Why Teens Aren’t Using Twitter: We’re Lazy
8:18 Jul 14th, 2009 | 1 note
After reading Daniel Brusilovsky’s TechCrunch article Why Teens Aren’t Using Twitter: It Doesn’t Feel Safe, I felt compelled to put forward my own reasons for Twitter’s lack of popularity among our contemporaries. While Daniel says the reason is because teenagers don’t see Twitter as ‘safe’, I believe the reason teenagers don’t use Twitter is we are fickle creatures of habit.
It all stems from this question: “What is Twitter?”
That is the question that I, as a 16 year old like Daniel, hear from students every time I mention the addictive social network and the one I can never answer with any sort of adequacy. I can say anything; celebrities use it to get in touch with their fans, news sites post new stories, you can let people know what you’re doing, it doesn’t matter. I can say anything and be met with the same response time and time again: “Why?”
And there you have it, the unanswerable question. If you’re an average student with Facebook, there is no reason. The truth is there is no reason for the average student to use Twitter. It fills no gap in their social life like Facebook does.
But how did Facebook become that glue for every student to stay in contact? Simple, everyone started using it. Once enough people started using Facebook, everyone else followed. That flocking has not happened with Twitter. It comes down to that all important question: “Why?” While teenagers use Facebook, there is no reason why the average student should use Twitter.
Teenagers don’t use twitter because it feels unsafe, because Facebook gives them friends’ email addresses and instant messaging screen names and phone numbers, or because an SMS message costs too much. You have to understand that in schools, there are no discussions of ‘Social Networks’, there is only discussion of Facebook. There is no thinking of Facebook as a closed network and Twitter as an open one. You have to understand that there is nothing in students’ experience outside of Facebook.
Teenagers are lazy. We find one spot and we stay there, regardless of the fact that that grassy knoll over there looks more comfortable than where we’re sitting. Using that logic, the only reason teenagers don’t use Twitter is because Facebook came first and that’s where we’ll stay.
