The New Media Audience

Tim Windsor posts a shout-out to Don Tapscott's book about the new generation of digital natives, Grown Up Digital, along with a telling photograph to illustrate that audience and why it's different from the audience that most of us are familiar with (and members of). As Tapscott writes:

If Wonder bread builds strong bodies in 12 ways, this generation is different from its parents in 8 ways. 

To wit:

• They want freedom in everything they do, from freedom of choice to freedom of expression.
• They love to customize, personalize.
• They are the new scrutinizers.
• They look for corporate integrity and openness when deciding what to buy and where to work.
• The Net Gen wants entertainment and play in their work, education and social life.
• They are the collaboration and relationship generation.
• The Net Gen has a need for speed–and not just in video games.
• They are the innovators.

That last point is critical. Those of us of the older generation (can't believe I'm typing that!) are really from a different age these days. We're have media and business behaviors and desires that are radically different from this new generation. We're a bunch of old fogeys, horse-and-buggy drivers in an era of supersonic vehicles.

Th members of that new generation are not only the new audience–they'll be building the new successful products (they already are, in fact). When I talk to journalism classes, I tell them to go out and create and build things that they and their friends will like and use–not what our generation wants. We're dinosaurs, and the way we consume media is fading fast. 

Everybody in the media business needs to be looking hard at this new generation's values and targeting products to them–and letting that generation take the driver's seat in deciding what those products will be. Seems obvious–but too many of us are still clinging to what is increasingly clearly past.

Comments

[John Welsh]

Do you know? I am not sure I agree totally with this (and I am reading the book!). If I look at my own media company, there are just as many twentysomethings who are slow to jump onboard digital as those who are older. Indeed it is some of those editors and reporters with years of experience who are moving fastest and understanding quicker.

I don't think youth enjoys immunity from lathargy and laggardness in these rapidly changing times. But I do think experience of media in general helps.

[John Welsh]

Me again! Just read this post that I thought might interest -
http://thefuturebuzz.com/2009/01/02/gen-y-observations/.

[Michael Staton]

I dislike it when the previous generation tries to intellectualize our (/my) generation.... He's part right. There's more to it, less to it. In a way, most young people in every generation want freedom and expression, they want playtime jobs and are interested in their social lives. And they want the world to be fair and good (companies included). What this Tapscott is saying is not unique to our generation, what is partly unique is that there's a complete bifurcation in lifestyles in the sense that we do everything openly on the internet and previous generations never could. However, such a bifurcation also happened with the rise of the automobile and air travel. My great grandma probably said many of these things about my grandma.

[Mark Potts]

Michael: In general, I agree with you. It's impossible to generalize about a generation, and now that I'm on the other side of the ol' generation gap, it's amusing to find myself having older-generation reactions to things and realizing that I'm sounding more and more like my parents. It's ever thus, I suppose, that generations look askance at those that follow them (now get off my damn lawn!).

But that said, I do think there are fundamental differences in today's younger readers and customers, many wrought or enabled by technology, than what we've seen before (similar to the changes you allude to with the automobile and air travel). Most importantly, I think, the older generation ignores those shifts or looks down at them at its peril.
Mark

[jackparsons]

Are there differences? Okay, then: let's quantify them.

- They're less likely to use email than their parents.
- They're more likely to have a computer at the center of their living space than a TV or phone.
Etc.

The list posted above reads like a horoscope that just about anyone can apply to themselves regardless of when they were born. If you believe there are substantial differences that we ignore or belittle at our peril, what are they?

[Mark Potts]

Jack:
I guess the best I can do is suggest you read Tim Windsor's full post, if not the book. The things that Tapscott is talking about are far more complicated than you seem to think. The products the traditional news business is building now are generally being rejected by this younger audience. I'd rather meet that audience's needs and grow along with it.

[jackparsons]

I don't know if it's complicated or not: I'm simply trying to figure out what those needs are. I've been sitting on this rocker on a couple of different blogs in the last couple of weeks, and no one has yet been able to describe for me how the new generation is different outside of banal generalities, like Tapscott's above.

In fact, the two items that I listed are more specific than any of the experts I've read, and I'm going to go out on a limb to state that younger people using email less than their parents is far more crucial than the fact that they like sparklies on their myspace.

I mean, "Customization"? I don't suppose you ever saw a teenage girl's high school locker in the late 1980s, did you?

Even the terminology: "Net Gen" is something I'd expect to read in Wired circa 1994 (I actually have a copy of Carla Sinclair's old book Net Chick which uses terminology like this). I'm around young people, I think, more than the average person of my age. I've never once heard that term, nor do I even hear them call it the Net. This is like PJ O'Roarke's famous description of Al Gore as "an old person's idea of what a young person is like".

I'm sorry, Mark, but this sounds like the same marketing clap-trap by someone seeking to define the market and make a claim to expertise. We've been seeing books of this dubious genre for decades.

[Greg]

I think the most crucial difference is really what's crushing the old media business in general: my (young) generation is used to getting something for nothing. Whether it's pirated MP3s or free news online, we don't have much respect for the creators of content. It's a very "me" centered model, which works fine until you bankrupt your source of entertainment.