Young People, Social Media and Government
If you have any doubt that companies and even governments are targeting young people in their information and communication campaign, you can set those doubts aside now. Even during the Economic recession in the United States, companies are still themselves how to target the youth and young adults so they could continue making these youngsters spend their money. This is a real lesson for teenagers and for young adults in the United States and in the Philippines. Be wary of advertisements telling you to spend your money. These people want you to enjoy the best they have to offer yet at the expense of you and your parents’ financial stability in these difficult times. So be really critical and careful in spending those hard earned bucks.
Twitter and Young People
Nielsen released a report lately claiming that Teens are not very fond of Twitter, the microblogging and social networking Web platform. This has important implications for those who are reaching out to young people. If young people are in Twitter, then it makes sense for these marketers to expand their presence there. Before the emergence of Twitter, Facebook is a very big thing among young people. Now that Twitter is becoming a big marketing and promotional tool, people just want to know if it’s worth establishing presence via Twitter.
According to the Nielsen report:
Twitter’s footprint has expanded impressively in the first half of 2009, reaching 10.7 percent of all active Internet users in June. Perhaps even more impressively, this growth has come despite a lack of widespread adoption by children, teens, and young adults. In June 2009, only 16 percent of Twitter.com website users were under the age of 25. Bear in mind persons under 25 make up nearly one quarter of the active US Internet universe, which means that Twitter.com effectively under-indexes on the youth market by 36 percent.
Mashable, however, the uber popular Social Media Blog released a new set of statistics belying this report of Nielsen. Young People do actually use Twitter. They based this contention on new data from ComScore. According to ComScore’s report:
“As the Twitter audience has mushroomed in recent months – to 21 million U.S. visitors in July 2009 (note: this number represents visitors to the Twitter.com website and does not include API or mobile Twitter usage) – the younger age groups are the ones flooding in the fastest.
The share of visitors to Twitter under the age of 35 is increasing at a breakneck pace. The most notable positive shifts are evident among the 12-17 and 18-24 year old segments, which are coming at the expense of the 35+ segments.”
What does this mean for us, youth ministers and non-profit organizations dealing with young people?
We could add Twitter as one of the areas of engagement with young people. But this should be part of the overall strategy of the organization and not just a haphazard “just-to-be-there”‘ mindset. If you’re thinking of using Twitter for young people, you better check out how this could be integrated into the overall promotional and marketing strategy of the organization.
YouTube, Government and Young People
During the campaign of now President Barack Obama, he used New Media extensively. He had a website that people could check daily and sign up to. They could also tune in to Obama’s YouTube Channel. The Oath-taking of Pres. Obama is also a worldwide phenomenon with millions of people all over the world watching the proceedings! Talk about the integration of Old Media (Radio, Television and Print) with the New Media (blogs, websites, social networking sites)!
His use of social media partly explains why he was very successful in his campaign. Obama continued to empower the American citizens through his YouTube channel. It was kinda like Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal Radio Program during the Great Depression in the 1930s.
The Russian President, Dmitry Medvedev, followed Obama’s act. He also established his own YouTube Channel at http://www.youtube.com/kremlin. According to a news report from Yahoo:
In April, he announced the launch of his blog on the Russian version of LiveJournal, a portal seen as an outpost of free speech in Russia. The launch of the channel, www.youtube.com/kremlin, has coincided with the start of a new academic year in Russia and in his first video Medvedev addressed schoolchildren, stressing the importance of good neighbourly ties in a multinational country.
One of the most popular Web sites, YouTube allows to upload and share videos. Google does not release estimates of the YouTube audience in Russia. Observers say there is an unspoken competition between Medvedev and his mentor, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, for attention of average Russians.
Social Media in the Philippines
In the Philippines, blogging is becoming increasingly popular among young professionals and students. Friendster used to be a big thing also before the advent of Facebook. When Facebook arrived, most of the Friendster friends I knew started trooping to Facebook. Now, Facebook is a big social networking site among young people. How about Twitter? It hasn’t really caught up with the Filipino Young People. I could say that Plurk is pretty much more popular than Twitter. But those are just my hunches and I have no statistics and study to back up my claims.
I laud Ms. Janette Toral for conducting a study on the Internet Habits of Filipino Young People. Back in 2007, I used one of her findings as part of a presentation (The Word, the Web and the Youth) I gave at the first ever Bible Forum organized by the Philippine Bible Society. A number of young people are also blogging about what they think on politics, their spirituality and other things that they are going through.
But social media in the Philippines still has a huge room to grow! This is why Internet Literacy is very much needed–not only in the Metro Manila area but more so in the provinces and rural areas. This could be a good advocacy project for my work and for other nongovernment organizations working with young people!
For now, we use the tools are readily available — websites and blogs, Facebook and Plurk among other things.
Recent Comments