A couple of weeks ago I got an email from facebook informing me that thanks to "my suggestion" my mother and my uncle had made it official and were now friends. It should have been quickly deleted and forgotten, but for some reason that email has been stuck in my head. I'm not exactly sure what it is that bothered me about the computer generated message. It could be the sentiment driving the new Toyota ads featuring the daughter chiding her parents for having only 19 friends on facebook. In the latest twist on the "kids may be hip with the trends but grownups know what matters" advertising narrative, she sits inside watching viral videos while they go on a road trip with their flesh and blood friends to the mountains. #ironyanyone?
With all this in mind I was very excited by a new Ad Age survey on media consumption that looked at each generation's hour by hour patterns. The takeaway, at least for me: the technologies may change but the core of our communications basically stays the same.
Lost somewhere between Generation X and the Millennials, I'm pretty happy with my own media consumption, social and otherwise even if it is a lesson in contradiction. A few hundred friends on facebook, several tweets a day, a couple of hours of political and financial TV news in the morning, streaming Netflix and a DVR full of shows I actually want to watch but with the memory of appointment TV.
Monday through Friday I'm more comfortable getting my news from blogs and websites however most Sunday mornings I'm in my pjs still reading the newspaper in print. I've had an iPhone or Blackberry my entire working life and a T1 line was put into my freshman dorm room one week after I arrived. These days most people email me at gmail but I still have a secret AOL account, a memento of instant message days gone by.
I cited the actual encyclopedia in book form while in school but have always had Google and Wikipedia to make me look smart at work. I just had to order another bookshelf to accommodate the hundreds of books I'm not sure I want the iPad to replace, my magazines still clog my mailbox, and a nice card still means more to me than a tweet. To say nothing of Pandora stations, a strange addiction to historical documentaries on Hulu and a canceled foursquare account.
Putting aside the most tech savvy among us, I always thought most people's media consumptions patterns are an accident of birth. While the above mentioned mother only wants to connect with her most trusted friends on facebook and "misses" shows because she was out to dinner, I actually enjoy knowing what college dorm mates and every member of my graduating class from high school are up to, even if I didn't really miss them after graduation and we've already covered my DVR. Of course a child born today won't know what it is like to "just loose track" of people and will assume any kind of media is available to them 24/7/365.
But the Ad Age Survey clarifies some less than accurate assumptions I had been holding: My first assumption, the younger you are the more likely you are to forego traditional media when you first roll out of bed in favor of updating your facebook page. After all, we are constantly hearing about the aging demographics for local TV news and the importance of headlines being under 140 characters. Turns out Baby Boomers, Generation X and Adult Millennials are all listening to the radio and watching TV in the morning but they are also consuming news and information online. In fact all three generations had online activities right behind radio and before TV, it is the Teen Millennials and iGen who shun the internet in favor of ipods, tv and radio. Sounds a lot like me begging my mother to let us listen to my mix tape rather than news on the radio doesn't it?
My second assumption, none of us is watching TV because we are too busy playing angry birds, was also wrong. TV advertisers should take some comfort that during primetime it's still the most popular activity for all five generations. The only problem, while 70% of Baby Boomers are tuning in and tuning everything else out, only 39% of iGen thinks TV is must see and about half of them are consuming another form of media simultaneously. Of course my grandparents were born in 1899 so they read Boston newspapers twice a day, I came about 80 something years later so I read newspapers all day and into the night. We're a naturally curious family my access is just different.
My third assumption, we're all obsessed with facebook, was confirmed however. At any given moment with the exception of hours where we're all sleeping and when the under 18 crowd is in school, more than 10% of all five generations are on the social media platform. For Gen X and Adult Millennials, that number gets up around 40% during our work day. I can't wait to see the first study that ties facebook to America's long term decreased work productivity.
But getting back to my mother and my uncle, I did tweet my confusion as to the necessity of such an email from facebook. Perhaps what bothered me so much was while the technology we use to communicate and share ideas may change, the basic messages always seem to stay the same and mine today: is there is no substitute for good old fashioned human commonsense?
Now social media like facebook and twitter has become a place where we can find the people of every age sharing their thoughts and engaging with others.
Social media sites have become place where age old people like to share their own experience and like engaging with others.