The ‘research note’ on teen media consumption penned by an intrepid intern at the London office of Morgan Stanley and released earlier this month, hit the front page of the FT, which is impressive stuff for a 15-year old. It also generated “five or six times as much response than the team’s usual research” which is a bit of a poke in the eye for the grown-ups at Morgan Stanley.
I found a transcript of said note in the Guardian where the research method is not described and I couldn’t find any reference to it on Morgan Stanley’s website. My impression is that it’s largely anecdotal, although none the less instructive for that. When billions of dollars are spent annually to confirm the bleeding obvious this seems like an appropriate level of investment to confirm what should be largely intuitive.
The note addresses individual media in turn. Some of it pretty obvious – when did teens ever read newspapers? Although the free dailies have introduced at least some of them to news that stays on your hands if not on your mind. In the main, it confirms the fact that ‘traditional media’ are getting their just come-uppance for low grade, undifferentiated, recycled content. Why listen to radio when you can make your own playlist? TV is destination viewing only now that xbox and Wii offer entertainment options for anything less engrossing to the teen-aged mind than House and 24. Social media? They don’t use Twitter. Well duh. When everyone they care to communicate with is a text message away, why on earth would they?
Again confirming the obvious, cost (or lack thereof) is the primary determinant of teen media usage. Illegal downloading is a preferable source of music to iTunes; cinema visits drop off as kids get older (and as they are more likely to have to pay for themselves) and illegal movie downloads become more attractive; the features they use on their cell phones are the free or near free ones (which means they wait until they get home to surf the web). Macs are generally too expensive for teens and the music device of choice is determined by economic circumstance (iPods for the snots, cell phones for the rabble).
When cost is not an issue they do what everyone else does: search on Google, buy stuff on eBay (the fortunate few with access to a credit card) and socialize on Facebook.
And like everyone in the history of the world, they claim to dislike advertising. Outdoor goes right over their heads, except – wait for it – murals for GTA IV. Gaghhhh! So they’re affected by advertising in precisely the same way everyone else is, they like the stuff that’s targeted and relevant to them.
People aren’t changing, the stuff they consume is changing. And nothing is going to die – not advertising, not TV not the music business, not news. For too long we in the big western economies have priggishly declaimed the wonder of the free market, when in truth many of our own markets have been hijacked by intellectually barren, imagination bereft monopolies. It’s called competition – and it’s a good thing.
Today’s teens will become adults and they’ll do what adults always do, buy houses and fill ‘em with stuff. Only they’ll have a whole lot more options to choose from than their parents and grandparents.
cross posted from GrumpyBrit.com
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