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CULTURE | Noah Brier

Youth Evolving Online

October 14, 2004 | RSS | EMAIL | PRINT | 12 COMMENTS

A while back I asked people to make a list of sites they visit everyday. I was finding that there was an increasingly long list of places I visited daily and I was curious if others behaved similarly. What I found ended up changing much of my thinking and consumption of the web. Not only was this stupid little activity the reason that I got into RSS (one of the people I polled listed Bloglines as one of their daily visits), but I also discovered an interesting divide in the way different sexes used the internet. (For anyone interested, the list is available at TimeAtWork.)

Nearly every male I talked to had a list of sites they checked daily, which for most began with ESPN.com. However, when I asked females I know for their lists I got answers like, "I don't know, I don't really have any sites I check that often," or, "I just don't use the internet that way." This way of using the web, checking sites every day, seemed like such a natural thing for me and I couldn't understand how it could be used differently. I mean, visiting my regular sites was always the first thing I did online and consumed a majority of my time. Why would men and women use the technology in such different ways? For the men, this was an information medium and for women it seemed to be much more of a tool. (This is not to say that women aren't consuming information online, but the women I spoke with seemed much less inclined than the men. Most women I spoke to seem to prefer consuming their news as hard copy rather than digital form.)

When I read Danah Boyd's entry titled "a culture of feeds: syndication and youth culture," I immediately thought back to my TimeAtWork survey. Boyd's essay is about the way youth use the internet and specifically whether RSS will be a useful technology for them.

Youth use email to talk with parents and authorities (including corporate emails like from Xanga); it's where they get the functional stuff. They check email once a day. They get notices there, but they're mostly disregarded. IM is where the action is. Youth see this as their digital centerpiece, where they communicate with their friends, thereby maintaining their intimate community. They use the Profiles in IM to find out if their friends updated their LJs [Live Journals] or Xangas, even though they are subscribed by email as well. The only feed they use is the LJ friends list and hyper LJ users have figured out how to syndicate Xangas into LJ. [Remember: blog is not a meaningful term to youth culture.]

In a lot of ways, the differences in the way youth use the internet seem similar to the difference I found between males and females. For youth it is less of an informative medium than a social one. However, this raised two questions in my mind. First, what's the difference between teenage male and female internet use, and second, what will happen when these youth reach college and the work world? Will their online consumption habits change?

The fact is that most teenagers are not overly interested in what's going on in their world. How could they with dating, drinking and sex taking up 90 percent of their mindshare? They are at a time of their lives when they're trying to develop their identity and these activities are far more important than knowing what's going on in the world around them. (I'm not being sarcastic here, at this point in their lives, identity creation really is, and probably should be, higher on their list of priorities. I know it was for me when I was 15.)

However, most will reach a point later in the lives when they feel a responsibility to better understand their world. [Just to clear up one point, I am speaking strictly of youth at this point, while I compared the consumption habits of women to that of youth towards the beginning of the essay it was purely a jumping off point and I apologize for any misunderstanding this may have caused.] Boyd suggests that, "there is a huge cultural divide occurring between generations, even as they use the same tools." I'm not sure that I agree, though, I think that we may be getting our first look at how a generation that grows up with the internet evolves with it. As I grew older my internet habits changed based on my interests. I would imagine that while LJ may be amongst the most popular location for youth in general, that specifically within the male youth demographic there are sites, like ESPN.com, that get visited regularly. It is that kind of surfing pattern that lends itself to RSS so well. Rather than having to visit the sites, these youth will be able to be informed of the updates in real time. While I'm not expecting them to subscribe to the technology now, by the time they reach their college/post-college years it will most certainly be integrated into their browser/OS in an undetectable way.

I also don't think that Boyd is putting enough stock in the content creation side of this trend. She explains that, "Their participation in "blogging" is not in the form of alternative journalism and so they, like most people, seek news from mainstream (even if digital) forms." I would argue that online journaling in this way may be the pre-cursor to 'blogging' in the alternative journalism sense that the word is often used. Whether they understand it or not, they are creating internet content, albeit in a different way and with a different goal than your average 'blogger' does. What will this openness lead to, though? The lesson we learn from sites like LJ and Xanga is that our life should be open to people and that the world is interested. With that said, when it comes time later in life that they are coming up with their own ideas and theories who is to say that they will not publish those as well (as opposed to just their experiences)?

