The Millennials, the generation born after 1980, start turning 30 this year. Beneath the tattoos and piercings beat the hearts of news lovers --- just not news lovers as we've known them, asserts an American Journalism Review essay.
Barb Palser notes that this generation is the best-educated ever and will have sufficient civic engagement and literacy to serve as a strong base of consumers for information. Trouble is, they don't necessarily want it as it's been delivered --- with a daily newspaper edition or a nightly newscast. They want it where they are, when they wish.
Palser suggests they'll neither be the nightmare or dream of the news business, but that it will take effort.
"Newsrooms that are sending their content to portals and aggregators, taking mobile distribution seriously and making their stories easy to share on social sites like Facebook are moving in the right direction," she notes.
A
new survey from the Nielsen organization suggests that, even though women do not comprise the majority of smartphone owners, they comprise the majority of mobile social networking.
They "friend" and "Tweet" 10 percentage points (55 vs. 45 per cent) more than do men.
And it's not the youngest cohort networking. The 35-54 age group comprises one point more (36 vs. 35) than the 25-34 age group in their use. Even though that's a larger age span, it's interesting to see the level of use in that cohort.
The Pew Internet & American Life Project has some surprising data on which generations are doing what online.
Contrary to the notion that Internet use is dominated by Generation Y --- the generation that has always had an Internet --- the report concludes that Generation X seems most into e-commerce, boomers are booking travel, and the so-called Silent Generation is commanding e-mail.
A slide presentation of the report is below.
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