Social Channels | – According to an article in the

According to an article in the Washington Post, teenagers want their parents to know three things about social media. It was partially accurate. According to a 2018 survey by the 2Pew Research Center, 32 percent of American teens use YouTube the most and 35 percent use Snapchat. Over the past five years, I’ve noticed that my daughter’s friends want to create their own YouTube channel to share their passion for dancing, drooling tutorials, beauty classes or reaction videos. Marketing to teens is money well spent, showing them how to positively influence their peers while making money doing what they already do for free. These numbers aren’t because teens have closed their accounts. Fifty-one percent of teens still have accounts, but they spend their time elsewhere. Not surprisingly, Facebook use among teens is much lower than predicted; this trend has affected users from all demographic groups. Before I started my research, I assumed that YouTube and Instagram would top the list of social channels most used by teens. At 13, I realized two things: first, I’m old, and second, social media didn’t exist when I was a teenager. Where teens spend their time online is a lot of talking about who they are and what they need. Instead of yelling at them to put away their phones, we need to show them how to become the thinkers of their generation and how to use their tools to shape the marketing world. The downside is that most of their time is spent creating a version of themselves that their peers may like more than they do. To stay relevant to my young son as “he” gets older, I’ve had to dive into apps that I wouldn’t otherwise use as often.