
Tenth Grade Tech Trends - j2labs
https://medium.com/product-design/d8d4f2300cf3
======
jgannonjr
I'm not sure this has as much to do with her age as her gender (although I'm
sure the former does play some kind of a role). My sister uses snapchat,
instagram, and facetime all the time in the same ways as you described your
sister does, and she's graduated from college. She uses it predominantly to
communicate with her other female friends.

I also know several girls my age (25/26) who use these services in the same
way. It tends to be mostly the "social butterfly" type of girls. It's funny
because these are the same girls who would flood their facebook walls with
pictures throughout the day, and now they rarely if ever make a post. I could
be wrong, but I don't see any guys using the services in the same way.

------
Shank
I'm in 11th and I read Hacker News on a daily basis, so I'm a bit outside the
general population when it comes to issues like this. With that said, her
thoughts on Facebook are echoed by everyone who I've talked to. Many are sick
of it, and fewer each day check it regularly.

If I need to contact someone, even someone with Facebook on their smartphone,
it takes hours to get a reply. If I use SMS I'm acknowledged near instantly.

~~~
corporalagumbo
I feel like Facebook has become the boring Uncle of our digital lives. Nobody
really likes it, except for those blissfully ignorant people who haven't
realised how dumb they look posting all the time, but we can't get rid of it.
I agree that texting is usually faster than Facebook messaging (though because
I use WP7 the line is pretty well blurred between the two for me) but you tend
to be Facebook friends with more people than you have phone numbers for and/or
text regularly. Maybe this is a little different for you because you are still
in school, but as a young adult Facebook is the quick, reliable place where
everyone I know is stored.

I read a description of the computer desktop as the place which you can always
find on your computer, and so the place where unconfident computer users end
up storing all of their files. I think Facebook is the equivalent of the
desktop for social contacts on the web. Which I think will give it a lot of
resilience to unpopularity, so even if no one loves it, it'll probably stick
around.

~~~
Shank
I use Facebook as the "universal directory" if I don't have contact details
for someone, which is the infuriating part. If I need to contact someone I
don't have a phone number or some IM contact for, I go to Facebook and look
there.

A great analogy would be phone books. I've not found a person who actually
likes getting or using them, but they were the best place to find someone's
phone number if all you had was a name and a bit of an address.

------
biturd
I think he missed the point about FaceTime. Not /that/ many 10th graders have
iPhones. 110.00 a month is too much, so the push the limits of their iPods.

We don't need a new app so kids can do video chat, there's Skype and others
for that. They like the ease if use. The problem is to tack in another data
plan restriction removal to open FaceTime with AT&T and possibly others is the
barrier.

I have a 4gs and can't use FaceTime over the cellular network without paying
AT&T more money or losing my unlimited plan. So I don't use it.

All this comes down to the same conclusion the author had. There's a huge
market in the term category. They have deep pockets by proxy of their patents.
But parents won't drop that much more for FaceTime. Want to tap that market
AT&T, Verizon, etc? Allows FaceTime on your network. And Apple, open iMessage
and FaceTime so that it can be coded on Sndroid and everything else. Apple
gets brand recognition ala "FireWire" and we get a service we want that there
no reason to pay more for.

29.00 a month for unlimited texts. Insane. 90% of my friends have iPhones. But
messages from my bank, pharmacy,etc go through a non iMessage service. Apple
needs to open up the protocol and allow an API gateway so regular SMS messages
can get through. Then we can all dump the unlimited text plans or the 30 cents
ala carte text plans.

~~~
blantonl
You don't need an iPhone to use Facetime.

I have a 6 and 8 yr old and both received iPad minis for Christmas and they
have already FaceTimed with their friends and cousins via their new devices.

And we are now spending a lot of time educating our children how to properly
utilize technology to communicate with their friends. That includes a number
of very firm rules and regulations.

~~~
da02
Do the rules/regs end up being fodder for creativity on how to break said
rules/regs? I would imagine that is one of the problems with having smart and
clever kids.

~~~
blantonl
Not if you are an active and involved parent.

------
k-mcgrady
I don't think the Facebook issue has anything to do with their brand. I think
the attitude that Facebook is addicting actually has more to do with people
becoming bored with the service and noticing how much time they actually spend
on it.

Edit:

>> "... my friends and I used Myspace in middle school, and we too abandoned
it (for Facebook) once we reached high school"

The conclusion drawn here might be incorrect. I'm not sure of the age of the
author but could it be that he reached high school at the time when Myspace
had fallen out of favour with most people and everyone was beginning to
transition to Facebook?

It's an interesting post, particularly the part about Snapchat. His sister's
use of it seems to fit with the way Facebook was advertising Poke (I thought
they just had to find another angle besides sexting but it sounds like there
are other uses for it). After hearing this description it sounds like
something I might use. A lot of the photos I share on Twitter/Instagram and
things I find interesting or funny but I never need to see again. I usually
have to then go and delete them from my camera roll and occasionally I go back
through my Instagram feed and delete them. The idea of Snapchat (expiring
images) seems to be what I need.

