The juggling generation
Too much media, too many choices? For young people, media fragmentation and multitasking is just a way of life, as Simon van Wyk writes.
“The rich are different than you and I,” US author F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote during the Roaring 20s. But in the ensuing 75 years, the average standard of living has climbed so high that the have-nots have access to luxuries undreamed of by the haves back in Fitzgerald’s day.
Sure, there are still examples of the “differences” of the rich, such as Ivana Trump’s insistence that every room in her home be vacuumed every time she wants to enter, so she doesn’t have to view unsightly footprints in her plush carpet, or the film boss who flew with his wife and two other couples to Mexico for Christmas and needed two corporate jets - one for the people and one for the presents. But I think the biggest differences in today’s society are not economic, but generational.
The way children view and experience the world is very different to their parents’ experience. That’s largely due to the massive changes that have occurred since the baby boomers were babies, particularly changes that have occurred in the last 10 years.
The over-30s grew up in World War II or the Cold War era, where there was a well-defined “enemy”, a world divided into two camps, and the knowledge that if conflict broke out, it would be huge and catastrophic, but at least it would be over with pretty quickly.
Younger people in the West, on the other hand, have memories only of post-Berlin Wall optimism, which reached its zenith with the Sydney Olympics, followed by the disparate but ongoing threat of terrorism in the wake of September 11 and Bali. There is now no clearly identified geographic “us” and “them”, as the regime changes in Afghanistan and Iraq have showed. Ambiguity is the order of the day.
On a more personal level, there has been an explosion in media options during the last few years that seems bewildering to adults, but which young people have taken in their stride. Adults can remember when the only media choices were newspaper, radio and television, while young people have always lived in a world with computers, gaming, the Internet, PlayStations, VCRs, DVDs and mobile phones.
Adults have to make a conscious choice to take on a new media option and shoehorn it in among the mix of other media they use, while young people have never known any different and have grown up multi-tasking.
You can see the difference when you go into your average suburban family home. I remember TV as an experience like cinema is today, sitting in a darkened room transfixed by what’s happening on the screen. Kids today rarely park themselves quietly in front of the TV, focusing on the program they’re watching. They’re more likely to have the TV on in the background while they do their homework, play on their GameBoy, SMS their friends or just engage in conversation with those around them. But they can still tell you what happened on their favourite show.
That’s why it doesn’t surprise me that young people’s consumption of new media is far out of proportion to other demographic groups. The Pew Internet & American Life Project has revealed that 18-29 year-olds make up 29% of Internet users, while only accounting for 14% of non-users 18 and older.
Another recent study by AOL confirmed that the Internet has become the primary communication tool for teens. It found that 81% of 12-17 year-olds use the Internet to email friends or relatives while 70% use instant messaging. For 18 and 19 year-olds the figures climb to 91% and 83%, respectively.
Fifty-six percent of that group prefer the Internet to the telephone, while 60% of all teens use the Internet for help when doing their homework.
When they’ve finished their homework, it’s off to the virtual mall. According to a landmark study published recently by Harris Interactive, 15% of young people’s spending is done online, with the group between the ages of 13 and 19 spending at the greatest rate of any age group in the ‘Generation Y’ category.
The study, “Born to Be Wired: Understanding the First Wired Generation”, confirms this profound shift in the way young people use media. During an average week, according to the Harris report, 13-24 year-olds spend 16.7 hours online (excluding email), 13.6 hours watching TV, 12 hours listening to the radio, 7.7 hours talking on the phone and only 6 hours reading books and magazine to keep up on personal interests. (This ties in with other surveys showing that daily newspaper readership among young people dropped from 50% in 1922 to 20% in 1998).
This age group, dubbed “Millennials”, thrive on media fragmentation and enjoy managing, controlling and personalising the various media, according to the study’s authors.
Sarah Fay, president of Carat Interactive, which commissioned the study, said the most striking finding was the fact that Millennials are extremely comfortable with media multitasking.
“We know they are juggling more media, making their attention spans shorter and more challenging to capture,” she said.
Although it was expected that Millennials would have used the Internet more for entertainment than information, the findings indicate they “approach the Web with an agenda, making search engines their first stop.” If they read about an item or a trend in a magazine, they will hop online to look for more information and shopping opportunities.
The bad news for marketers is that if you are marketing to young people (which includes anyone up to 30), you can’t put all your media eggs in one basket, or you will risk missing out on this whole segment. The good news is, there are plenty of different opportunities to get your message in front of an audience who are well trained in absorbing many messages at once. You just have to make sure each message is optimised to the medium.
The work involved in tailoring your messages for different media is greater, but the more marketers do this, the more they will understand the multitasking youth market.