2024.03.23 What do successful readers do - Sandy Millin for PARK.pptx
an attractive article for presentation
2. Article written by
• Maya Kosoff
• Maya was a tech reporter
at Business Insider, writing
primarily about startups
and venture capital. She
graduated from Syracuse
University's S.I. Newhouse
School of Public
Communications in
2014 with a degree in
magazine journalism.
4. • Too often when writing about what
teenagers like, we neglect to talk to the
most important group of all: teens. So we
decided to put together a State of the
Union on the American teenager. To learn
what American teenagers in 2016 really
like, and what they don't, we polled about
60 of them from across the US. We spoke
with teens ages 13 to 19, in middle school,
high school, and college.
5. • We asked them about their digital lives and
habits, the apps they use and the games they
play, pop culture, and politics. Their answers
offer a glimpse into what it's like being a
teenager in 2016. We've drawn out the
highlights below, along with some data from
other sources, so keep scrolling for our guide
to teenagers in 2016.
8. • On average, the teens
we spoke with received
smartphones from their
parents when they were
11 years old. At their
youngest, they received
phones when they were
8; at the other end, one
teen's parents made her
wait until she was 16
before she got a phone.
9. Teens are shy to talk about how much
time they spend on their phones, but
it's a lot.
10. • We got lots of "too
many" and "I'm
embarrassed to say"
responses, but the
numbers we were able
to get suggested teens
spend about six hours
a day on their
phones. (This is both in
and out of school.)
12. • Besides owning smartphones, most teens we
talked to spent time in front of television sets
and gaming consoles (PlayStation 4 and Wii
were popular answers) as well. Some also
used desktop computers.
13. • On average, they said
they spent 11 hours in
front of screens every
day — answers ranged
from two hours to 18
hours, which sounds as if
it would be literally every
waking moment (and
maybe it is).
14. Teens aren't only spending a ton of
time online — they're shopping
online too.
15. • Clothing has been relatively
immune to the rise of e-
commerce because people
still like to try things on
before buying.
• But when it comes to teenage
shoppers, the option of being
able to try on clothing before
buying is becoming less
important, according to a
survey conducted by Piper
Jaffray in 2015.
16. • Only 61% of US teens
say they prefer to shop
for clothing online from
retailers that also
operate their own
brick-and-mortar
stores. That's a
significant drop from
the 81% of teens last
spring who said they
preferred to shop at
omnichannel fashion (or
cross-channel) retailers
17. What are teens' favorite apps? Here
are a few of the most popular
answers:
19. • It's no surprise that
teenagers love Snapchat.
Here's what they had to
say about it:
• "It's how I communicate
with most of my friends
and it's fun." — 15-year-old
• "Snapchat because it's
pretty much just texting,
but with pictures of my
beautiful face " — 16-year-
old
20. • "Snapchat, because it is fun
to send your friends what
you're doing, and where
you are in a fast and easy
way. I also like being able
to make stories, for all of
my friends to see, and I
also enjoy seeing stories of
my friends on it and see
what they're up to." — 17-
year-old
22. Spotify was almost universally heralded as
the best music app, and it was also listed
as a favorite app by a lot of respondents.
23. • Teenagers almost
universally named
Spotify as their
preferred music-
streaming service —
and some
teenagers said it was
the best app on their
phone overall:
• "I use it to share
music, to see what
my friends are
listening to, and to
find new music." —
14-year-old
25. • Instagram is a
standby favorite
of teens, who
swear by its
filters and direct-
message feature.
Here's what they
said:
26. • "I use Instagram to message my friends funny
pictures I see on Instagram." — 15-year-old
• "Snapchat and Instagram, I love sharing photos all
of the things I do and places I go. I also like seeing
what others are up to." — 15-year-old
29. • You might not expect
Twitter to be among
teens' favorite apps.
After all, the company
is having a hard time
attracting new users.
But a lot of teenagers
we talked to really
liked the platform.
Here what they had
to say:
30. • "Twitter because I can update
everyone all the time quickly
and it's not annoying like
Facebook." — 17-year-old
• Twitter because "you can
voice your opinion on
anything you want to and you
can somewhat interact with
celebrities." — 18-year-old
• "My favorite app is Twitter
because I am the kind of
person who needs to get out
my thoughts, and Twitter may
be like shouting into the void
but at least I am heard and
often validated by my peers."
— 19-year-old
32. • The teens we talked to said they and their
friends were still using Facebook
33. • but it wasn't their favorite app. Here's why:
• "I use Facebook, but I feel like I can't be myself on it
because my parents and my friends' parents are my
Facebook friends." — 16-year-old
• "It's mostly outdated." — 14-year-old
• "Facebook is good for group events and things but it's
definitely not my favorite app." — 15-year-old
35. • Google+. "I don't even really
know a time where Google+ was
a thing." — 16-year-old
• Whisper. "People just don't use
it anymore." — 17-year-old
• Vine. "I watch Vine videos, but
me and my friends don't have
accounts or make our own
videos, same with YouTube." —
16-year-old
36. This pretty much lines up with what
teens across the board are saying.
