
Eleventh Grade Tech Trends - ASquare
https://medium.com/musings-about-text-boxes/eleventh-grade-tech-trends-aca537e9ce62
======
quaz3l
Being a High Schooler myself, it is actually really cool to see viral effects
first hand. For example, when I released my first simple game app, Runbow, I
thought it might catch on if I just played it in class. It did, within a day,
1/3 of the students at my school had it (school of 2000). I was also featured
in the school newspaper. It was a fun experience. I wrote a blog post about
it:

[http://blog.sam.ink/2014/03/05/i-made-an-
app/](http://blog.sam.ink/2014/03/05/i-made-an-app/)

~~~
mandlar
That reminds me of my high school days where people played games on TI-83
calculators. I built a level for the Super Mario game and it spread like
wildfire throughout the school.

------
patja
I have an eleventh grade daughter. Some of the accepted norms for her peer
group that have surprised me are:

Email is just for school and ecommerce. She told me that one of her friends
sent her a super long text about a crisis she was having. I said, wait, a
super long text? Why didn't she send an email. Laughter ensued. Nobody uses
email to communicate with friends, silly Daddy. I guess that's how you get to
> 3000 sms per month.

Facebook is out. She feels like hers is the last grade to use it in any
appreciable way, and even for them they mostly use it to manage events. Few of
the freshmen use Facebook.

~~~
lightcatcher
I'm not so sure about email not being used to communicate with friends.

I'm currently a senior in college. If asked during high school, I would have
said exactly what your daughter said, except with Facebook messages replacing
SMS.

At my college, all organization of student groups happens over email. I very
quickly went from receiving <1 email/day during high school to receiving ~20
emails/day in college. Exposure to this mailing list culture at college (and
also at during internships in industry) has made me an email person. I
typically don't send short emails (~2 sentence) for social messages (I use
Facebook for that), but if I need to send a paragraph to someone I do it over
email. My group of friends splits our planning of events 50/50 between email
and Facebook messages.

I'm not sure if this is just at the college I attend or if its a more general
phenomena.

~~~
rtpg
College is where I learned of the necessity to get good at e-mail management.

But honestly, since I left most events/groups I'm a part of work through
Facebook now. Event management with Facebook really is its killer feature as a
social network.

~~~
bravura
And yet, event management in Facebook sucks. It's just where all the events
are posted.

Facebook isn't good at events because of event _management_. It's just because
they aggregate all events.

I consistently get invited to events in: New York, Montreal, San Francisco,
Buenos Aires, London, and Berlin. This is by choice: If I visit one of those
cities, I want to know what to do. But why can't I filter my events view so
that I only see events nearby? Why do I have to have a clogged events
feedback, because I want to know what's happening if I travel and don't want
to hide invites certain event producers?

(Also, event sharing features suck, if you're promoting an event. You have to
use Javascript hacks to share, and only then you can share with _everyone_ in
one of your top two or three cities.)

~~~
rtpg
They are not good at event discovery, maybe, but for setting things up between
friends I've had no major issues (especially now that I can follow the wall of
an event without RSVPing).

I think your use case is very different from how most people use FB events.
Though it would be nice to have good event discovery (and they probably have
the data to do it).

------
jmgrosen
This definitely echoes what I see as an eleventh grader. Although the only
social network mentioned here that I use is Snapchat, I definitely get the
sense that Instagram and Twitter are becoming more popular as medium-specific
apps. Additionally, Facebook feels ubiquitous (though I don't have an account
anymore) but more "formal" than other options nowadays.

And for better or for worse, teens love their anonymity.

(Meanwhile, here I am, glued to Reddit and HN...)

EDIT: Feel free to ask me anything regarding this, if you're curious. Of
course, as a relatively nerdy guy, I don't have the most typical experience :)

