TechCrunch: Why don't teens tweet?

Posted by Erina Lin on August 31, 2009 at 2:35 PM

"Why Don't Teens Tweet?" has become a popular question in the past few months. According to the New York Times last week, only 11 percent of Twitters are teens, TechCrunch reported.

11 percent seems a small number, but actually it has a higher concentration of teens compared to Facebook, with only 9 percent of user being teens, which means Twitter is more teen friendly than Facebook.

Actually, teens tweet more than the general population, according to a Silicon Valley Insider post yesterday, "Kids Don't Hate Twitter Anymore." Also, comScore stated that Twitter's unique visitor composition index in the age group of 12 to 17 is 118, higher than those in the group of 25 to 34 and 35 to 44.

Another similar figure: these teen Twitters do so 5.2 times in a month, more often than those between 25 and 44, who tweet 5 times or fewer per month.

So, Twitter actually skews more teen than the average sites, as well as Facebook, according to TechCrunch. The question we need to ask instead should be: Why don't the majority of teens tweet?

According to a Morgan Stanley report written by Matthew Robson, a 15-year-old intern from the UK, most teens "have signed up to the service, but then just leave it as they realize that they are not going to update it (mostly because texting twitter uses up credit, and they would rather text friends with that credit)."

Robson said that teens in the UK signing up for the service and then never using it again, which is similar in U.S., according to another survey. In U.S., 45 percent of those between 13 and 17 who have a Twitter account don't tweet. Most tweet a few and stop later, and 17 percent never sent a single one.

When asked why they tweet, the top 4 reasons are as follows, in order:

Update My Status
Keep Up With My Favorite Musicians, Bands, or Celebrities
Stay Current with What's Going On in the World
Keep Up with Friends I Know

According to TechCrunch, a clearer picture of why Twitter is not that popular among teens comes up when we break down the reasons they use it:

Teens already update their status religiously on other sites like Facebook, MySpace, and myYearbook.
Teens use MySpace to keep up with musicians and celebrities, which MySpace differentiates on.
As a group, teens are not major consumers of news from any outlet, making "staying current" a poor driver of mainstream adoption -- though of course there are exceptions.
Teens use both MySpace and Facebook to keep up with friends they know.

So, most teens don't use Twitter because it does offer nothing they can't already do elsewhere. This is the same reason most adults don't use Twitter. It's not actually a teen-specific question, TechCrunch reported.