The Chaser has seen the future, and it is . . . text? Chasers are always looking for the new, the next big thing, but it turns out the next big thing has been around for thousands of years.
Recently, the Pew Internet & American Life project released a new study on how teens use the Internet. It has taken us a little time to dig into the report and to get a glimpse into a group who has grown up with the Internet as a fact of life. According to the survey,
The number of teenagers using the internet has grown 24% in the past four years and 87% of those between the ages of 12 and 17 are online. Compared to four years ago, teens’ use of the internet has intensified and broadened as they log on more often and do more things when they are online.
For this group, the Internet is much larger than just the Web: email, gaming, the Web and text messaging are part of Internet generation’s life. No surprise there. However, there is one other thing they do online: read the news.
76% get news online. That represents about 16 million people and signifies growth of 38% in the number of teens getting news online since 2000.
As traditional media (newspapers and televisions) engage in a never ending parade of focus groups, surveys and studies to try and figure out what will get teens to read the newspaper or watch the nightly newscast, perhaps the answer is to realize this group lives online and focus its efforts there.
However, like many things, those in traditional American media may already be behind the curve.
One thing that got Chaser HQ’s attention is the number of teens who use text and instant messaging. According to the study,
75% of online teens — or about two-thirds of all teenagers — use instant messaging, compared to 42% of online adults.
48% of teens who use instant messaging say they exchange IMs at least once every day.
And to prove how much teens rely on instant messaging, the survey found that almost one-fifth of online teens use IM as their main way to deal with friends: 19% of online teens said they use IM most often to connect with friends, compared to 8% for email and 71% for the telephone.
And teens messaging is not tied to the desktop:
Close to half of teens (45%) own a cell phone, and 33% have used a cell phone to send a text message. Texting on cell phones is particularly common among those who already go online frequently and use other internet tools often. Teens who have cell phones are heavy users of online communication tools. One in four cell phone-owning teens have used their phone to connect to the internet.
Already in 2003 movie companies were trying to blame text messaging for a drop in movie attendance, arguing “instant reviews” during and immediately after a film caused teens’ friends to stay away. While evidence for this argument is scarce, the impact of text messaging for what journalists do is substantial.
While movie companies may have been too quick to blame text messaging, many have been too slow to respond to it. And while text messaging via SMS and instant messaging are different technologies, they point to a problem the Chaser has been prophesying about since its inception: convergance is more than just pushing stories to Web pages.
The Pew study reveals that as teenagers mature, their expectations about accessing information will be very different from the vision many media companies have set-out. They will expect to be able to access information and news where ever and whenever they want.
Instant messaging is only the beginning. Just imagine getting headlines via a video game.