~~~
alexanderss
One thing not covered in the blog post (except Twitter) was social media or
regular media where you interact with people you don't already know (e.g.
Twitter, Reddit, Hacker News). Is this less common because friend-based social
media is mostly photos and teenagers prefer using images to communicate? Does
having a pseudonym on any of these sites count as anonymity, or is that
preferred to communicate with friends anonymously? Thanks!

~~~
jmgrosen
I think Instagram (along with Twitter) is used a lot to interact with a wider
base of people than just your friends, supporting your idea of image-based
networks, but I don't think it has to do with their particular media. Reddit,
and other forum-like sites, are popular in certain cliques (mainly tech-savvy
ones -- anime/manga fans, gamers, etc.), but hasn't really broken out in
mainstream teen culture. My hypothesis is that teenagers like the more
personal, if you will, aspect of Twitter/Instagram/Facebook/etc. in that they
are very user-based -- even if you find content based on a hashtag (say, on
Twitter), _who_ posted it is just as important as what they posted, unlike
forums, where content matters significantly more than its poster. (How many
Reddit usernames do remember? Now what about Twitter?)

I think pseudonymity is perceived in a very different manner than anonymity.
With a pseudonym, you can piece together the scraps of information someone
leaves and maybe make a good guess at who that account is; at least, that's
how one feels when using a consistent pseudonym, even if it's unrealistic.
With anonymity, you have no sense of responsibility for your actions, because
each one post is unlikely to reveal much on its own.

Again, I probably have a skewed view of things, but hopefully this was at
least thought-provoking!

------
alexanderss
"This is huge for Facebook — it has become an ubiquitous utility. And my
sister didn’t even know Messenger, Facebook’s well-regarded, standalone
messaging app, existed. Couple this anecdote with the WhatsApp acquisition and
Facebook seems poised to own (utilitarian and functional) communication."

Given how hard Facebook pushes, and has subsequently forced Messenger onto all
mobile users, his sister not knowing it exists is not good for Facebook. I'm
sure the author is trying to spin it into a positive since he works there, but
that's quite a stretch.

~~~
icelancer
I refuse to install it. I get around to my messages when I get back to my
computer. The messaging app is terrible.

~~~
alexhawdon
What do you dislike about the messaging app?

I initially felt corralled into installing it but now I use it quite
frequently to participate in small group discussions with my friends.
Actually, I should clarify: it's almost exclusively one group discussion that
we use to organise our social lives (last-minute day trips at the weekends,
beers after work, that sort of thing). Email has become fragmented (not
universal; everyone has a number of accounts), there is no group option on
SMS, and Twitter is too public. There isn't a comparable communication medium
in use within my social circle.

I find the app experience pretty reliable and straight-forward. I especially
like the option to 'snooze' chats for an hour or two (I'm trying to get some
work done and my friends are all telling jokes) or until the next morning (I'm
engaged this evening and don't want my phone pinging all the time).

(As it appear to be relevant and give context to this discussion, I'm a
late-20s English male.)

------
mhurron
It was entirely focused on Social Media Platforms. Now, while I don't expect a
high schooler to be checking the performance of their stocks, it does
highlight something I've thought for a while about social media (and maybe why
I don't 'get it') --

It seems entirely designed to keep the high school experience of constantly
worrying about what everyone else is doing and thinks about you front and
center through the rest of your life. It's like choosing to never move past
the most horrible parts of school.

~~~
jmgrosen
> It seems entirely designed to keep the high school experience of constantly
> worrying about what everyone else is doing and thinks about you front and
> center through the rest of your life.

