DECODE BLOG

That’s according to latest figures from Gallup.

Samir Khan Citizen, Generation Y, U.S.

Harvard Business School professor asked this question and came up with a painfully banal answer: To look at pictures.

“I just wondered why people spend so much time on these sites; what do they do?”

The biggest discovery: pictures. “People just love to look at pictures,” says Piskorski. “That’s the killer app of all online social networks. Seventy percent of all actions are related to viewing pictures or viewing other people’s profiles.”

Why the popularity of photos? Piskorski hypothesizes that people who post pictures of themselves can show they are having fun and are popular without having to boast.

Another draw of photos (and of SN sites in general) is that they enable a form of voyeurism.

Given that the primary interest people have in social networking sites is voyeurism, it is difficult for organizations looking to leverage social networking tools for their own purposes. Few people click on advertising on social networks, or visit corporate organizational zones.

Rather, people look to communicate. If you have something to engage in a two-way conversation about, well, that’s a start - but it is hardly the transformational tool that will help you attract young people to your cause or buy more of your knick knacks.

Samir Khan Strategy, U.S. Social Netwokring

According to the Pew Research Centre, Americans think think that the generation gap has gotten wider. They just don’t think it’s as big of a deal. Interesting tidbit: pretty much everyone thinks older adults have superiour moral values.

Samir Khan U.S., Youth Trends Technology, Values

The New York Times has a snazzy interactive graphic showing the results of how Americans spend their days. You can track differences between various demographic categories, including age range. What this survey terms “computer use” accounts for a tiny fraction of how people aged 15-24 spend their leisure time.

This flies in the face of conventional wisdom about how youth populations are glued to their computer screens. Is this a case of a flawed survey methodology? Or are our assumptions about the dominant nature of online experiences completely wrong?

Samir Khan Generation Y, U.S. Internet, Leisure, Media Usage, Online

As Conor Clarke notes “this piece gets written every year.” Educational professionals have long fretted about how First World countries with fewer days of school (U.S., Canada, New Zealand) compete against those with more (Japan, South Korea, etc.) Kids have long been shown to forget what they learned the previous year in the summer months. Going back to school requires some reorientation. As Clarke notes, he length of the summer break amplifies a class divide.

Those children of wealthier parents benefit from all sorts of edifying experiences — lower class kids don’t. In the U.S., the Obama administration has already expressed its displeasure at the status quo. Time will tell if the U.S. is able to muster the political will to change.

Samir Khan Students, U.S. Education

A profile of Brian Deese in the New York Times. When’s the last time you heard of someone under 35 occupying a senior role in a Western civil service?

This likely would not have happened even 10 years ago. The notion of seniority is essential to how most government organizations in the world organize themselves. Granted younger people are often well-represented in political staff, whose jobs are largely administrative and logistical… But the notion that a young person could guide one of the key economic transformations of the coming years is truly remarkable.

What does this say about the changing culture of meritocracy in the U.S. civil service? Would something similar even be possible in Canada or Europe?

Are there any other examples I’m not aware of?

Samir Khan Citizen, Employee, U.S., Young Employees Government

One advantage of tracking studies is that they help us contextualize modern “crisis” points in a historical context.  Harris Interactive’s has been running the Met Life Survey of the American Teacher since 1994.  Some surprising findings:

• Teachers are now more satisfied with their profession than ever before (40% were very satisfied in 1984, now 62% are)
• The number of teachers who rate the academic standards of their school as excellent has doubled (from 24% in 1984 to 53%).
• More teachers report that that at least 3/4 of their students are preapred to learn at their grade level (54% now as opposed to 44% in 1984).

More here.

Samir Khan Citizen, Generation X, Generation Y, U.S. Education

Slate’s resident journalism grump Jack Shafer regularly makes mincemeat of trend fad journalism , so I’d be curious about what he’d say about a recent New York Times article on teens addicted to text messaging. Spurred on by unlimited text cell phone plans, American teens are now sending almost 80 messages a day, more than double that of the average user.

This is naturally psychologists some concern about the impact on grade, sleep patterns, and attention spans. Sherry Turkle of MIT worries:

“Among the jobs of adolescence are to separate from your parents, and to find the peace and quiet to become the person you decide you want to be,” she said. “Texting hits directly at both those jobs.”

And fair enough. Undoubtedly technology changes behaviour. We have been worrying about the impact of technology on youth development for years now. The telephone was once described as an psychologically isolating device, as was television, the Internet, instant messaging, birth control… the list goes on. At some point the ballpoint pen was described as being destructive to handwriting, allowing people to write faster (without thinking carefully)…

The question in my mind is not about the specifics about how technology is enabling teenaged distraction. The worry here is that kids are hiding their phones under their tests, texting gossip when they should be learning algebra.

And that may be a real concern… But articles like these piece together anxieties and bits of data without really engaging with the issue. But if this is an epidemic, then let’s see some real data that there’s a cause and effect. And then let’s have a real conversation about the root of this desire to always be in touch…

Also, where are the articles about Baby Boomers and their addiction to Blackberrys?

Updated:  The New York Times also recent ran an article on the epidemic of teenaged hugging.  No joke.

Samir Khan Attitudes, Generation Y, Social Networking, U.S., Youth Trends Technology, Text Messaging

The now Toronto-based guru Richard Florida, the future of consumption can be observed in what people feel are “necessary items in the latest Pew Internet Survey. But Florida takes the ball and runs with it, pointing out that this kind of tracking survey doesn’t account for what he calls “intangible” spending:

Iff we look closely it’s possible to discern some emergent threads of a new consumption pattern. We’re already experiencing the fall of some of the biggest symbols of post-war consumption - big cars and SUVs, oversized suburban McMansions, and conspicuous consumption of various sorts. There’s a shift toward smaller cars and smaller dwellings, toward walkable neighborhoods; toward more authentic, organic and energy-efficient products; and from material goods to experiences generally.

It’s an intriguing idea, and will have tremendous implications for young people living through this transition. As much as recent economic and environmental trends have forced people to rethink how and where they live, we are still prisoners of an infrastructure designed for the last 30 years, not the future.

That shift towards a more responsible consumer lifestyle is still a luxury in today’s economy. When will it become the norm? And who will drive it?

Samir Khan Consumer, Generation Y, U.S.

In the category of “not-so-surprising” and “surprising” you can now file the Pew Centre’s latest report on the 2008 U.S. Election. Unsurprisingly, the Internet was more likely to be source of election information than a newspaper. Remarkably, 10% of the population used Facebook or Myspace for gathering election information or to become involved.

Another nugget:

Politically-active internet users are moving away from news sites with no point of view to sites that match their political views, and this is especially true among younger voters.

What happens to a political culture where people are not exploring opposing viewpoints?

Samir Khan Citizen, Civic Participation, Generation X, Generation Y, U.S., Voting