Teens are dictating the steady rise of social media and the eventual collapse of print newspapers, said Jeffrey Cole, director of the Center for the Digital Future at the University of Southern California.
Teens see print journalism as an irrelevant product, but have embraced social media because it placates their need for "narrowly focused communities," Cole said yesterday at the American Association of Advertising Agencies Transformation in San Francisco. These communities serve as a portal for personal information about their peers. Teens strive for total awareness of their environment, thus explaining their desire to know everything about the people around them, Cole said.
Cole has spent the last 10 years studying the trends in media consumption among teens, Mediaweek reports.
This doesn't mean that sites such as Facebook are invulnerable, however. Cole said kids may migrate to different pastures as their parents start roaming the social networking sites.