I think this is true if you choose to make it that way, but for a lot of
these, it really doesn't have to be that way. For example, I have a small
(~10) number of friends on Snapchat; we generally share tiny tidbits of our
life that we enjoy, and it helps us to know each other a little better in a
manner that doesn't invoke jealousy.

~~~
eitally
Agreed, and my only use case for Whatsapp is a similar social group of
colleagues (most of whom are friends IRL, too) spread around the world. This
kind of platform was the easiest method of staying in touch, but in an
unforced passive participation way. It works well.

------
cwal37
I have 5 younger siblings (ranging from early teens to early 20s [8th grade
on]), and everyone in my family has a smartphone so here are some scattered
thoughts.

It's always interesting to see what apps they have pinned or what they use the
most (snapchat, instagram, twitter). Generally with tech-related stuff I'm the
most knowledgeable and up-to-date family member, but I completely miss the
train when it comes to social apps sometimes. I think this is because I'm
older, geographically isolated from young people, and grew up without a
cellphone at all. I definitely had a phase where I was obsessed with joining
things ASAP (remember Pownce?), but I feel like I've been done with that part
of my connected life for a few years. I use instagram, but don't follow anyone
except immediate family members or close friends, I have 0 exposure to the
super popular "celebrity" accounts because I rarely use or search for
hashtags. I still don't use Snapchat, and recently one of my brothers was
shocked that I didn't use Venmo.

A particular thing that I've found really odd is that I have trouble getting a
text response from my siblings, even though I know they have their phones on
them and are constantly snapchatting, or whatever. I text a lot, but maybe get
one response for every 5-10 texts I send.

I think the one extremely consistent app in my family is Spotify, although
it's fairly rare for any of us to use its social functions. From my parents
down through all the kids, everyone uses Spotify quite a bit.

The younger siblings don't seem to care about or understand data limits as
much. To them, the internet is everywhere, what do you mean it's not free?

~~~
at-fates-hands
>>> A particular thing that I've found really odd is that I have trouble
getting a text response from my siblings, even though I know they have their
phones on them and are constantly snapchatting, or whatever. I text a lot, but
maybe get one response for every 5-10 texts I send.

text messaging for kids is what email is for the older generations now. I
remember when I first starting email and I thought it was really cool. It was
instant communication and I felt like I was living in a brave new world.
Nowadays, I almost despise email. Too many messages, or ads, or stuff I get
subscribed to, then have to remove or unsubscribe to when they don't mean
anything to me.

This is how it is with kids and text messaging now. Unless you're one of their
10 most important friends they text and arrange their social calendars with,
you're the equivalent of spam to them. I should know, I have the same
experience with my nephews.

Anything about how something went like a sports event, or something that I
thought was important in their life? No answer. Even stuff like, "I have two
extras tickets to the Maple Leafs game, you want to go with a friend?" will go
without an answer sometimes for days. The response? "Oh, sometimes I get so
many texts, I forgot sometimes to reply back to people." When I spoke to my
sister she said they were starting to have the same problem. Until they took
my nephew's iphone away for a week and told him if they text him, it's a
priority and he had better respond or lose more of his gadgets or his iphone
on a permanent basis. So now they have a way of cutting through the noise to
signal ratio and get a hold of him. I just don't have that much pull with
them. Now, I usually just call my sister or call him directly. It's the only
way I can get a response within a decent amount of time.

------
iLoch
I'm 20. Am I already too old for this? I use Twitter and Snapchat most days,
though my contributions to either of those are limited in comparison to my
consumption of others' content. I've deleted my Instagram account and haven't
felt like I'm missing anything. My Facebook feed is filled with clickbait and
auto-playing videos.

I think people are starting to recognize that your social presence catches up
to you later on in life, and as a result are flocking to semi-private networks
like Twitter (via private profiles), Instagram (again using private profiles)
and Snapchat. Using these networks in such a way removes the anxiety of
posting to a large audience, and in some cases (Snapchat) you can easily
control the audience who sees your posts. I think this is really valuable. The
other commonality between these apps is that none of them require your real
name - you can choose to mask your identity, or make yourself easily
discoverable publicly (especially Twitter). Oh yeah, and none of these apps
require that you sign in with Facebook. I think asking for a Facebook login is
just about the laziest way to attempt to harvest data about your users, and
it's not as though they no longer recognize this (or at the very least, it's
yet ANOTHER app asking for you to associate your account with your Facebook
account.)

