Midcourse Corrections

This is a guest post from Joe Flowers, a Millennial and co-worker of mine. To read more about Joe, scroll to bottom of post.

Yesterday afternoon, Jeff was kind enough to ruin my Wednesday by sending me a link to a blog post entitled “Twitter: It’s a GenX Thing.” The blog was just a re-posting to the author’s comment to another article, “Study Shows Gen Y Not In Love With Twitter, “ found here. I patiently read both before sending a flurry of angry message to Jeff letting him know that both links were nothing but garbage. He responded by saying I should write a blog for him about it. I thought to myself, “Well the articles say my generation needs constant praise and attention,” so here we are.

The original article states that only 22 percent of Gen Y a.k.a. Millennials use Twitter. It’s source for such an astounding statistic? “PMN conducted the study in May 2009 with its research partner, the Lubin School of Business’ Interactive and Direct Marketing (IDM) Lab at Pace University, by questioning 200 PMN panel members and consumers between the ages of 18-24.” Hmm, a tiny cross section from a small school lab in New York that doesn’t even cover the appropriate range of ages of the generation it’s claiming to represent. It doesn’t get much more credible than that, does it?

By this study’s definition, I’m a 26-year-old GenXer. A product of the Cold War along with other apparently notable GenXers like Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Justin Timberlake and 95% of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue. Is it any surprise a study favored GenXers using Twitter if they have a 20 year span compared to the six years awarded to Millennials?

This report has been picked up by major news networks as well as the Twittersphere as fact. As we speak, an infection of ill-informed “gurus” is off to the races touting this story as gospel in an attempt to cash in on the social media craze. News flash: the report is as much a credible fact as the movie Titanic is a credible source to the actual disaster.

Nielsen states that they don’t have an accurate enough sample size to represent the 18-24 year old range, but the 25-34 range represents 19.6 percent of unique visitors to Twitter. This obviously pales in comparison to the 41.7 percent unique visitors ages 35-49. [Source]

On the opposite end, Quantcast says that young adults are leading the Twitter demographic with the 18-34 demographic representing 43 percent of users compared to the 33% represented by ages 35-49. [Source]

Staying in the statistics vein for one more example, a recent poll of people named Joe currently sitting in my desk chair revealed startling news. It appears 100% of people polled think that these surveys can kiss roughly 98% of my ass.

Now that I’m fired up, I’d like to address the real source of frustration in all of this. That would be the comments left by Miss JessieX. JessieX describes herself as an “an old school marketer with a new media swing. An avid hula hooper and Iconic GenXer.” Now, I’m not sure what she thinks she did to consider herself an “iconic GenXer,” but having spent a bulk of my night reading her old tweets, she has little to contribute as far as productive conversations. She mostly reflects on the weather, her family, the occasional tech posting and far too many hashtags for me to handle.

Of course, I am a self-admitted link regurgitator so I have little room to speak so let’s move on.

In her response to the incredibly detailed and accurate report from the brains at Pace University, she said Millennials can’t adjust to Twitter because “they are a peer-oriented, collective can-do generation.” Well of course, JessieX! Twitter is a “Me, Me, Me!” network used to simply inflate one’s ego. It is not a social networking site that encourages collaborative work. We’ve all been such fools!

She goes on to say Gen Y is “oriented more to group-think and the collective heart-space they share in their peer groups.” Once again, how does this ideology not line up perfectly with Twitter? We also rely on a structured learning approach, need hands on attention and guidance.

Also, don’t think for a minute I’ve missed the complete irony in this woman saying Twitter isn’t for group-thinkers while she defines it as a place to “broadcast, engage and connect.” Must be a typo.

Of course, maybe she’s right. Maybe I’m looking at this all wrong. It’s probably because my generation relies on a teamwork approach and I’m sitting at my desk all by my lonesome. No one is here to inspire my can-do attitude or tell me that, gee whiz, I’m doing a great job. Aw shucks, I’m just a poor, snarky and inexperienced lost soul wandering the Internet wasteland searching for a hero from a previous generation from whose knowledge I can feed. I need someone to tell me what exactly my next step should be and how I should do it.

If you would like to help me and my current situation, here’s how:
RT @unhatched: Helpless Millennial searching expert guidance and mentoring from GenXer. Must be willing to hold my hand and pat my back.

About Joe
Joe is a non-profit employee based in Dallas, Texas. He claims to specialize in social media marketing because it’s the trend right now, but also dabbles in the creative arts. Besides his benefits paying job, he also freelances as a Web designer, copywriter and technical proofreader. Actual previous job titles include cooking instructor, department store pianist, fight promoter and zamboni driver. He is available for sarcastic and serious conversations 24/7 at twitter.com/unhatched.

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