ONA session on digital "natives"

I'm here in the session on "how young people use internet," at Online News Association 2007. The moderator makes a joke, "we won't ask them waht they do and how to monetize it." Each of millenials talks about what they do with media: Older college girl--Slate, Google news, listens to podcasts when jogging ("anything under 5 mins." "Very rarely do I go to a newspaper's website, its so easy to get news elsewhere." "Slate gets it, takes the best part of Bob Woodward's book and makes little subheads and paragraphs so it goes by really fast." Jordan (a guy)-check weather and Google RSS feed or other convenient feed. They like the headline feeds with 30 or so stories. Play games, talk to friends, do homework. "Anything I do on the computer is right there--convenient and quickly." Girl HS age-- gets online in school and writes for school paper. Goes on her yahoo homepage and reads sports, entertainment and news. As a HS journo--her job is to skim "big world" and find out what to tell the HS kids. At home its all about Facebook and IM. Email once in a while. Alex, middleschooler--In the mornings I have to go to school and can't do anything on computer. When he gets home, looks up stuff on Wikipedia, "its addicting [wiki]." Play games, watch youtube movies while listening to iPod, play games, check email. "Email is too slow. If we do use email, we all use Gmail." Then she noted that she reads the news that is contextualized for her in Gmail. TV: never watch in real-time. Wanted not watch TV "when it is on." He wants to watch comedy central news "fake news binge", when he wants. HS girl likes TiVo for its rewind and skip commercials, but likes to watch when big premieries come out like "Lost" Middle school boy has a "cheap" videotape camera. Likes to video his brother and the dog--makes video with friends. When he finishes the video he just shows it to his friends. Sometimes he'd tape birthday party and show it to friends later. College girl noted that some kids video impromtu stuff, upload to youtube and says "21 year old guys like this." HS Facebook user notes that she can keep up with friends via Facebook. Good to keep in touch with friends about their lives. "MySpace is a little scary to me because its not just students. I think Facebook is a lot safer because you can just look at profiles of friends." post.com has story about the page who emailed Foley -- called the MySpace a post and she noted that calling it a post was "lame." What about news of the weird? Love to pass it on to friends as sort of a passtime. On her yahoo feed she gets this kind of news--example, people have sex while driving, and she said she had just been in an accident and was wondering about that... HS boy like RSS because he doesn't have "filter through what I'm not interested in."Her uses WaPo, NYTimes and CNET feeds. He uses WaPo feed because that was the paper he read as a kid. NONE OF THEM READ PRINT. IT GETS HANDS DIRTY. The college-age girl talked about the preying mantis sex story and all her friends liked it. It wasn't dumbed down, but it got popular with their friends. "I sold magazines, but I don't read them." "If my mom buys a magazine I'll open it if I'm not at the computer." "When I read a magazine, I always wish it had the "find" command" Do they bring their media with them? College girl--Blackberry always with her because she can always get to the Internet. HS boy doesn't bring stuff with except for phone. 3 out of 4 don't wear watches because their devices tell time. The HS girl does text messaging, and says it is "like a diary of her life." Texting is really fun and I do it when I'm bored. They text from their purses and kind of hide texting when they are bored. Do they help the adults with tech at home? Install software for mother. Helped dad with video camera. All mom can do is email. I had to help her get directions to get to the hotel and session. Young do not "get" why old people don't know how to use computers and use Google. We don't know why. When is multitasking too much? When it breaks down. I do it until I break down. One game, talking, and looking up stuff isn't too complicated because stuff isn't instanteous. The ability to find out what I want when I want it is key. I don't have to go to a library, I can just find out what I need to know at my pace. "Unless it overloads your computer its never too much" At the beach she wasn't connected to everything and got a new perspective on being connected. Its just nice knowing you are connected to everyone all the time. "Visceral drive" to be connected all the time. college girl "When your computer breaks down, your life shuts down." Questions from audience: Get news from message board in games. Middle schooler uses message boards in this games. What about blogs? HS boy doesn't read blogs because he doesn't know how reliable they are. HS girl--blogs aren't accurate. I use blogs for entertainment news cuz who really cares if its real. What defines credibility for you? NYTimes over Joe Schmo. Must link to MSM story in your blog to get credibility. For primary news, still go to MSM. In blogs, Wonkette, snarky blogs and Smoking gun (because of primary source documents.) Registration and ads: do they stop them? Hate full-page ads. Registration don't like it. "Certainly not going to pay for something online." HS BOY on registration: age restrictions are stupid because no one checks. He resents a registration with age requirement, especially if the age isn't related to content or site. Need for speed: What would make you click through and read the whole thing? "Read the whole thing?" Break text up into small graphs. Include explainer to provide context--200 wd. backgrounder so story makes sense to a reader not familar with all the stuff about the story. Don't dumb down content. In-depth detailed info is okay with teens. How do you discover new news? "The point of RSS feeds is that I'm trying to get what I want to know about" HS boy. Uses homepage of yahoo or google to get exposed to new news. HS girl has set up her homepage with categories to show her the top 3 in each of the categories. "Its a let down to click on a video and you get an ad" College girl. Ads can be more relevant online -- HS boy How much do kids talk about "big issues" offline? Would they like a story told from perspective of teenager? Yes to second question--tell story through the person living the problem. Telling the story with a teen hook would be more interesting to kids. HS girl HS boy Teen perspective makes them relate more, but that alone won't get someone read a story. Put all info in the same place. How can you keep integrity and make a lot of people read your site. Privacy concerns? Worry about getting too much spam--have a separate address for spam and real email. HS girl likes email news she asked for from Newspaper sites. Is there any one way of learning about a story you prefer? HS boy--Likes news in text form. Doesn't like TV news because its not in-depth. Middle school boy--likes text for news, because if you don't get something you can read it again. HS girl--text College girl--slideshows need optional audio because they use them at work. Read about digital natives. Personal, Portable, Pedestrian about "keitai" which is something they carry and the mobile phone/alwarys connected society.