xcelerate 12y ago
Not just high school. I'm at a large university, and I would estimate that probably 1/4 of the school is using it. A new post appears about once every 10 seconds. However, any bullying type posts get downvoted really quickly. Or posts with personal information. The only kind of insults that stay on there are those directed at other schools, or those among the fraternities/sororities. Actually, I've noticed that when people anonymously post about depression or suicide, the response is overwhelmingly helpful. Other students post links to the counseling center website or tips that helped them personally.
Kiro 12y ago
What is it? I don't understand what I should enter as my "digits".
- anonetal 12y ago
  Phone number -- I tried a zipcode, and it asked me for a "valid phone number". I didn't try entering one.

quaz3l 12y ago

Being a High Schooler myself, it is actually really cool to see viral effects first hand. For example, when I released my first simple game app, Runbow, I thought it might catch on if I just played it in class. It did, within a day, 1/3 of the students at my school had it (school of 2000). I was also featured in the school newspaper. It was a fun experience. I wrote a blog post about it: http://blog.sam.ink/2014/03/05/i-made-an-app/ http://blog.sam.ink/2014/03/05/i-made-an-app/

deleted 12y ago
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mandlar 12y ago
That reminds me of my high school days where people played games on TI-83 calculators. I built a level for the Super Mario game and it spread like wildfire throughout the school.

metaprinter 12y ago

Can any of you younger folks tell me what the kids without smartphones do? Surely there are kids that don't own one yet or are too poor to afford one. Generally speaking, are the smartphone-less kids ostracized or is it taken in stride by their classmates?

joliv 12y ago
I'm in 12th grade and without a smartphone, because I feel like I spend enough time on HN and working on side projects already, and a smartphone would only pull me into the digital world even more. I personally don't feel ostracized, but I do feel a little isolated when everyone has their noses in their phones. My friends also get annoyed when I'm not timely in responding to their Facebook messages, although they've gotten used to my delay there.
- mattgreenrocks 12y ago
  That's funny, because the group norm of "burying noses in phones" is inherently anti-social behavior, at least to the people in the physical vicinity. But everyone does it so it gets a free pass. In HS, I made sure not to mention that I stayed up late playing games on the Internet; that was behavior that would get me ostracized. Just goes to show you how arbitrary our standards of normal are. :) Related: I want to start a tumblr consisting of photos of groups of people in public staring at their phones. We take our phones way too seriously at the moment.

mattgreenrocks 12y ago

The drivel about Instagram ratios hurts to read. They're Internet Points: inherently worthless, and they exist to manipulate your brain's pleasure centers.

dozenal 12y ago

Something just feels wrong to me about kids being trapped in these closed, proprietary communication systems. It's like things are moving backwards.

pablobaz 12y ago
Although it appears there's a diverse ecosystem of competing systems. The worst scenario would have be a total domination by a single player.

nitin_flanker 12y ago

I am from India and I really feel that these technologies are decreasing the grey cells from the minds of the youngsters. Using FB, Twitter and Whatsapp like SNS is a must have for a 10th grade student. This is the time when they have to learn the basics of science and the life. If you will ask someone about Newton, they are going to stumble . However, if I ask them about FB they are going to tell the full form of acronym and as well as the use of the SNS. The time they can spend on improving themselves and their gray areas, they are spending that time on FB and other SNS and wasting it. As Patja said, email is really a big NO for them. Just two days back, one of my friend who is in her high school asked me to edit her pics. I said her to send here pic as an attachment in an email. Her reply was amusing. She was saying that she has to do extra work. I just didn't know how it is an extra work to send the same stuff over email rather than on whatsapp.

icelancer 12y ago
How is that any different than kids playing video games or sports? It's not like subject material in school is being replaced by iPhone games and Snapchat.
eitally 12y ago
Discounting the first part of your post, I do the same thing re: pics. I use Android and take advantage of Google's auto-backup to G+ feature, from which I then share pics. It's not convenient for the people I share them with, but at that point doing anything else with them becomes their problem, not mine. Editing pics on a mobile device is an awful experience, and getting pics from a mobile device to a pc to then edit is unpleasant, too. I feel her pain. To your first point, social networks are what you make of them. Don't judge. :) It's also still a fact that, especially in India (when trying to get hired by a western tech company), being able to effectively communicate using western idiom and being up to date on trends, etc, is almost as valuable as your technical chops. I can train you to program. I can't train you to work well with others.
- nitin_flanker 12y ago
  yes you are right that social networks are what we make of them. We should not judge anyone. :) I am seconding your views. But I didn't understand that how social network can help someone to work well with others? Yeah if they are meeting personally then it makes them more socialized. However, if they are just chatting and exchanging text and nothing else then it is waste of data and as well as time.

iLoch 12y ago

I'm 20. Am I already too old for this? I use Twitter and Snapchat most days, though my contributions to either of those are limited in comparison to my consumption of others' content. I've deleted my Instagram account and haven't felt like I'm missing anything. My Facebook feed is filled with clickbait and auto-playing videos. I think people are starting to recognize that your social presence catches up to you later on in life, and as a result are flocking to semi-private networks like Twitter (via private profiles), Instagram (again using private profiles) and Snapchat. Using these networks in such a way removes the anxiety of posting to a large audience, and in some cases (Snapchat) you can easily control the audience who sees your posts. I think this is really valuable. The other commonality between these apps is that none of them require your real name - you can choose to mask your identity, or make yourself easily discoverable publicly (especially Twitter). Oh yeah, and none of these apps require that you sign in with Facebook. I think asking for a Facebook login is just about the laziest way to attempt to harvest data about your users, and it's not as though they no longer recognize this (or at the very least, it's yet ANOTHER app asking for you to associate your account with your Facebook account.) Monetization in apps of the future will rely on creative new ways of associating non-identifying data. This will mean relying more on the information the user generates vs. the information they give us explicitly (Who are your friends? Where did you go to school? etc). It should be an interesting next few years for the big players like Facebook. It's certainly been interesting seeing Snapchat rise to such success with such a simple concept. I think there's a potential to "Snapchat-ize" every major feature of Facebook into many wildly successful apps. Now, what's more important than photos?

mbesto 12y ago
This is good insight, thanks for sharing. > Using these networks in such a way removes the anxiety of posting to a large audience What I've noticed about Twitter and Instagram is that because they're semi-private it means people get WAY more upvotes on their content. Thus, for a younger generation, they'll flock to the networks where their voice is heard the highest. Kids get sick of "Sally Cheerleader" getting 135 likes and "SOOO BEAUTIFUL" comments from everyone else in their school. As this group ages they'll see the value in LinkedIn/FB when non-anonymity can potentially means real cold hard cash in their pockets and the cycle will repeat itself. > Monetization in apps of the future will rely on creative new ways of associating non-identifying data. I disagree. For the last 15 years we've been asking publishers to "get more creative" with advertising. All that means is that Forbes now gives you a 15 second ad before clicking through to it's content. There's nothing creative about that. I do however think many app vendors will start charging for their apps as opposed to relying on advertising in the future.

Kiro 12y ago

What's a subtweet?

indielol 12y ago

Here in India, all college communication happens on WhatsApp, except when communicating with teachers, for which everybody exclusively uses email.