Why it Matters that Teens Don’t Like News
By Stephanie Critchfield on Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008I’m a frequent Adfreak reader. Yesterday, I came across a post that made me laugh.
A Northwestern University report (”If It Catches My Eye“) discovered something *unbelievable* — “Teenagers find online news troubling and a reminder of the world’s dangers. Meanwhile, time spent on YouTube or social networking and music downloading sites as a treat.” No way!!??
The study goes on to suggest that “news organizations should cultivate teen audiences by learning what appeals to them and diminishing their angst.” Seriously? Trying to diminishing teen angst would be like trying to tell salmon not to swim upstream.
But before I was tempted to tear further into this study the way Adfreak did, I did some reading. What I found was a 56-page study, a product of Northwestern University’s Media Management Center - a “qualitiative, in-depth study of a diverse group of 65 Chicago-area teens in 2007, seeking to identify what drives the online news consumption of teenagers.”
The purpose was to help news organizations more effectively attract and serve teens. 65 is a small sample size, yes. But, it does offer some insight into the thoughts, reactions, and behaviors of teens using the web on a daily basis.
My thoughts relate directly to one of my recent blog posts (Another Teen Community?) where I talked about the genuine importance of the teen population as an indicator of future marketing practices. We would be foolish to ignore a study that could provide valuable insight into the behavioral patterns influencing our next generation of adult consumers.
Some key findings from the study:
- Researchers repeatedly heard the phrase, “I will read it IF IT CATCHES MY EYE.”
- Few said they look purposefully for news. Rather, reading news is usually something they do if they happen upon it while doing something else.
- They look at news online an average of two or three times a day on weekdays.
- Teens tend to get news more from giant news aggregators and portals than from traditional destination products or news brands.
- They find the news stressful, not enjoyable.
- Teens don’t seem to differentiate between sites that generate news stories and sites that aggregate them.
My final thoughts:
They’re teenagers. In time, news will be more more interesting to them. The key question is what behavioral patterns will have developed by then that will influence their consumption of news and media?
News organizations - heck, any marketers - need to be thinking about how teens take in information, as this will likely be translated in many ways in their adult life.
The study said “when it comes to news, most teens are grazers.” This is important. Really all of us are grazers right now. In today’s digital society, we consume information very differently than even 10 years ago - we check news and email from mobile devices, we skim RSS feeds for top headlines, and watch headline news channels to gather snippets of the day’s top stories.
Understanding how teens consume information now is critical to marketing and selling to them 10 years from now as adults. The report also provides some interesting and detailed recommendations for news organizations trying to reach teens that as marketers should sound pretty familiar. One such recommendation is “go where they are” - a concept we often discuss when it comes to social marketing and online media.
I find this finding very interesting:
“Teens don’t seem to differentiate between sites that generate news stories and sites that aggregate them.”
There has been talk lately that news aggregators have an unfair advantage over sites that generate news stories because aggregators reap the rewards of the stories without doing any of the hard work. The same argument has been made about YouTube growing based on content of others.
At the end of the day if people do not care who actually wrote the story, then will we lose some of our best sources for news, since they do not always get “paid” directly for their work?
Excellent point Joe. I also found that quite interesting. Maybe it’s the job I have, but I’m always interested in the source. This post is a perfect example, in fact. I read about the study on Adfreak, but dug up the original to read it myself. If I hadn’t, I’d have been guided down the wrong path by the Adfreak writer.
It’s hard for me to comprehend that people would blindly trust the information they are reading without knowing and trusting the source - this is (at least in many ways) what makes news credible. News outlets (television stations, radio, newspapers, etc.) have to work hard to build a reputation based on credibility.
Steph,
Does the study qualify what constitutes “news”? Studies like this usually limit the subject matter to “civics” type topics, but teens are overtly sensitive to human interest stories and celebrity perspectives.
If we expand the topical area, we would probably see that their world view is as influenced by soft news as it is thei peer group.
- Dan “Emo” Dooley
Hi Dan.
The study looked at what news organization websites teens frequent for news information. These sites included bbc.com, newyorktimes.com, newsweek.com, time.com, cnn.com, etc.
Later in the study they define “big n” and “little n” to describe hard vs soft news. It’s here that they share teen’s fondness for soft news - sports, entertainment, celebrity gossip, etc. Which is something they consume regularly, and enjoy.
There is certainly a lot left to be desired by this study. And you’ve raised a very good point, Dan. I’d be very curious to know if the human interest side of “big n” would be considered more appealing. If so, that could be a strategy news organization could leverage for reaching teens.