~~~
veridies
> I think the attitude that Facebook is addicting actually has more to do with
> people becoming bored with the service and noticing how much time they
> actually spend on it.

This is still something Facebook should solve. Facebook, despite its public
groups and pages, still fosters incredibly insular communities, and those can
get tedious very quickly. The reason Tumblr and Twitter have any popularity is
that they encourage finding and following new, interesting people. They have a
lot more novel content and it's easy to explore and find more of it. If
Facebook gets seen as the boring, traditional social network (which to some
degree it has), then that seriously damages its credibility.

~~~
TillE
> The reason Tumblr and Twitter have any popularity is that they encourage
> finding and following new, interesting people.

Yes yes yes. There's a huge unsolved problem in the social networking space:
meeting new people near you (for purposes other than dating or sex, but that
too)

That'll be the next truly big thing, I think. It might focus on places or
events, like connecting people who are going to a concert or a bar. That's
sort of what I hoped FourSquare would be, but it's even more insular and
boring.

~~~
dpe82
Facebook used to solve this (at least for college students) with class
listings. That was a really killer feature for a large part of their user base
that got axed when they launched the app platform and expected an app to take
its place. Problem is, of course, 50 apps took its place and none of them won.

~~~
kragen
What were class listings?

------
martythemaniak
"she swore all of her friends would use if one of my “entrepreneur friends”
built it: a FaceTime-esque app that’s free."

I don't get it - aren't there a ton of video chat apps? Not only the big ones
(google, skype), but lots of startups as well - oovoo, etc?

~~~
prostoalex
Must be the data consumption part. AT&T starter package is 300 MB a month.

~~~
kunle
Yep. The answer might be in someone who figures out how to optimize video chat
for efficiency.

~~~
rory096
If the quality is too low, though, the benefits to communication from seeing
your partner's facial features synchronized with their voice disappear, and
people won't bother using it.

If software identified the user's face in live video and transmitted just that
at high resolution, discarding or compressing the rest, how much efficiency
could be gained?

~~~
kunle
Actually an interesting idea - in this context Facebook's purchase of Face.com
might seem prescient.

Separately - as data gets cheaper and video chat is further optimized, video
chat over 3G/4G becomes more feasible. Probably our answer to this is in the
countries that have abundant bandwidth? What do high schoolers in
Korea/Scandinavia use for video chat?

~~~
lewispollard
My girlfriend is Korean and she uses Skype for video chat.

------
Ogre
I don't understand the FaceTime is too expensive comment. Before iOS 6 it was
completely free, and now it's only not free in terms of celluar data usage
when not on WiFi. When you switch a phone call over to FaceTime, it stops
taking minutes away.

The real drawback to FaceTime is that it's iOS/MacOS only.

------
andybak
I was baffled by the "Facetime is expensive" comment. I'm in the UK. Are data
plans that limited and WiFi that uncommon? How much data does Facetime use?

The Facetime/iMessage slant is interesting. Do any of her peers have Android
phones? Do platform choices follow class/ethnicity/age/region patterns to the
extent where it's not even on her radar?

~~~
hosh
You are right to be baffled. We in the US are also baffled.

The US has a horrible wireless data market. It's not like the UK or Europe in
general. The companies here have a strong enough legal lobbies to keep their
monopolistic control over data. We're behind in terms of the amount of
bandwidth we can access and how much it costs. These companies typically make
over 50% margin on profits while at the same time complain that they do not
have the resources to expand bandwidth, or that the US is too geographically
spread out.

Almost all the "unlimited" plans in the US actually has a limit. Typically,
after a certain amount of usage, the bitrate gets capped. There are a good bit
of wifi, but I suppose that then depends on if you want to find a coffee shop
just to chat on FaceTime.

I'm assuming the article was written by an author living in the US.

------
rdl
I don't understand why FaceTime is viewed as expensive. Isn't it free? I guess
you pay for data, but 95% of the time I'm on wifi (home, office), and I'd
assume schools, wherever kids spend time (coffee shops?), etc. have wifi too.

~~~
plorkyeran
High schools generally don't have much in the way of WiFi coverage.

------
dysoco
I'm also a 15 years old teenager living in Argentina, but here things are
somewhat different.

First, no one has a "real" smartphone, most are cheap Nokia phones with some
applications for Facebook: People who have money usually buy BlackBerries, I
have a Samsung Galaxy Ace (Being an Android fan) that I bought in Spain: but
truth is smartphones are really expensive.

