The relationship between adolescents and makes rivers of ink run. They are considered early adopters because they are fans of technology and slaves to fashion. They sign up for everything new that comes out, they say out there, for his innate curiosity. From my point of view of almost, snif, fifty, that’s not quite right.
Being a teenager is hard.
You have your whole life ahead of you, okay, but that (which for adults seems like a blessing) for them is a granite slab carried on the backbecause your parents, your teachers and society in general want you to make decisions that, they tell you, will condition the rest of your life at the same time that you feel the call of the jungle caused by having your hormones at the point of snow.
You want to change the world, it’s more, you think you will change the world because you have not yet become as hypocritical as adults and you realize the reality: the world does not make sense. No, teenagers aren’t stupid, they just haven’t yet developed the filters that we adults put in front of our eyes so we don’t see what we don’t want to see. Faced with the vital anguish of being fully aware that the world is going to hell, some react with militant idealism and others decide that they are going to put the filter on them based on a party (let each one define the concept of «party» as they create). prompt). And of course, when you’re in that situation, tidying up your room so it doesn’t look like a crime scene isn’t the most important thing. Also, in the jungle of being a teenager you have to fight so that others don’t eat you.
The history of adolescents and social networks is an escape story. Reality is so suffocating that you need to get out of it in any way possible, and technology offers you a way out. Something that we adults later imitate and that is nothing new: it already happened with video games, which today no one in their right mind would dare to describe as “kid stuff” and much earlier with television, so why not Was the same thing going to happen with social media?
Teenagers and social networks: teenagers on the run
If we analyze the relationship between adolescents and social networks, we see that from the beginning they have been quite fickle: thanks to them (note: I speak of “teenagers” in a broad sense, say between 12 and 25 years) and practically all social networks have followed the same pattern, which is basically the following:
- A new social network is launched
- Teens join her en masse
- Their parents want to know what their children are doing and they get into the same network
- Those same parents discover that the social network is cool and start using it
- teenagers discover horrified that not only their parents, but also their uncles, cousins, grandparents and their parents’ friends are also in the same social network
- There is a mass flight of adolescents to a new minority social network.
This has been repeated in a loop from the beginning. The history of adolescents and social networks is an eternal race. Which is good for those who decide to create a social network, because they know that they have an audience eager to find a space where adults are not yet involved. It happened with Facebook (teenagers went to ) and has followed a pattern similar to this: Facebook>Tuenti>Twitter>Instagram>Snapchat>
You will notice that it is not Google+which was such a morrocotudo failure that not even the teenagers paid attention to it, as well as some others that I may have skipped.
They and they were very comfortable in TikTok… until covid hit and the party was over. TikTok grew like foam during the months of confinement, when millions of bored adults discovered that making short videos of shit is cool. And if the adults like it, the teenagers run away in terror.
There is nothing worse if you are a teenager than posting something on a social network and your father or uncle leaving you a like or, worse yet, a comment. I correct, yes there is something worse: that your parents or your grandparents make allegedly funny videos on TikTok. As those of you who have children know, “it’s not funny” is the most repeated phrase between 13 and 20 years old.
Therefore, we are in the flight phase of TikTok. Where?
Where are the teenagers now?
The fact that a server is a bit weird in social networks (check out my Instagram or my Twitter, but not the professional, the other… if you find it) has its advantages. Among them, that I find out what twenty-somethings do because they follow me (you can see that they find it funny, at my age and with these looks) with which I think I’m not very far off the mark if I affirm that there are several crossed phenomena:
Discord
It doesn’t matter if you have a terrifyingly old interface (let’s call it ‘retro’) and as friendly as an artichoke. Discord is the new hype for most of those under 25.
What started as a place to comment on online video game games or find colleagues/rivals to play, has become an impregnable refuge, or so they think, due to its curious structure of «servers» where you enter by invitation and that have different chat rooms that are suspiciously reminiscent of the IRC of the 90s, where in addition to sharing games online there are video chat rooms and you can share the music you are listening to in, for example, , in addition to being able to load a music playlist and have an automatic DJ use it to liven things up.
Due to its retro aesthetic of the 90s and its ideal structure to form “tribes” with your colleagues, Discord is fashionable. It will last? Since Microsoft is determined to buy it and probably integrate it with the Xbox ecosystem, it could have a way, but I smell that it is a temporary shelter until they find another site.
Like Discord, Amazon’s streaming platform has gained a lot of support among younger audiences. Not in vain The fact of having specific tools for gamers that allow the transmission of video games live attracted a large young audience at the beginning, as well as something that does not happen in other social networks: people plug in the live video and, basically, . Also not easy to use (you have a long way to go to have an interface as simple as YouTube) which is also a barrier for the user accustomed to the easy (ie parents).
Yes, a return to the origins is taking place. The specialization of Twitter users in immediate news, politics, humor and in making everything that moves fall from a donkey, has left a hole in this network, which is increasingly more niche and less of a general public, that teenagers are rushing to fill.
It also helps a lot that Instagram is getting very, very conservative when it comes to censoring content. Conservative in plan lost town in the Utah desert. The long hand of Facebook is noticeable and the youngest do not like it at all, while Twitter is, for the moment, much more permissive with the content that is published.
Either way, the teenage public is still the one who sets the trend in social networks. Something that does not escape the nose of the companies that are behind these networks. How they go about monetizing them is another question, but the story of adolescents and social networks continues, waiting for a new network in which to take refuge.
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