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Generation Y: Digital Natives
By Adam C | August 13, 2008
Its interesting seeing how digital marketing adapts to the next generation of users - the so-called Generation Y who have grown up with digital media.
A recent dot.life post by Maggie Shields inspired by recent Forrester research introduces Generation Y:
According to Charles Golvin, a principal analyst at the company [Forrester], a major strength of the report is that it includes a broad swath of so called Gen Y members. They are youngsters in the 18-28 age bracket, a group of 38 million American citizens that “sets the pace for technology adoption.”
(By that definition I’m just a tad too old to call myself a Gen Y-er! X it is for me…just.)
Golvin goes on to say:
“Gen Xers use technology when is supports a lifestyle need, while technology is so deeply embedded into everything Gen Yers do that they are truly the first native online population. They are heavy users of new media. It is their default.”
Craig Hanna of e-consultacy last week reflected on the innate understanding of social media amongst recent graduates taking part in E-consultancy’s graduate accademy:
My biggest surprise was the level of insight and questioning that we experienced. Not only was the understanding of digital innate (being in their early 20’s, I guess they are some of the first ‘digital natives’ to graduate from university), but their understanding of it as a communication and marketing tool was also very high. I can honestly say that it was at least the match for the feedback and input we get from many of our MSc students.
Richard Bailey, lecturer in PR at Leeds Metropolitan University, summarizes nicely on his post teaching social media inspired by a topic raised by Natalie Smith, one of his students and intern at online PR agency Wolfstar (found via Stuart Bruce’s blog):
I’m confused. There’s always more we can and should be teaching students, but social media? What does a digital native, born close to 1990, need to learn from a digital immigrant who graduated before the IBM PC was launched in the UK, and who wrote magazine articles back in the 1980s about how businesses were adopting a new communications device, the fax machine? The telephone has been the most important communications device for PR practitioners for the last century - but we don’t teach students how to communicate by phone.
Topics: Social media |
August 13th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
Richard Bailey may have missed the value of what the “olds” have to teach. the older generation have learned how to do business… measure business KPIs and make business decisions that allow us to grow our wealth. Gen Y can obviously teach the olds a thing or two about communication! Especially communicating in a digital mindset.
However - neither side has the solution yet. Unless you own the social media technology (i.e. you ARE the MySpace or the FaceBook) then the challenge still remains as to how you make all this communication “stick” and turn into something real without upsetting all your friends along the way.
But the olds can still show gen Y the economics behind and idea. It would be great if the olds could also understand what’s happening to better apply their collective wisdom.
Mind you… getting gen Y to listen to an oldie… that’s getting increasingly difficult. Would you have YOUR teacher as a Facebook friend? er… no.