Facebook... everything is about Facebook here: Teenagers don't use any other
IM service besides Facebook Messenger, they even use it in their phones. I
find it extremely painful to communicate because I need to keep a Facebook
window tab opened if I want to chat with someone (Well, I use Pidgin now).

I don't even go into Facebook, the Facebook feed looks like browsing /r/funny
New in Reddit, people don't post original content: Just memes copied from the
internet and cristian stuff.

People tend to have a lot of friends in Facebook: I think I don't have more
than 50 friends: Those who I really would like to talk with me and have access
to my pictures.

What people __really __use here is ask.fm , I'm not sure if people in other
countries use it: but the basic idea is that you create an account and people
(Logged, or as Anonymous) post you questions and you answer: Then it gets
posted in your Facebook.

I don't understand why would anyone want to use that service: The questions
are dumb and nosense. Other questions are personal, and some people still
answer that. Nowadays most of my Facebook feed is 75% ask.fm links, it's
really annoying.

Other services? Some people use Twitter, but not really; mostly teenagers
following One Direction and Justin Bieber.

Blogging? Nah, no one reads blogs: they don't like reading anything larger
than a couple lines of text (I think this:
[http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-
ma...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-may-
think/303881/) can be relevant).

Youtube... they like dumb vlogs and some people like gameplays, I find this
kind of videos very annoying and dumb.

Oh, not even mention Mail: most of people can't remember their passwords, for
me, Mail is vital. Tumblr? No one knows what that is. Ah, no one uses
Instagram either, and I'm glad...

So resuming: Teenagers only use the internet for Facebook, and, sometimes,
reading the Wikipedia (When they have to do something for school) and that's
__really __bad: They have a wonderful tool that they don't want to use,
although the language (Most of teenagers don't have a good level of English,
or at least they refuse to read English) can be an impediment.

For me the internet is amazing: you can learn whatever you want, for free,
thanks to tools like Khan Academy, Coursera and Udacity: But people refuse to,
and the language is not the only issue. I think we should focus our knowledge
into motivating the Teenagers to get interested into this, instead of
developing more applications like Poke or a Facetime killer.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
The person who figures out how to get teens to spend their free time learning
instead of socializing is going to go down in history. The answer likely lies
somewhere in the socializing, but I have no idea what it is.

And way to take advantage of the myriad of educational opportunities that
exist online. I would have done anything for access to them when I was a kid;
instead, I had to go to the ( _gasp_ ) library.

I think we are going to see a growing intellectual gulf between the few that
take advantage of these tools and the masses who don't. There are so many
opportunities that can really give somebody a significant boost; a much
greater boost than was offered to those of us who didn't have much more than
books in the past. And I'm always encouraged when I see the kids who do take
advantage of it.

~~~
jfarmer
I think learning is inherently social.

Part of the problem is the mindset that creates a false dichotomy between
"learning" and "socializing." One consequence of this mindset is the idea or
impression that "learning" involves locking oneself in a room, opening a book,
and sticking with it until one learns the material.

An example in language acquisition:
[http://www.ted.com/talks/patricia_kuhl_the_linguistic_genius...](http://www.ted.com/talks/patricia_kuhl_the_linguistic_genius_of_babies.html)

~~~
corporalagumbo
Language acquisition is not a good example to use here. Our minds are primed
with pre-built language circuitry and as children we pick up the specifics of
our environmental language effortlessly.

The learning we do throughout our post-infancy lives bears no resemblance to
language learning. It is done using that effortlessly-acquired language
structure, but in itself it takes hard work and effort. Unlike language, it
goes "against the grain" of our evolved instincts. It can indeed be catalysed
through judicious social interaction - comparing results, swapping tips, etc.
- but the core of adult learning is focused, isolated study. Social
environments for learning are a supplement, useful in moderation, but usually
destructive and much more likely to result in groupthink, lowest-common-
denominator mediocrity, and poor efficiencies in failing to optimise for the
wide range of needs and aptitudes distributed among individuals when used in
excess.

~~~
jfarmer
For sure. Do you have any research I can read?

There's tons of ink spilled about child development and learning, but precious
little about adult learning.

I help run Dev Bootcamp so knowing as much about this as I can is really
important to me. :)

~~~
corporalagumbo
Sorry, I can see how reading my comment would give the impression that I speak
from great authority, but I was mostly just voicing my own preferences and
prejudices about learning. I took a look at the introductory video for your
service and it seems like a very professional, carefully-structured course - I
do think learning in groups can work well if there is a clear, thoughfully-
conceived structure for interaction. And it must surely help that you select
for motivated, intelligent people - motivation is the key to real learning at
any stage in life, I'd say.

I have had some experience with attempts to get groups of people to create or
work together in groups with little to no structure and it never works. But I
have not had much experience with the sort of structured social learning you
offer (I think architect schools do a lot of this sort of structured, group
creation-cum-learning - might be worth checking out.)

