A flur­ry of arti­cles have been writ­ten in recent weeks about the usage (or oth­er­wise) of social media by that noto­ri­ous­ly fick­le demo­graph­ic: teenagers.  Giv­en the amount of con­flict­ing evi­dence, con­sumer mar­keters could be for­giv­en for scratch­ing their heads in try­ing to make sense of this sec­tor. How­ev­er, there are some impor­tant gen­er­al lessons to be drawn from the social media habits of the youth mar­ket.

The New Year kicked off with an inter­est­ing blog post, A Teenager’s View On Social Media, writ­ten by Andrew Watts, a 19-year-old stu­dent from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas in Austin. Watts him­self was admirably clear about what he was set­ting out to do: “I’m not an expert at this by a long shot and I’m sure there will be data that dis­proves some of the points I make, but this is just what I’ve noticed.”

In oth­er words, he was sim­ply shar­ing anec­do­tal­ly what he had observed about his own social media usage and his imme­di­ate peer group. How­ev­er, that hasn’t stopped many peo­ple from extrap­o­lat­ing from this to mak­ing gen­er­al pro­nounce­ments on usage as a whole.

Indeed, Watts’ own assess­ment of var­i­ous social media chan­nels was sud­den­ly being tak­en as gospel in some quar­ters. His arti­cle is well worth read­ing in its entire­ty, but here are a few exam­ples of how he viewed key plat­forms:

• Face­book: “It’s dead to us. Face­book is some­thing we all got in mid­dle school because it was cool but now is seen as an awk­ward fam­i­ly din­ner par­ty we can’t real­ly leave. It’s weird and can even be annoy­ing to have Face­book at times. That being said, if you don’t have Face­book, that’s even more weird and annoy­ing.”
• Insta­gram: “By far the most used social media out­let for my age group. Although the most peo­ple are on Face­book, we actu­al­ly post stuff on Insta­gram. It’s always fas­ci­nat­ing to me to see a friend with 1500 friends on Face­book only get 25 likes on a pho­to yet on Insta­gram (where she has 800 fol­low­ers) she gets 253.”
• Twit­ter: “There are three main (teenage) groups of Twit­ter users: the ones who use it to complain/express them­selves, the ones who tweet with the assump­tion that their prospec­tive employ­er will even­tu­al­ly see what­ev­er they are say­ing, and the ones who sim­ply look at oth­er Tweets and do the occa­sion­al RT.”
• Snapchat: “Snapchat is quick­ly becom­ing the most used social media net­work, espe­cial­ly with the advent of My Sto­ry. Snapchat is where we can real­ly be our­selves while being attached to our social iden­ti­ty. With­out the con­stant social pres­sure of a fol­low­er count or Face­book friends, I am not con­stant­ly hav­ing these ran­dom peo­ple shoved in front of me.”

Buoyed by the atten­tion gar­nered by his orig­i­nal arti­cle, Watts offered his views on a few more social plat­forms, includ­ing YouTube, Google+, Vine, and Red­dit. Tak­ing all of these togeth­er, a con­sumer mar­keter tar­get­ing the youth sec­tor might be tempt­ed to dump Face­book for Insta­gram and Twit­ter for Snapchat.

A Dangerous Game

Of course, any­one can play the this game. UK blog­ger Mum­my Bar­row post­ed her own ver­sion based on the views of her 19-year-old son and 16-year-old daugh­ter. If these two teens are rep­re­sen­ta­tive of UK teenagers, you’d be for­giv­en for think­ing that social media is pret­ty much nonex­is­tent with­in this demo­graph­ic.

A fur­ther per­spec­tive was pro­vid­ed by Danah Boyd with her post: An Old Fogey’s Analy­sis of a Teenager’s View on Social Media. She pulls no punch­es:

“Andrew (Watts) is a very lucid writer and I com­plete­ly trust his depic­tion of his peer group’s use of social media. He wrote a bril­liant post about his life, his expe­ri­ences, and his inter­pre­ta­tions. His voice should be heard. And his can­dor is delight­ful to read. But his analy­sis can­not and should not be used to make claims about all teenagers. I don’t blame Andrew for this; I blame the read­ers — and espe­cial­ly tech elites and jour­nal­ists — for their inter­pre­ta­tion of Andrew’s post because they should know bet­ter by now.”

