A Teenager’s View on Social Media

Andrew Watts wrote up a great post on Medium detailing social media from a teenager's perspective:

I read technology articles quite often and see plenty of authors attempt to dissect or describe the teenage audience, especially in regards to social media. However, I have yet to see a teenager contribute their voice to this discussion. This is where I would like to provide my own humble opinion.

This article brings me back to my old piece from The Axx, On Teens and iPhones, which picked up a lot of steam when I wrote it back in 2013. That post was written in response to a Pew Research Center survey that was attempting to quantify the enthusiasm that the teen demographic had for iPhones at the time.

The fact that my piece in 2013 and Watts' piece today both took off, despite neither of us being particularly well known authors, is interesting to me. People outside of this demographic seem to be craving insight into teenagers' thoughts, yet they consistently seem surprised when a teen steps forward and just tells them.

In 2013 this didn't surprise me. Services like Squarespace were just gaining popularity, and Medium did not even exist. But now it's 2015, three years later, and a post with similar insights that mine gave is still being picked up as if it's amazing that a teenager is contributing relevant information to the media.

Particularly now, with the advent of Medium creating an amazing platform for anyone of any age to write on and immediately distribute their ideas everywhere, I think it's overdue for the idea of teenagers contributing their voices to the media to be accepted as normal. Watts and myself are heading out of the expressly teen demographic this year, but there will be many more teenage writers behind us. I hope their ideas and creative endeavors will be accepted on their own merits, rather than simply because of their age. (▼)(▲)I'm not implying that Watts' or my own piece did not merit the attention they recieved, I think they did. But both of those pieces are from teens, about teens. Where are all the pieces that are written by teenagers, but regarding some topic besides teenagers? It seems like the only topic that the media deems teens to have relevant knowledge about is other teens.