I do think that locking yourself in a room with a book and focussing is
important, at least to build the platform of understanding from which you can
move to group interactions. That's certainly my preference for the things I
teach myself, and I think it is crucial for building basic understanding and
confidence with the ideas. Of course there are chokepoints, especially with
something like coding where at some point you need to actually start creating,
where measured, structured guidance must be immensely helpful. But I think you
need a rhythm - independent learning, then taking the problems and confusions
you've built up into a social setting, then independent work again - I think
real, 100% focus on a problem is a solitary activity. But perhaps from your
own experience with DBC you can offer me some counter-examples?

~~~
hluska
"I do think that locking yourself in a room with a book and focussing is
important, at least to build the platform of understanding from which you can
move to group interactions."

Studying learning is inherently difficult because it requires intelligent
people to try and figure out how they got that way. The tendency is to extend
personal learning styles upon the population!

In this case, I bet that you learn the best from sitting down and reading a
book. I'd double down and suggest that you take incredible notes and that your
favourite books are thick with notes and underlined passages.

If I'm correct, it means that you learn best from reading/writing. This is one
of the most common learning styles. However, some people are auditory learners
(they learn the best during lectures), others are visual learners (they learn
best when graphics are used to explain the concepts), and still others are
kinesthetic (they learn best from doing).

To complicate matters, these learning styles are far from perfect type
theories. In practice, people employ different learning strategies in
different situations.

------
toobulkeh
This diverse view is very good. It's always promising to pay attention outside
of your generation and use-case. Family and friends are a great starter, but
try different neighborhoods , cities, or even countries - there are a LOT more
opportunities out there.

Sadly, one thing I've found with people's suggestions (and I've heard a lot of
"next hot app" suggestions as I'm sure you have as well) already exist. They
just don't know that they do. Maybe there's a job for bringing those apps to
those people? How meta.

------
kunle
Curious - all of our parents' preferred methods of communication cost
money...letters, long distance phone calls, mobile phone calls. All of Josh's
sister's (and her peer sets) methods of communication cost nothing (Instagram,
Facebook, Kik, Twitter, Tumblr). Just an observation. Implications of this?
Will companies one day pay us to talk to each other?!

Separately - isn't Skype basically Facetime over 3G/4G (and not just wi-fi)?
What is Skype lacking here?

~~~
justhw
_Josh's sister's (and her peer sets) methods of communication cost nothing_

You gotta have a data plan to access these from anywhere. Most schools don't
have wifi. So, the actually can cost more than phone calls, letter etc...

~~~
kunle
Fair point actually - didn't consider that the cost is embedded. That said,
How often are those the data hogs? (Anecdotally from myself, I rarely come
near the data caps). My assumption is that even today, video apps are the most
data intensive - outside of those, are folks hitting their data caps on a
regular basis?

------
r0s
Interesting to me are the generational service abandonment patterns.

The author mentions abandoning MySpace moving into highschool like the subject
graduates past Tumblr.

It's symbolic of the maturing nature of the individual. In the future perhaps
social networks will find a way to iterate their brand with each generation to
prevent losing users to another new service.

~~~
RyanZAG
Is it so much the individual maturing, and not just the platform itself losing
relevance? The whole nature of these social platforms seems to be entirely
ephemeral - they spread by word of mouth because others are using it. The
problem comes in when you consider that a person isn't going to use more than
2 or 3 of these platforms. So as soon as a new platform is released, older
platforms are guaranteed to lose users even if the new platform is worse, as
it will take a number of weeks or months for a typical user to understand and
then reject the new platform. During that time, the older platform isn't being
used.

This exact issue seems to apply to online gaming as well, so this isn't some
new discovery of human behavior. There are some 'big' games (warcraft, cod)
that retain their users even after a decade - but they do this by reinventing
themselves and recreating their products constantly. I think social media and
gaming are similar enough for a lot of these behavior traits to apply to
social media also - which means the correct approach is to redesign/improve
core parts of your social platform at least once a year to keep it relevant.

------
exodust
15 year olds definitely want to have "compatibility with different systems"
including the source of their pay packets, allowance, and access to resources
- ie old people and their old email.

But it turns out email, even if used infrequently, is still important. It's
easy to have multiple accounts sit there indefinitely. Not controlled by one
fatcat pulling privacy strings and strategizing your online activity.

Meanwhile another million blue 'f' logos are printed, each destined for a
shopfront window, cash register, door. Beckoning the registration and sign up
and sign over of your stuff. In return, FB tells a few advertisers about you
and your stuff. And FB also reserves the right to build the mechanics of your
social communications, private and public, the particulars of which will be in
accordance with Facebook's sole decision and strategy in an advertiser-hungry
world... And other things without notice and so on.

~~~
zdrtx
To be clear, Facebook doesn't tell any advertisers any information about any
users. Advertisers tell Facebook what kinds of people they want to see their
advertisement, and Facebook shows the advertisement to those kinds of people.