I'm not completely sure where I've gone with this post and feel free to throw in your own two-cents in the comments. Clearly there are divides between the way different groups use the internet, but the overall lessons can not be ignored. Watching Generation Y and the Millenials grow up with the digital world at their fingertips will be a fascinating experience with much opportunity to understand the technology in completely new ways.

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COMMENTS

1Pam

you and i have some talking to do about yr Youth Evolving Online posting.

i don’t know if you intended this, but you seemed to set up an analogy that goes:

Woman is to Youth as Man is to Adult

kind of offensive, as following this line of logic implies that women are allegedly not interested in “better understand[ing] their world.� like we’re less mature or less concerned with the global forum.

i’m at work now, so i can’t fully delve into this, but i’d love to talk about it more later

xoxo

October 15, 2004

2Jeff

It would seem quite the appropriate analogy, Ms. Pam. I cite this conversation with my mother, only two weeks prior to writing this:

Me: Who won the debate?

Mom: I think Bush.

Me: Why?

Mom: I don't know.

This kind of cutting edge, political analysis could only come from a woman.

thanks you.

TMM
TheMan'sMan

October 15, 2004

3Noah

Pam,

The problem I have with your comment is that I explicitly state that when people get older they are more interested in the world they live in. I just don't agree that the analogy carries throughout the peice, and in fact the real questions I'm trying to answer are clearly addressed in the fifth paragraph.

First, what's the difference between teenage male and female internet use, and second, what will happen when these youth reach college and the work world? Will their online consumption habits change?

I in no way believe that women are not interested in understanding their world (whatever Jeff has to say about it). What I do believe, though, if you strictly look at the online consumption of your average adult female vs. your average adult male it will appear as though the male is more interested in the events that shape the world. This is because, and I quote a conversation I had with you here, for you "the internet is more for research." I am strictly focusing on a trend in one medium, in this case the internet. What is more, as I've mentioned I make it very clear that adults (both male and female) have reached a point in their lives where they feel a responsibility to understand their world and act accordingly. It just so happens that the women I spoke with don't do this online, which I find fascinating.

October 15, 2004

4Pam

This is the paragraph that is the culprit, I think:

"In a lot of ways, the differences in the way youth use the internet seem similar to the difference I found between males and females. For youth it is less of an informative medium than a social one."

October 15, 2004

5Noah

But I think that's true, for women the internet seems to be more of a social medium than an informative one, which is the same pattern Boyd is seeing in youth. Maybe informative is the wrong word?

October 15, 2004

6Pam

I disagree with that. To me "social" evokes ideas of chatrooms, IMing, dating sites, etc, and I personally don't really use the internet primarily for that sort of stuff - at least, no more than a guy would. When we were talking, I meant that I use the internet as a research tool.

I also feel like "social" and "informative" are very loaded terms, that, in the context of your essay, could be misconstrued as falling into classic gender stereotypes. Obviously, we know that both males and females are social, and both seek and utilize information. I think you just need to be careful when generalizing, and when positing an argument along gender lines.

October 15, 2004

7Ben

Taryn checks MSN and E!Online everyday to see who got married to whom and what they wore at the wedding. If you were to ask Taryn I'm sure she'd say her consumption helps her understand the world she cares about. I'll let you decide where this fits into your argument, I just thought it was an interesting example because she does check certain sites for content everyday (a male habit if I understand you correctly) but the content of the sites is more social (a female habit?). Either way, the argument is an interesting proposition, but not an altogether surprising one. We know a lot (and by we I mean people who do what Noah does, not me) about how things are marketed to each gender because of differences in consupmtion through other media, so why not through the internet as well?

October 15, 2004

8Noah

I'm completely aware that my silly survey is far from scientific, however, of those females I asked the only website they could name that they visited daily was their email. Email is a social tool. Comments on this website, for that matter are a social tool.

