What do young people actually think about social media?

Q: “How do you think your generation will be defined by other generations to come?”

A: “Maybe people will say we were more creative, more driven, definitely more competitive…more willing to create different identities just for social media... the creation of fake people, probably not genuine people either”

A: “Like you can live your life with Facebook, you can be a completely different person, you can be whoever you want to be as long as you are on the internet and you have got a Twitter account and you know how to say the right things. You have got Facebook and you can make your life look fantastic.”

What do young people actually think about social media?

Today, they are linked inextricably to the phenomenon of social media and attaching a virtual component to their lives is done almost without thought by brands who seek to define them and to engage them. And why wouldn’t brands do that? When we spoke to over 1,500 young people this year, 78% of them said they were using social media ‘often’ or ‘all the time’. It makes sense to attach a digital arm to this generation and it makes sense for brands trying to connect with them, to reach them via these media channels.

Or does it?

The thing is, social media has exploded onto the scene and the uptake of social media by people has happened so fast that we’re still reeling. Brands have scrambled to climb atop the wave and push out their message via this new platform using a ‘tick box’ kind of approach. Reach target number of ‘likes’ on Facebook? Tick. Adapt core advertising message to 140 character nugget? Tick. Try and “have a conversation” with consumers online? Tick. Sort of.

The thing is, by using this ‘tick box’ approach to show that you “get” social media in the most elementary way, you may be missing the point. Are these ticks actually useful at engaging your target audience beyond surface value recognition? To determine that, you need to unpack why young people are using social media and to understand how they see it fitting into their lives.

Why you ask? Let us tell you.

Sure, young people are online a lot and use social media a lot but as everyone knows, this media channel is fundamentally different to the media platforms that came before it in that it is a platform for having a conversation rather than taking in information without comment. Can you imagine if a phone call you were having with a friend was interrupted every five minutes with an advert that mimicked the way you talk to your friend? It’s a jarring thought isn’t it? It would annoy you, wouldn’t it? Accordingly, when brands try to spread their message across this media channel they need to understand the social graces, the cultural codes that dictate appropriate behaviour.

So, we decided to try to expose those codes and to unpack what young people actually think and feel about their social media use. This is where it got interesting.

Our research exposed a sense of ambiguity among young people over the role they feel social media has to play in their lives. They were inclined to be disdainful of over-reliance on social media and of people who showed that over-reliance by sharing too much personal information online.

They did not like addressing the extent to which social media impacted their social lives. Even though most of them are on it all the time and 47% agreed that they use it to stay in touch with friends, only one in five of them agreed ‘if you don’t use social media, you’re missing out on socialising’ and 27% strongly disagreed with the statement.

Similarly, while only 18% agreed with the statement “I use social media to showcase who I am and what I care about” 64% of those surveyed felt that other young people share too much information on social media and 51% felt that other people show a fake version of themselves online. Virtually nobody felt that they were doing it, but over half felt that other people were doing it.

Brands that try to mimic the behaviours young people exhibit online might be missing the mark. Young people might not like being confronted with those behaviours and it might not make sense to them, for a brand to try and occupy their social media space. We know young people use social media, but until we “get” how they think and feel about this channel, we’re shooting blind trying to reach them through it.

An area for exploration, we think…