~~~
karambahh
Supposedly :-) I am always amazed at how poorly personalized facebook are for
me or my friends. Basically it's always made of 60% "meeting someone from the
area" aka some shaddy semi-porn website. I am really curious of the efficient
of advertisement on FB. I know some large brand (GM I think?) pulled off FB
because they did not see any ROI.

I wonder if it holds true worldwide and for smaller brands...

------
philwelch
FTA:

 _For me, Twitter is predominantly a link discovery service — admittedly, that
is a simplified view, but it’s helpful for these purposes — so I followed-up
on her Twitter comments by asking where she discovers links. “What do you
mean?” She couldn’t even understand what I was asking. I rephrased the
question: “What links do you read? What sites do they come from? What blogs?”_

 _"I don’t read links. I don’t read blogs. I don’t know. You mean like funny
videos on Facebook? Sometimes people post funny links there. But I’m not
really interested in anything yet, like you are."_

Television was a major blow to reading for decades up until the internet, but
now even the internet is starting to destroy literacy. It's very unsettling.

~~~
corporalagumbo
My impression is the exact opposite: I see people reading and debating more
than ever thanks to the internet. I think thanks to the internet we are in a
golden era of literacy, but we just don't notice it because we're too busy
complaining with other highly-literate people on highly debate-focussed
websites such at this one about the more obvious non-literary manifestations
of popular culture.

~~~
philwelch
One need only look as far as Reddit to see that HN is highly unusual in this
respect.

~~~
corporalagumbo
People were plenty stupid before the Internet. It was just hidden before, now
it's all out in the open.

Let's just see what happens next - remember, we're only about three to four
years into a fully online society :)

~~~
philwelch
Stupid is one thing. Disinterested in reading is my primary concern.

------
unimpressive
I'm going to break the "Don't mention my age." rule to write this post. Only
because here it's relevant.

What you use and how you use it has a lot of factors besides age. It has to do
with your friends, their friends, where you live, what school you go to or
what job you have, etc etc.

I'd like to share an anecdote about umwelt. A few days ago, I walked into a
coffee shop. I sat in that coffee shop for two hours.[0] When I first walked
in my jaw hit the floor as I scanned the room. Everyone had tablets, young,
old, there was no common pattern. There was one person I could see reading a
physical book, and two graphic designers in the back with Macbooks. My first
thought was "Either I'm living in a bubble, or coffee shops are a bubble.".

I figured that if this is what it looks like in suburbia, then it must be even
crazier elsewhere. That's when it hit me. If silicon valley developers do
their work in coffee shops, and all they ever see there is mobile devices,
then they'll naturally develop for mobile devices. But then mobile is new,
hot, and growing all the time. IIRC mobile sales have already outdone consumer
desktop and laptop sales.

Are developers choosing mobile because it's new and big, or because they see
it in coffee shops all the time? Probably both. They're not exactly mutually
exclusive. Just like how you have to ask if consumers are switching to tablets
because laptops are too bulky, or because they're more usable, or because
that's where the focus of every up and coming developer is right now? Probably
a combination of all three and more.

All of that might have seemed pretty obvious to you. Well it wasn't to me,
heres why:

1\. In my circle of friends, everyone still uses desktops or laptops. Having
only a laptop seems to be a result of financial concerns, not a lack of demand
for a desktop.

2\. At my school a handful of people have tablets. Me being one of them. A
group of kids asked me what kind of cellphone it was when I first used it in
class.

3\. Among my friends Facebook seems to be the dominant communication medium,
alongside telephone services. I only use the latter.

4\. My school has uncommon demographics, The vast vast majority could be
described as one or more of the following: Nerd, Hipster, Extreme anime and
manga fan, Gamer. So I guess I myself sort of live in a bubble. I don't even
own a cellphone.

I live on the west coast of the US. Not exactly a remote location.

[0]: This was the first time I've ever actually sat down in a coffee shop.

~~~
notJim
You actually didn't mention your age. I gather from the rest of your comment,
you're in high school?

You have a lot of good thoughts about the mobile/tablet stuff and I think
you're right. Just to add some quantitative info to it, I work for an
e-commerce site and a quarter of our traffic is mobile, and that's not
including people using our native mobile apps, which means that our real
mobile traffic is more than 25%. I don't believe that includes tablets, but
I'm not sure (there isn't a tablet-specific site, although we do have native
tablet apps.)

~~~
unimpressive
> You actually didn't mention your age. I gather from the rest of your
> comment, you're in high school?

Yes.

