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Teens don’t use Twitter, nor do they read newspapers. They also hate advertisements, and they’re really, really into free music.
Nope, those aren’t the results of some bone-headed new survey; instead, they come straight from the keyboard of one Matthew Robson, a 15-year-old Morgan Stanley intern whose candid report on his friends’ TV, music, and online habits set the media world on fire this week.
According to The Guardian, Robson’s bosses at Morgan Stanley’s European Media group were so impressed with the teen’s report—”one of the clearest and most thought-provoking insights we have seen,” one Morgan Stanley exec said—that they promptly sent it out to their C-level clients.
The response, apparently, was immediate, with “dozens and dozens” of high-level clients “e-mailing and calling all day,” the Guardian reports.
As for Robson’s report, well … the kid didn’t mince words. “Teenagers do not use Twitter” (as quoted by the Guardian). Why? Because updating Twitter on your phone counts as a text message, and teens would rather use their texts to ping friends than update a Twitter profile “that no one is viewing,” Robson writes.
He goes on, dissing newspapers because teens “cannot be bothered” to read physical pages when they can get the condensed version online or on the tube. As for banner ads on the Web? “Extremely annoying and pointless,” Robson observes (according to the Guardian). By the same token, Robson says teenagers are “very reluctant” to pony up for tunes, preferring to stream or share them for free.
Of course, Robson is only speaking for himself (and his friends, I’m assuming). Still, I think it’s great that he took his assignment at Morgan Stanley seriously, writing a direct, honest report that (apparently) hit media bigwigs in the solar plexus.
Youth Dynamix 