Her key point: “teens’ use of social media is sig­nif­i­cant­ly shaped by race and class, geog­ra­phy and cul­tur­al back­ground.” In oth­er words, “pre­sum­ing that a sin­gle person’s expe­ri­ence can speak on behalf of an entire gen­er­a­tion” is a dan­ger­ous game to play.

Of course, mar­keters have access to a panoply of respectable third-par­ty research sources to shed light on con­sumer social media usage (e.g., Pew Research in the U.S. or Ofcom in the UK). Look­ing back at the data from recent times, it is inter­est­ing to see that the “teenagers ditch­ing Face­book” meme has con­tin­ued to per­sist.

In August 2013, Pew Research not­ed that although enthu­si­asm for Face­book was wan­ing among teens, they hadn’t aban­doned it alto­geth­er. A Piper Jaf­fray sur­vey from Octo­ber 2014 sug­gest­ed that Face­book had plum­met­ed to third place in social media usage among teens in the U.S. In the UK in Decem­ber 2014, Ofcom sug­gest­ed that although Face­book pop­u­lar­i­ty was declin­ing the UK, Face­book remained the most pop­u­lar net­work with teens.

What Conclusions Can Consumer Marketers Draw?

Let Your Social Goals Guide You

It is worth tak­ing a cue from stu­dent Andrew Watts when he makes an impor­tant dis­tinc­tion between usage and pres­ence on a social net­work.

Although Insta­gram might be the most cur­rent­ly used social net­work (depend­ing on whose data you trust), the major­i­ty Face­book of teens every­where still main­tain a pres­ence on the plat­form. Broad­ly speak­ing, it is the dif­fer­ence between reach and engage­ment.

For exam­ple, Twit­ter has for some time been used by the major­i­ty of users as a media con­sump­tion plat­form. Most Twit­ter users sim­ply use it to access infor­ma­tion rather than tweet, reply, or share. For teenagers, Face­book might be going the same route.

From a mar­ket­ing stand­point, your social chan­nel mix should be dri­ven by your goal – reach, engage­ment or a mix of the two. Face­book, there­fore, could still be con­sid­ered a worth­while method of reach­ing the right demo­graph­ic, but not if you’re seek­ing engage­ment.

Social Media Behavior Is Constantly Evolving

More gen­er­al­ly, it sug­gests that social media behav­ior con­tin­ues to evolve and to treat teenagers (or any oth­er demo­graph­ic) as an homoge­nous group is unhelp­ful in achiev­ing spe­cif­ic goals.

Indeed, this chal­lenge of build­ing a coher­ent pic­ture of the social media habits of teenagers is a sub­set of the wider chal­lenges fac­ing all con­sumer mar­keters. The deci­sion jour­neys of all demo­graph­ic groups are becom­ing increas­ing­ly hard to pin down. Dana Boyd is right about teenagers as well every oth­er demo­graph­ic group: a sin­gle point of ref­er­ence shouldn’t be used as rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the whole seg­ment.

Yet these kind of anec­do­tal ref­er­ences increas­ing­ly pro­vide the siren song back­drop which might lure mar­keters into adapt­ing their approach­es erro­neous­ly. Mar­keters are oblig­ed to plan and bud­get on quar­ter­ly and annu­al cycles. And yet the con­sumer land­scape in rela­tion to social media appears to blur and change every few days.

Try­ing to iden­ti­fy gen­uine longer term social media trends on which to base longer term strate­gies is tough. As ever, plan­ning and exe­cu­tion should be dri­ven by data and KPIs with a direct line of sight to clear­ly defined goals, objec­tives, and audi­ences.

Use Your Own Data

In the end, mar­keters should look to their own data to deter­mine whether their activ­i­ty is deliv­er­ing the desired out­comes with their tar­get­ed audi­ences.

Google Ana­lyt­ics, for exam­ple, now pro­vides insight into site and app usage based on a vari­ety of demo­graph­ic dimen­sions includ­ing age, inter­est, and affin­i­ty.

An audience’s actu­al observ­able behav­ior in rela­tion to a spe­cif­ic brand out­come, rather than anec­dote, should ulti­mate­ly be the arbiter of mar­ket­ing activ­i­ty – whether we’re talk­ing about teenagers or 65-year-old smart­phone users.