Honestly, every time I use a tablet the first thing on my mind is the firmware
invading my privacy. The next thing though is input devices. (I'll probably
end up flashing cyanogen mod.)

Input devices, for most users, and even most developers, are something
assumed. For desktop it's keyboard and mouse, for laptop it's keyboard and
some kind of mouse-like input device. For tablets it's touch or buttons. For
phones it's touch or buttons. (I don't think most tablets that use buttons,
like e-readers, are open for development. Correct me if I'm wrong though.)

I'm going to reiterate what I've already said before, touch sucks as a
universal interface. [0] So my question ends up being "What peripherals make
sense for a mobile device?". Recently I received a tiny bluetooth keyboard to
type on my Nexus 7. That's a step in the right direction, as typing things out
with the on-screen keyboard is painful and awkward. (And since a stylus is too
slow, smudges up the display...)

For a pointer device I am using a capacitive stylus. My current hypothesis is
that the dominant paradigm for tablets will be keyboard and pen. Though for
delicate tasks such as drawing, a capacitive stylus leaves much to be desired.
IMO touch should be, in the majority of cases, a fallback interface for people
without peripherals. For most applications it doesn't beat traditional input
devices such as pens keyboards and mice of one sort or another.

[0]: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3606002>

~~~
philwelch
Touch beats pens, keyboards, and mice in the respect that you don't have to
carry around a bunch of peripherals. Nearly everybody has fingers and spent
the first couple years of their lives learning to use them.

Your complaint about touch interfaces probably has more to do with buying a
really shitty MP3 player than anything inherent about touch.

~~~
unimpressive
>Your complaint about touch interfaces probably has more to do with buying a
really shitty MP3 player than anything inherent about touch.

I just mentioned I have a Nexus 7. Same complaints mostly. Though the touch
_is_ more responsive in the 7, doesn't really alleviate my complaints. (I
never complained about latency on the Sanza because it's a sub $100 device and
can't be expected to have decent capacitive touch hardware. Which is part of
the reason it should use buttons, there was no reason to _make it a device
driven by touch_.)

That and I haven't seen very many "gestures" in the android apps I use. Though
I've heard a lot of hype about them.

>Touch beats pens, keyboards, and mice in the respect that you don't have to
carry around a bunch of peripherals. Nearly everybody has fingers and spent
the first couple years of their lives learning to use them.

Yes, yes it does. Which is why it was probably a smart idea to force
developers to assume only a touch screen for most applications, it stops them
from requiring a stylus for stuff that doesn't need it. At the same time,
using a tablet with just your fingers is really painful, and theres no way I'm
the only person who holds this opinion.

And theres a reason tablet keyboards are so small, and usually clamp onto the
device they're built for, it's because nobody is going to lug around a full
sized 104 key desktop keyboard. And pens are small, they fit in your pocket
easily. Together they probably fix enough of the weaknesses touch has as an
interface to make a tablet usable as more than a toy.

when I say touch should be a "fallback" interface, that might imply it
shouldn't receive regular use. I really mean something closer to "default". A
good example might be GIMP. (Or any other image editor, like photoshop.)
People who are serious about drawing digitally usually buy a drawing tablet,
or in decades past some sort of light pen. But because drawing tablets work
like any other pointing device from the operating systems perspective, users
who prefer a drawing tablet can use one without locking out users who only
have an optical mouse, and vice versa.

A capacitive touch stylus is compatible with touch screens, meaning that for
applications that don't require extreme delicacy, pens and touch can co-exist
without carrying around any large peripherals. Users who don't want to buy any
fancy add-ons are happy, users who can't stand smudging their screen and
cleaning it with a glasses cloth are happy too.

------
Uhhrrr
I think it makes total sense that no one she knows reads blogs. Most kids
don't read the paper, or read books for fun. This is not so much devolution of
reading habits as democratization of computer usage.

~~~
wildgift
This is true, but there are also kids her age who do read the paper, and it's
actually a prime age for pleasure reading. His sister probably isn't going to
take up reading or writing for reasons other than necessity. SaMo is not a
crappy community - it's a wealthy one really - and very well educated, so if
she's not interested now, she probably won't be in the future.

------
justhw
Tenth graders are customers without credit cards. How are snapchat and all the
free apps generating revenue? ads?

~~~
Evbn
They have credit /debit cards linked to parent accounts.

~~~
timthorn
Don't they have debit cards in their own name?

