BEHIND THE SCREEN
“I’ll wake up in the morning
and go on Facebook just … because,” Casey says. “It’s not like I
want to or I don’t. I just go on it.
I’m, like, forced to. I don’t know
why. I need to. Facebook takes up
my whole life.”
Inseparable from her iPhone,
but apt to tire of the sites she uses
it to access, Casey at once personifies why much of the technology
world has become obsessed with
capturing the attention of people
her age, and why those efforts risk
turning into expensive debacles.
That teens’ friendships and relationships will play out online is
certain. But which site will host
that social intrigue is constantly
up for grabs.
Two months ago, Yahoo became the latest tech giant to make
a major play for younger users,
agreeing to pay $1.1 billion in cash
to take ownership of Tumblr, the
blogging site that has emerged as
a popular and engaging platform
with users under the age of 35.
They completed the acquisition
late last month. Yahoo has in its
sights young people with disposable income, still-evolving spending habits and a willingness to devote virtually unlimited amounts
of time to staring at a screen.
HUFFINGTON
07.14.13
Casey belongs to the first true
generation of digital natives, who have
no memory of life before the Internet.
In short, Yahoo is trying to
gain access to people like Casey.
As social media experts have already suggested, and as a day with
Casey makes clear, winning the
attention of teenagers and maintaining it are two very different
things. Yet seeking that attention
is irresistible.
Casey’s habits underscore a new
reality for this networked generation: Social networks — and the
gadgets they run on — aren’t a
distraction from real life, but a
crucial extension of it.
Born in 1999, just a few years after the mass adoption of the World
Wide Web, Casey belongs to the
first true generation of digital natives, who have no memory of life
before the Internet. The eighthgrader, who lives in the northern
New Jersey town of Millburn, has
always been attached to her gadgets. When she was only 18 months
old, she received a toy computer