Doing It For The Kids
February 25, 2010
Plenty has been written about Millennials. There are books on how to contend with them in the workplace, there are countless articles about how to market products and services to them, and there are hundreds of studies rich with data about their sexual behaviors, the causes of their ennui, their politics, and their favorite monster breakfast cereals.
Yesterday, the Pew Research Center's Social & Demographic Trends project released yet another report in their ongoing series about Millennials entitled, oddly enough, "Millennials: A Portrait of Generation Next". The study examines trends in Millennial attitudes toward identity, work, education, family values, politics, religion, and of course technology.
Millennials are so connected to tech, apparently, that about 1/4 of them cite it as the most unique characteristic of their generation compared to other distinctions such as their fashion.
Over 90% of these creatures are active online, with over 60% accessing the internet via wireless and mobile networks. Their connectivity is their lifeline -- an umbillical cord that remains unsevered even when when they go to bed (83% of them sleep with their cell phones! Creepy.)
Millennials outpace all other generations in technology hardware and services usage, with a heavy emphasis on texting and other wireless related activities. 75% of them are social network users, with over 50% of them claiming to be daily users. This, compared to Gen-Xers (another fairly connected group), of whom only 50% claim to have a social network profile at all.
Millennials use Twitter more. They post more videos of themselves online, not even stopping to consider that kind of thing is just a little weird. 40% of them have no landline phone, they watch less TV than any other generation, and increasingly are getting their news from online outlets, citing Yahoo! and CNN.com as their top sources. Yes, Yahoo! No wonder that Yahoo! is moving forward with tighter Facebook and Twitter integration.
So yes, Millennials are connected to technology like no other generation before them. We probably didn't need another study to tell us this, but I'm not sure as technology developers, innovators, and digital marketers we've completely grasped it.
The trend will continue. The next generation will not merely be very connected. They will be completely connected. The services we build and innovate today will need to operate in a world without technology borders, where digital will be completely ubiquitous, expected, and taken for granted. Users will not distinguish between such novel concepts as mobile and desktop, or blog and portal content. Marketing that is not sociable will be irrelevant. A fourth "R" (Retrieval) will be added to the foundation set of basic skills (Reading, 'Riting, 'Rithmetic) and absolutely everything will require a sophisticated approach to discovery and findability. There will only be online. Offline will be a memory and embraced only, perhaps, by the Amish.
We tend to break apart our approaches to digital marketing into separate bolt-on components. Client A needs a social strategy. Client B needs search. We suggest to Client C that they consider mobile in another phase. But the Millennials, and all subsequent generations, will demand portability, sociability, digestability, and findability from all of the content and services they consume. Services that are deficient in any one of those key elements will be neglected. The experiences we build and the strategies we develop will need to be comprehensive and inclusive, and the successful digital marketer/strategist will need to stop thinking about their services in terms of narrow specializations.
The kids, they'll want it all. And for better or for worse, we'll have to give it to them. They are, after all, entitled to it.
Want to know how in touch you are with the Millennials? Pew set up a quiz to give you an idea of how much you have in common with them.
My results?
Wish I had never gotten those tattoos and piercings.