~~~
ams6110
Pretty hard to do if you're under 18, banks want a legally responsible person
to own the account.

~~~
DanBC
Debit cards in theory do not allow any debt, thus there's not so much of a
problem allowing under 18s to have them.

See this UK account for 11 to 18 year olds which allows a debit card.

([http://www.rbs.co.uk/personal/current-
accounts/g1/young/revo...](http://www.rbs.co.uk/personal/current-
accounts/g1/young/revolve.ashx))

HSBC give you a savings account when you're seven, and add a current account
when you're 11, with a VISA debit card.

([https://www.hsbc.co.uk/1/2/current-accounts/under-18-bank-
ac...](https://www.hsbc.co.uk/1/2/current-accounts/under-18-bank-
account?HBEU_dyn_lnk=CurrentAccount_FilterTool_MyMoney_FindOutMore_ProductNameLinkButton))

~~~
theatrus2
A lot of US banks still want 18-year olds or a parental guarantee.

US banks love overage fees (making credit card interest rates an amazing
bargain). Plus there is the liability of checks/ACH which can cause
overdrafts.

------
JacksonGariety
Being an 11th grader I can honestly say this is bizarre since I associate so
well with both Josh and his sister at the same time. Kids use social media
differently than the middle-aged.

~~~
GuiA
Josh being in his 20s, it's funny to see that high schoolers already consider
us "middle aged" :)

~~~
unimpressive
I don't think that's a majority opinion. And if it is then it's certainly not
a new trend.

I don't plan on dying at 40 anyway.

------
wildgift
Look, some people get into Princeton, and some don't. LOl.

People are different, and in my experience, some brainy people like twitter
and other link finding services, to find things to READ. We watch
instructional videos or download all the awesome lectures that universities
have posted. We use facebook, but end up posting links to news stories and
even longer things like wikipedia articles and actual papers and prose. We
like Reddit and even stackexchange. We love wikipedia.

We're a minority. Way more people like to take photos of each other and send
them to each other. They like to share photos of the cat, babies, etc. They
share inspirational poetry.

Even more people just want videophone of some kind, or something like twitter,
but sans too much linking. More photos. t.co for everything.

I know someone who got internet mainly for consuming porn and maybe some video
games. He's an adult, has a college degree, and works with people who wish
kids would read more, or be more interested in school, or basically be more
like the brainy kids. He didn't go to college because he loved knowledge. He
went to get a middle class job, and because his parents went to college.

Personally, I was the first to go to college in my family, and went to a good
one. I'm a big nerd. My brother and I taught ourselves to program computers.
(He's smarter than me, too.) I liked to read. I still mostly read online. I've
put up a few left-wing websites, have an almost obligatory anger toward the
boss (comes from growing up working class), and still buy books.

I just accept that people are different. Some people are into reading, and
others aren't. Some people like to think about things, and others are more
about looking at people. Some people go with the flow, and others don't.

~~~
ubercore
I'm not quite sure what statement you're making here? Where does Princeton, or
education at all, have to do with what 15 year olds use for technology?

------
dhughes
My take on social Internet trends and technology seems to be everything is
rushing towards mobility and has been since about 2004.

When I first got on the Internet in the early 90s you sat at a desk with a CRT
monitor and used a dial-up 14.4Kbps modem when the phone wasn't being used by
your mom or sister. I didn't even have a cellphone yet.

Then into the PDA phase, wifi came along, cable Internet, then better phones,
more people on the web, commerce really picked up and then blogs etc.

Each generation is exposed to mobile technology that's more powerful and the
Internet it seems to young people isn't seen as a thing that is on monitor but
a poor version of it is now on my phone, it's a tool to be used. Even tablets
I can't see being popular like phones since they're too big, now if you had a
folding tablet like Microsoft's killed-off Courier I could see that being
popular.

I can see mobility being the only way the Internet will be used by young
people teens to 20s. The desktop computer will be too formal and seen as too
stuffy and slow, chained to a desk at home.

~~~
GuiA
>I can see mobility being the only way the Internet will be used by young
people teens to 20s. The desktop computer will be too formal and seen as too
stuffy and slow, chained to a desk at home.

This is already the case. I have 2 teenage brothers; one (somewhat tech savvy)
uses almost exclusively his tablet + mobile phone (he only uses his laptop to
run a webradio); the other one (not tech savvy at all) only uses his
cellphone.

------
jhkdesign
A few observations:

1\. Facebook is trying to stay relevant by copying promising social network
features (e.g. Whatsapp, Snapchat, Foursquare, ...)

2\. Although Facebook is trying hard, it's having a tough time competing with
the new social network because of preconceived notion of what Facebook is.
(Facebook is news feed of personal social graph, not ephemeral real-time chat
like Snapchat.) More on this:
[http://www.futureofsocialnetwork.com/2012/12/social-
network-...](http://www.futureofsocialnetwork.com/2012/12/social-network-as-
context.html)

3\. Although Facebook is having hard time competing with new, it has the big
enough network to be the social platform. People still have account because of
network-effect.

------
ruswick
Interesting commentary. However, a sample size on one doesn't yield a
substantive-enough dataset to draw conclusions. As a high schooler, I can tell
you that service use varies wildly based on location and demographic.

