Teens tell all

I attended the Microsoft Research Symposium on Social Computing 2008 a few weeks ago in Redmond and as part of one of the tracks, someone had invited 3 young 18-19 year olds from Seattle to come and speak about their use of technology, how they saw technology in their lives and their expectations for the future. Needless to say some of their statements kinda blew my mind and I thought I’d share some of my notes with you. For a little bit of context, these 3 students attend the Seattle Academy of Art and Science what I can only assume was a public school (in the British sense of the word) for children of the wealthier strata of Seattle. Here goes:

- Their parents were as old as most of the parents of the people attending the symposium who were mostly in their 30s. They said their parents didn’t know how to text on phones and didn’t understand what the value of Facebook was.

- They didn’t read any books that didn’t directly relate to schoolwork.

- They didn’t think much about the value of open source software as their all had laptops given to them with all the software they needed already.

- They had laptops since the 6th grade.

- They didn’t really write anything down anymore as they didn’t feel the need to, having access to laptops.

- They hardly used their cell phones. ( This is unsurprising and probably a by-product of the US being so far behind in terms of cell phone penetration.)

Overall, I thought some of their comments were the true and extreme results of having been exposed to technology fairly quickly and at a young age and being from wealthier backgrounds. One of them, a young woman very active with extra-curricular activities, had a better camera than most people in the room. The thoughts from the attendees were that these young people didn’t represent the majority at all, just a part of the elite, and generally didn’t know what to do with their comments or how to interpret them in any meaningful way. When faced with the challenge of understanding young people and their relationship to technology, when does a small sample become “the norm” in the eyes of an audience of adults. Hard to tell.

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