Multi-Channel Teens are Super-Communicators

When I was a teen our parents were constantly harping on us about the time we spent on the phone with our friends. Well, when we weren’t at school or hanging out in person, the phone was the only way to communicate with our friends (minus the old pen and paper for long-distance friends). Today’s teens have so many more communication channels available to them - its enough to make a parent’s head spin. After all, “get off the phone, give me your cell, no more texting, enough IM’ing, log off MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, disconnect Skype, and close your email” is quite a mouthful!!

A recent study shows that 64% of teens are participating in at least one type of online content creation which is up dramatically from numbers a few years ago.

According to a post at Social Media Optimization:

Girls continue to dominate most elements of content creation. Some 35% of all teen girls blog, compared with 20% of online boys, and 54% of wired girls post photos online compared with 40% of online boys. Boys, however, do dominate one area – posting of video content online – online teen boys are nearly twice as likely as online girls (19% vs. 10%) to have posted a video online somewhere where someone else could see it.

And it is not just content creation that is interesting teens. It is also about participating in conversations fueled by that content. Nearly half (47%) of online teens have posted photos where others can see them, and 89% of those teens who post photos say that people comment on the images at least “some of the time.” Teens who post videos report a similarly large incidence of feedback, with nearly three quarters (72%) of video posters receiving comments on their videos.

It really doesn’t surprise me that girls and boys are using social media sites differently - after all, traditionally, boys and girls communicate differently period. I have watched my own kids embrace technology and social media and they go about it very differently. My son is more interested in racking up points at Club Penguin than he is in making “friends” where as my girls weigh success based on the number of “friends” they have and the “cool” stuff they purchase for their online characters.

My son is into using Skype to talk to his friends while playing video games but my daughter would rather IM, email, and call her friends - all in the same evening.

Here are some more interesting statistics from the same post:

Asked about the communication they have every day with their friends, the multi-channel teens say:

• 70% talk daily with friends on a cell phone
• 60% send text messages daily
• 54% instant message
• 47% send messages daily over social network sites
• 46% talk to friends on a landline phone
• 35% spend time with friends in person daily
• 22% send email every day to friends

Are your kids multi-channel teens? I know I am a multi-channel Mom and fully expect my kids to follow suit as they get older.