37. • Instagram leads as the "most
important" social network among US teens,
according to the 2015 edition of Piper Jaffray's
teen survey, as reported by BI Intelligence.
38. Most of the teens we talked to wouldn't
acknowledge having fake Instagram
("finsta") accounts.
39. • For the uninitiated, a finsta is a portmanteau
of the words "fake" and "Instagram." You use
it for posting embarrassing or less
aesthetically pleasing pictures you wouldn't
want to share with all of your friends.
40. • Eighty percent of the teens we talked to had
no idea what a finsta was, and 92% said they
didn't have one.
• "I did have a finsta with a friend, but we don't
use it anymore because it got too confusing to
know which account you were on, to make
sure we were posting on the right one, and
not posting on the wrong one by accident,"
one 16-year-old told us.
41. Facebook may be dead to teens, but a
surprising number of them are texting their
friends through Facebook Messenger.
42. • The most common form of messaging among
teenagers in our survey was iMessage or SMS
messaging (100% of the teens we talked to
used one or both of those). But Facebook
Messenger was mentioned almost as
frequently — 80% of teenagers we spoke with
said they used Facebook Messenger as a
primary or secondary form of communicating
with friends. Less popular were WhatsApp,
Kik, and Snapchat text.
43. Overwhelmingly, three phones are most
popular with the teenagers we talked to:
the iPhone 5S, the iPhone 6, and the Samsung
Galaxy S5.
44. • Eighty percent of the teenagers we talked to
had one of these three phones
45. Teenagers are watching both cable
and streaming services like Netflix —
but there's one clear winner.
46. • And that's Netflix. Hulu and Amazon were also
listed by a lot of the teens we spoke with, but
Netflix had the lion's share.
47. • Here's why, in the words of a couple of the
teenagers we spoke with:
• "My family has cable and Netflix and Hulu, but for
me all I watch is Netflix. I know my parents will
watch the news and sometimes a show on cable,
but they also mostly use Netflix or Hulu to watch
shows and movies. I use Netflix more then Hulu
because there aren't commercials on Netflix. I
only use Hulu when I miss an episode of a show
because it will be on there fast." — 17-year-old
• "Netflix is life." — 16-year-old
48. Here's what teens are watching on TV
(it's mostly Netflix and Netflix-like
services).
49. We asked teens to identify the coolest app,
website, or thing on the internet that adults
probably didn't know about.
50. • We got a fair number of responses from teens
who thought Twitter, Tumblr, and Snapchat
were cool (and they are!) and that adults
didn't know about them (but they do!).
52. • You've probably never heard of Musical.ly, but
it has already cracked the top 20 in Apple's
App Store. The app has quietly grown to its
popular status without any press. Musical.ly
lets you make music videos of yourself or of
other people. It may not seem like a
particularly compelling value proposition, but
10 of the 60 teens we spoke with listed
Musical.ly as the app they were most excited
about and doubted adults would know about.
54. • Remember when you were a kid and you
colored in coloring books? Color Therapy is a
stress-relieving, digital coloring book for
adults, and the teens we talked to swore by
it.
56. • Launched by the Los Angeles venture-capital
firm Science's mobile studio, Wishbone shows
you two options and lets you vote on which
one you like more — a spin on the popular
"Would you rather?" hypothetical question.
• Wishbone became somewhat of a viral teen
phenomenon, and as of September, just
months after it launched, Wishbone had been
downloaded 3 million times.
58. • You have probably never heard of the
Japanese game "Neko Atsume," but numerous
teens we talked to were obsessed with it. The
game's name literally translates to "cat
collecting," and that's exactly what you do in
the adorable game.
60. • Speaking of games, a bunch of teens also
mentioned "Color Switch." In this game, you
must follow each color pattern you're
shown on each obstacle to progress.
62. • "I use YASSSSSSSS a lot when I get really excited and don't
really realize it. I also like slay, even though I know that's
kind of stupid."
• "Regularly use: hype (as in 'I'm so hype for this'), mad,
dope, low key/high key, lit. Uncool: on fleek, bae, fire, etc."
• "Goals. You might look at a beautiful celebrity or your
favorite couple and say they are goals."
• "Me and my friends use Gucci and squad and #goals a lot
but in a joking manner. The ones that are uncool are on
fleek and holla @ me."
• "I regularly say v instead of very (ex: 'She's v aesthetic') and
'it's lit.'"
• "'Throw shade/spill tea' — talk negatively about someone
or gossip. 'Read' — make a judgment."
• "I normally use flames or lit to sound cool. We need to stop
saying bae and on fleek."
63. Finally, we asked teens to send us their homescreens
so we could take a look at what their phones looked
like. Scroll through to see what apps are on teens'
phones.