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Here is part two [Update: part one and three here] of our series from Ypulse Insights president Dan Coates dedicated to covering the Millennials Event that took place in Washington, DC yesterday at the Newseum to review and comment on recent data published by the Pew Research Center.

Pew Research Center: Millennials, Media & Information [Part Two]

The twittersphere was abuzz yesterday with mention of this great event and our article on the first Panel, Portrait of the Millennials, was liberally retweeted. One highly talkable feature of Pew’s efforts to bring clarity and attention to this generation was the “How Millennial Are You?“ quiz. If you haven’t taken it already, the entire youth industrial complex is busily revealing their Millennial score and then describing why it is high or low. In keeping with the spirit of this wonderful tool that is making Pew’s research accessible and relevant to all, I’m an 84 (out of 100), mainly because I spent the day in DC incessantly communicating with colleagues via text and managed to avoid television and newspapers the entire day.

Panel Two examined how Millennials are seeking, sharing and creating information. Based on Pew data that was presented by Tom Rosenstiel, Director of the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, and the commentary of three experts on media and technology: danah boyd, Social Media Researcher, Microsoft New England and Fellow at Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society (keynote speaker at the 2007 Ypulse Mashup and advisory board member for this year’s event), Dylan Casey, Product Manager at Google and Amanda Lenhart, Senior Research Specialist of the Pew Internet and American Life Project (also a former Mashup speaker).

Tom’s summary statement from the research he reviewed was that technology reflects the unique characteristics of this generation, but does not define them. Meanwhile, the data that he shared focused primarily on media use and consumption across the entire population, with Millennials cited as the leading indicator of a number of Internet-induced shifts. That being said, Tom said that the media landscape is changing so rapidly that any attempts to pin down usage at any given point in time is difficult. One of the hallmarks of Pew Research is their ability to ask questions that catch successive generations within the same lifestage, a feature that is easy to do when asking about religion, society and politics, but more difficult when asking “Do you use Twitter?,” something that didn’t exist when you and I were teens.

As a generation, these on-demand, media grazers distinguish themselves by constantly sharing information within an always-on and often mobile network. Millennials are described in the Pew data as avid news consumers that avoid traditional, time-based delivery channels in favor of online news aggregators and search engines that fit their grazing behavior. Dylan Casey added that Google’s experience in the search arena indicates that the value of information has been dramatically compressed in time, leading a re-architecting of Google search to deliver incredible immediacy. Interestingly, boyd cited a major shift in the way that information is stored over time (what we used to remember, we now merely Google) and how society will continue to struggle to indicate the “truthiness” of information in the face of what Google sends our way based on search engine rankings.

A significant component of the debate focused on privacy and trust as well as the expectations that young people have of each other and the world around them. According to boyd, trust expectations have been inverted through technology wherein information is public by default and private only if extra effort is expended to protect it from public view. While young people are actively calculating what might be gained from publicly revealing themselves (fame, connecting with others just like them), the rest of the population reflects largely on what might be lost by revealing information about themselves. According to Lenhart, information that is let loose into digital spaces cannot be “code switched” or tailored to specific audiences (e.g friends versus college admissions officers). boyd challenged those that provide these technologies to develop better capabilities to surround those that are less capable of making effective personal decisions about public versus private information. The persistence of digital information means that any poor decisions will follow youth around for a very long time.

If Neil Howe was the shining light of panel one, danah boyd was the star attraction of panel two. Her insights into how behavior is shifting from offline to online across an ever-evolving array of technologies were deep and insightful. Owing to the sheltered nature under which Millennials have been raised, their over-protective parents have them living under house arrest. When you are unable to play in the local park (for fear of predators) or hang out at the mall (for fear of drug dealers), the only place left for teens to be among other teens and develop their social skills is online, within a social network. According to boyd this culture of fear, combined with chronic over-scheduling and reduced physical mobility has driven a technological shift from communication to community. Once kids move from parental lockdown and gain physical mobility, they then use their online social network to coordinate physical activities among the friends that have bonded to each other via online toolsets.

danah told me that she’s actively wrapping up an upcoming book – stay tuned for links to pre-order or order her book on Ypulse. Meanwhile, don’t miss tomorrow’s final installment on the Pew Event: Millennials, Midterms and Beyond.

About Dan

Dan brings two decades of experience in technology and survey research to the Ypulse team. Based in New York, Dan is a veteran within the online research space. Prior to joining the Ypulse team, Dan was co-founder of SurveyU, drove exceptional growth as Vice President of Sales & Marketing at Polimetrix (acquired in December 2006 by YouGov PLC), served as Vice President of Surveys and Samples at SPSS and was a co-founder of PlanetFeedback.com, an ASP-based consumer affairs portal that rewrote the rules of consumer to business interaction. (PlanetFeedback was merged with Intelliseek and subsequently acquired in January 2006 by Nielsen Buzzmetrics). Dan spent the first decade of his career developing cutting edge research practices and methods on behalf of Burke Marketing, Millward Brown Interactive and the Angus Reid Group, enabling companies to develop online marketing insight.

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