Pew: Teens using social media more than ever

Maggie Fox, January 3 2008

As if we all needed it, further valuable evidence from the Pew Internet and American Life study showing a continuing increase in social media use by young online Americans. Among the top-level findings:

And, finally, another finding of interest, the notion of “super communicators”,


There is a subset of teens who are super-communicators – teens who have a host of technology options for dealing with family and friends, including traditional landline phones, cell phones, texting, social network sites, instant messaging, and email. They represent about 28% of the entire teen population and they are more likely to be older girls.

Of course this has all kinds of implications for the workplace. I had a really interesting conversation with a potential hire today about the fact that he feels like he’s been actively losing young, intelligent staffers because his current workplace doesn’t recognize that they work differently. This is a topic I’ve been thinking about a lot since September, when I had a really interesting conversation with Josh Greenbaum at the Office 2.0 conference. There’s a post brewing on that one, so stay tuned.

Here’s a link to the complete Pew study, called Family, Friends & Community: Teens and Social Media