Moreover, Josh's sister didn't really differentiate between her preferences
and the preferences of her cohort in general. She may have very idiosyncratic
social media use-cases. I know the way in which I use social media is very
different from the way in which some of my friends use it, which in turn
differs from the way many others use it. People are different, and they use
services differently.

I would take any assertion of how people use social media with a big grain of
salt.

~~~
j2labs
Josh doesn't imply otherwise.

He is explicit that this post represents reflections on a conversation he had
with his sister; it is indeed anecdotal.

~~~
hosh
The value of the article is not in its statistical likelihood, but rather, in
recognizing how his assumptions blinded him. And actually listening to people.

~~~
ruswick
How is he to know if he was "blind?"

The fact that one girl exhibited preferences counter to his assumptions does
not mean that those assumption are incorrect.

~~~
hosh
"The fact that one girl exhibited preferences counter to his assumptions does
not mean that those assumption are incorrect." <\-- is exactly how you do not
do customer development. You have stopped listening to the user.

~~~
tedunangst
Assuming the first user you talk to is representative of all users is exactly
how you do not do customer development.

~~~
hosh
You're focusing on having things being driven by data. That is commendable.
However, that only tells you a part of the story.

There's a big blind spot of people who depend on analyzing things like this.
And that is, they stop listening to other people. It is usually because such
people are consumed with being right, or even trying to prove themselves
right. The skeptical stance gets distorted into requiring other people to
challenge your assumptions. Sometimes, it is a covert (as in Jungian shadow
covert) way of feeling good about being contemptuous of other people.

To really listen to other people, you give up the notion that it is all about
you. In other words, it's better to assume that you don't know what you are
are talking about. You don't have any preconceived notions blocking you from
hearing someone out. You are not "listening" in the sense that you are waiting
to for the other person to stop talking so you can tell them how they are
wrong. You might even learn something.

This is exactly what customer development is about: listening to other people.

In any case, I doubt this will persuade you. That's the cool thing about this.
Some people don't want to consider this, so it becomes an unfair advantage for
the folks who do :-)

------
j2labs
Keek might make a reasonable example of something do ewhere between facetime
and instagram. It's a lot like instagram, but the medium is <36s long videos.

Just bringing it up as food for thought. No real point here.

------
jtchang
Sure there are a lot of FaceTime like apps. But the problem is none of them
have done a phenomenal job marketing to their demographic to really take
market share.

There are also a great deal of drawbacks to FaceTime which make it expensive.
It costs cell data? That's expensive! It takes a lot of bandwidth? Also
expensive.

The point is that there are so many rough edges around the product that it
makes it a pain in the ass to use. Slow choppy video is also a problem.

~~~
ilaksh
Choppy video and cell data aren't rough edges on FaceTime. It just takes a lot
of bandwidth to transmit and receive video.

------
hosh
Not really tech trends, but rather, product trends. Still interesting.

I think the biggest takeaway is: just because your parents are clueless about
the generation gap doesn't mean that you are not either. Don't bring in your
assumptions.

(And following that: tech is now iterating fast enough that a "generation gap"
can now be seen among siblings, not just parent-children).

------
floatingice
This is one if the most interesting articles I've read on HN in a looonnng
time. More tech companies should be thinking about this.

------
frasierman
<http://willsmidlein.com/blog/tech-trends/>

------
jff
I wouldn't be too much bothered by what tenth grade kids like, because they
don't have any damn money.

~~~
corporalagumbo
Wow. You must be lost - Hackernews is, as far as I am aware, a site for
intelligent, open-minded people who recognise that valuable information may be
found in many inconspicuous, non-intuitive locations. People intelligent
enough to realise that kids are historically early-adopters and re-shapers of
technology, pioneering uses and social integrations which, while dismissed as
trivial by ignorant, hidebound adults, often end up exploding into mainstream
popularity and defining the future of technology.

~~~
jff
The article describes how these kids are all using free services, and that
they won't use the ones that costs money. So I'd say that if you have any
business model besides "Ads, ads, glorious ads on our user-generated
content!", I think teenagers are probably going to pass by your service,
however good it may be.

~~~
dpe82
> Ads, ads, glorious ads

Is there something wrong with that? Total US advertising expenditures for 2011
were $144 billion[0]. UGC is of course quite difficult to monetize, but it's
not impossible.

[0] [http://kantarmediana.com/intelligence/press/us-
advertising-e...](http://kantarmediana.com/intelligence/press/us-advertising-
expenditures-increased-08-percent-2011)

------
SeoxyS
That last point about FaceTime sounds like an opportunity for Sean Parker's
Airtime.

------
n1c
> “entrepreneur friends”

Instead of /nerds/ or some such is quite a nice touch.

------
drwl
> real time social web all the major buzz words in one phrase!

