Out of the mouths of babes

You can usualy be sure that if you see a feature update on the lives of teenagers (what gadgets they are using what slang falls from their mounths...that kind of thing) you can be sure that the information is woefully out of date. Elderly media commentators desperately trying to get 'down with the kids.'

However, the FT recently ran a story here about a 15-year old intern at Morgan Stanley who wrote some research describing the social media habits of his friends. The bank was so impressed with the results that they published the report. According to the head of Morgan Stanley's European media analyst team:

"The response was enormous. “We’ve had dozens and dozens of fund managers, and several CEOs, e-mailing and calling all day,” said Edward Hill-Wood, estimating that the note had generated five or six times more feedback than the team’s usual reports.

In summary the intern's report included the following:

• Teenagers do not use Twitter - something about 'pay-as-go phone cards.
• Even online, teens find advertising “extremely annoying and pointless”.
• No teenager he knew regularly reads a newspaper since most “cannot be bothered to read pages and pages of text” rather than see summaries online or on television.