Learning from Teens About Social Media
Not surprisingly, teens are pretty smart about the way they use social media. Tim Nekritz wrote about this in a smart blog post on 22 October:what 15 freshmen taught me about social media. Here’s one of the most telling lines of Tim’s post:
I asked if they would feel different joining a group started by an institution vs. one started by a student. The enlightening response: We don’t even look for that or care. We just want to meet other students. Some even said they would prefer the groups be created by the college because they would trust the information more.
For these teens, it’s pretty clear: Facebook is a social experience. Tim’s small sample confirms what lots of other researchers, including danah boyd have to say. Karlyn Morrisette made a similar point:
Teenagers have always made a really clear distinction between things they use for their social lives and things they use for “business”. Friends are for social media. Colleges are “business.”
Disentangling professional and personal
So I’ve decided that I need to emulate those teens and straighten out my social networks. Maybe it’s because I’m trying to avoid engagement fatigue, or just organize my online life more effectively. Or maybe because my inner introvert nature is asserting itself.
But, whatever. Here are some of the changes I’ll be making.
Facebook: I resisted Facebook for a long time. Now that I’m using it regularly, I’ve become aware that its value is for me to communicate with friends and family. I really like the fact that a lot of people from my local, physical community are on Facebook. It’s a reality of my life that I can’t be as involved as I’d like to be with some of my neighbors in FTF relationships and Facebook offers a way for us to keep in touch: it’s better for me than the telephone. Same with family and more far-flung friends.
Some of my Facebook friends are people I’ve met professionally—folks with whom I have a relationship that goes well beyond what LinkedIn can offer. I’ve learned about their spouses and kids and it’s nice to have the glimpse of their lives that Facebook affords.
But the truth is that I’ve also friended a lot of folks I barely know, for the vaguest of reasons. So in the next week or so, I’m going to unfriend a slew of people and resign from a mess of fan pages. No offense to anyone: but I need to keep Facebook as a place where I stay in touch with people that I know fairly well.
LinkedIn: Yeah, I agree: LinkedIn has some deficiencies, but it’s the best we’ve got right now for professional networking. And it’s what I’m going to rely on for business relationships. If you are primarily a business friend/acquaintance, I’d welcome the opportunity to connect with you LinkedIn if we aren’t already connected. But not on Facebook.
Twitter: If you follow me on Twitter, you’ve probably guessed that I’ve grown to like it. [Thank you once again for the incentive to join, @KarineJoly!] It’s amazing to see how much you can communicate in 140 characters. I work alone some of the time, so Twitter provides a bit of a watercooler experience for me. And I really like the fact that Twitter provides the opportunity to segment one’s identity.
I have three Twitter IDs; most people reading this blog post will be interested in following either mStonerblog, which I use for business-related tweeting, or, for the next few months, CASE5sm. We set this up to communicate around the pre-conference workshop on social media at CASE V. I’m going to do some selective pruning of the people I follow on @mStonerblog: nothing drastic, but shedding some people whose insights are less valuable to me than others.
Making choices
I’m focused on these three tools because I’ve already found them personally valuable and, for now, they’re where I want to focus my activity. I am well aware that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of other communities in which I can participate if I choose to do so. I’m not much of a photographer, for example, so I’m really not into Flickr, and though I watch videos on YouTube like any netizen, I don’t spend a whole lot of time commenting on them. So Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter offer the best possible options for connecting with the other people I value in my personal and professional life.
Others are making similar choices. For example, I was interested to see last week that even Mr. .Edu Social Networking himself, Brad J. Ward, pruned his Twitter account. The blog post explaining the how and why makes fascinating reading.
One of my continuing realizations is that I just don’t have enough time to have a healthy marriage, do my work, stay connected with my mStoner colleagues, our clients, and the people I value in my personal life, and try every new tool or social networking trend that surfaces.
And, you know what? As social networking mania fades, people will make the same kinds of choices I’m making. Our audiences, members, supporters, alumni, donors, prospective students, etc.: they will also experience their own “a ha” moment, if they haven’t already, and start to think a lot more carefully about how they manage their online social life.
Can they really follow every fan page for every group they’ve had a tangential association with? How many updates from people they barely know are they willing to read when they open their Facebook page? How many Facebook games can they play? How many tweets from how many sporting events can they stomach on a Sunday morning when they log into TweetDeck or Nambu?
It all comes down to relevance. How relevant the content we’re consuming—in the form of tweets, blog posts, YouTube videos, Flickr images—is to our personal needs and interests. Time and attention are my most precious resources and I want to use them as wisely as possible.
It’s great having you on twitter. Just wish you’d take more twitpics of your meals. :)
And thanks for the Dr. Phil moment. My wife will be happy to know our marriage problems are due to social media addiction and not my roommate choice at #heweb09 (still love you Mr. Prentiss).
Posted on November 18, 2009 by Todd
Thanks for the comment, Todd. You keep my Twitterstream lively: I appreciate it. And I’ll work on the Twitpics, I promise, though I usually tweet stuff like that via my third Twitter acct. But no #gagshakes, I promise.
Posted on November 18, 2009 by Michael Stoner
You’ve articulated my thinking and conclusions perfectly: Facebook for friends and family; LinkedIn and Twitter for professional.
However, I’m still learning about ways my clients can use Facebook to meet their goals and how I can help them, so there’s a bit of overlap.
Thanks for another thought-provoking item, Michael.
Posted on November 19, 2009 by Mary Ann Hill
Well said, Michael. The services we’re all using will put pressure on us, as best they can, to use them for multiple reasons and purposes. Facebook will add tools that make it easier to segment personal from professional contacts; LinkedIn will “socialize” its functions, integrating our travel plus some business functions (how about getting “linked in” to your bank or your kid’s school?). But ultimately, as users we can help influence which tools live on, and for which purposes.
Reading about your decision process and actions helps me visualize our progress toward whatever the next plateau turns out to be.
Posted on November 21, 2009 by Andy Shaindlin