Maybe social wasn't the right word, however, the responses I got when I asked about the sites people visited daily tended to be along the lines of classic gender stereotypes. That is, most men said ESPN and most women said they browse/shop. I'm not making this up, this was the response I got. An interesting thing, though, that I failed to mention in the essay is that when I dug deeper more women mentioned that they received their information via email subscriptions. Rather than going out and seeking that which they were interested in they had it delievered to them. I'm not exactly sure what the significance of this is, but I find it interesting. Clearly the internet is used differently along gender lines and that's what I was trying to express.

When I sit down to write something for this page I tend to not have a outline. It often happens that I read something interesting and just start writing, seeing where I end up at the end. It's a place to work out my thoughts and this is what I was doing in this essay. The analogy was not meant to carry through and I would be happy to fix it if you can help me get to the center of the problem which I'm still having some difficulty seeing. Thanks for the feedback, though. In the end, opening up some dialogue is all I'm hoping to do here and although this has been because of a negative reaction, I appreciate the feedback nonetheless.

October 15, 2004

9Noah

Just read Ben's comment. I would say that Taryn is more of an exception in that case. I encountered very few females who actually check sites everyday, no matter what the content may be. I found the difference in consumption habits interesting because I really couldn't have imagined using the internet as an as-needed tool. Instead, it is an always-on media connection for me. It could just be that I'm a computer nerd, but from what I understand this seems to be fairly consistent with other people's habits.

I also don't completely understand your last comment:

We know a lot (and by we I mean people who do what Noah does, not me) about how things are marketed to each gender because of differences in consupmtion through other media, so why not through the internet as well?

Can you explain?

October 15, 2004

10Ben

I was trying to touch on one of the pragmatic uses for the results of your informal survey. I was thinking that TV is an example of a medium where there has already been a lot of research done on consumption along gender lines. For example, an ad exec trying to target an 18-35yo woman knows exactly what time and on what channel to place her spot. The consumption patterns are probably pretty well established as to who is watching what and when. So, I was thinking that it's not that surprising that consumption patterns that split along gender lines would emerge in any new medium (e.g., internet).

Of course, where my thinking totally misses the point is in the fact that your survey unearthed a gender difference in the fundamental way we use the internet as a tool, not just differences in content consumption (on which TV marketing is based). I can't posit any reason for this difference, and I'm not knocking the signifigance of it--if you found out why the genders use the internet differently I'm sure you could find a way to make a ton of money--but it just doesn't seem that surprising that men and women would take advantage of this new medium in different ways. After all, the internet is so unlike any medium we've ever known that I'm sure it will unlock all types of secrets about how different people communicate differently.

Then again, I'm obviously well out of my element...if there's no connection to the ancients I should probably keep my mouth shut. But I figured in the interest of dialouge I'd speak up when something resonated.

October 15, 2004

11Noah

Thanks for jupming in Ben, appreciate it.

I think you're right that what we're looking at here is not a consumption trend, but something that runs much deeper. It's about the differences between the internet and other media. Unlike television or radio, both one-way mediums, the internet truly allows for two-way communication to develop. Regular consumption trends based on gender has been established online already, for instance we know that women play more games online than men do. In a lot of ways, the way women are using the internet is more advanced and a better use of the technology than men, who are not taking advantage of the two-way capability. This has been a bit of a ramble, I think I need to give this whole thing some time to digest and to re-investigate the whole trend.

October 16, 2004

12Barbara

I just read through these comments and, as a somewhat older woman who uses the internet daily, I thought I'd weigh in on my own experience.
1 - Email is my primary source of business communication. Although I certainly use it socially as well, I'm probably more likely to use the phone for communication with friends and family.
2 - Research is a significant part of my work, and is certainly my primary reason for going online. However, and this is the part that I don't think has been raised ...
3 - The sites I check regularly, if not daily, tend to be dependent on my interests at a given point in time. For example, since about mid-September, I've been checking political news services daily. Before that, I relied primarily on my delivered NYTimes and TV for news, and I expect that once the election is over, I'll go back to that.
Similarly, when I was in apartment-hunting mode, I was on real estate sites and Craig's list daily. Now that the immediate need has passed, I don't look every day anymore, but I still check the major sites at least once a week. I imagine this fall under the heading of research, but it is definitely specialized, and based on short-term interests.

October 18, 2004