Monetization in apps of the future will rely on creative new ways of
associating non-identifying data. This will mean relying more on the
information the user generates vs. the information they give us explicitly
(Who are your friends? Where did you go to school? etc). It should be an
interesting next few years for the big players like Facebook. It's certainly
been interesting seeing Snapchat rise to such success with such a simple
concept. I think there's a potential to "Snapchat-ize" every major feature of
Facebook into many wildly successful apps. Now, what's more important than
photos?

~~~
mbesto
This is good insight, thanks for sharing.

> _Using these networks in such a way removes the anxiety of posting to a
> large audience_

What I've noticed about Twitter and Instagram is that because they're semi-
private it means people get WAY more upvotes on their content. Thus, for a
younger generation, they'll flock to the networks where their voice is heard
the highest. Kids get sick of "Sally Cheerleader" getting 135 likes and "SOOO
BEAUTIFUL" comments from everyone else in their school. As this group ages
they'll see the value in LinkedIn/FB when non-anonymity can potentially means
real cold hard cash in their pockets and the cycle will repeat itself.

> _Monetization in apps of the future will rely on creative new ways of
> associating non-identifying data._

I disagree. For the last 15 years we've been asking publishers to "get more
creative" with advertising. All that means is that Forbes now gives you a 15
second ad before clicking through to it's content. There's nothing creative
about that. I do however think many app vendors will start charging for their
apps as opposed to relying on advertising in the future.

------
metaprinter
Can any of you younger folks tell me what the kids without smartphones do?
Surely there are kids that don't own one yet or are too poor to afford one.
Generally speaking, are the smartphone-less kids ostracized or is it taken in
stride by their classmates?

~~~
joliv
I'm in 12th grade and without a smartphone, because I feel like I spend enough
time on HN and working on side projects already, and a smartphone would only
pull me into the digital world even more. I personally don't feel ostracized,
but I do feel a little isolated when everyone has their noses in their phones.
My friends also get annoyed when I'm not timely in responding to their
Facebook messages, although they've gotten used to my delay there.

~~~
mattgreenrocks
That's funny, because the group norm of "burying noses in phones" is
inherently anti-social behavior, at least to the people in the physical
vicinity. But _everyone does it_ so it gets a free pass. In HS, I made sure
not to mention that I stayed up late playing games on the Internet; that was
behavior that would get me ostracized. Just goes to show you how arbitrary our
standards of normal are. :)

Related: I want to start a tumblr consisting of photos of groups of people in
public staring at their phones. We take our phones way too seriously at the
moment.

------
misingnoglic
I do this with my little brother (8th grade) all the time, his perspectives on
the unique lives of middle schoolers (which are definitely unique in this day
and age) give the technology this whole new life.

Also the thing with Instagram following ratios is frightening. My brother
talks all the time about following and then unfollowing people to trick them
into follow you, it's all an unnecessary popularity game (I guess I was never
one to understand popular people though).

~~~
heyheyhey
> Also the thing with Instagram following ratios is frightening. My brother
> talks all the time about following and then unfollowing people to trick them
> into follow you, it's all an unnecessary popularity game (I guess I was
> never one to understand popular people though).

It is interesting and the article touches on a reason Snapchat is so popular
is because it gets rid of the whole non-judgmental aspect that occurs in
FB/Instagram.

------
Xcelerate
> Though still wildly popular, my sister mentioned that anxiety around “like-
> to-follower ratios” and “judgmental viewers” has been leading to less
> posting amongst her and her friends.

There's a lot of weird things that I notice many people do (including myself)
related to metrics like this. I'm 24, and a lot of my friends use Snapchat;
however, they've switched to using the personal stories over sending actual
messages. I really don't like this, mainly because you can see who has viewed
your story. And there's a sense of anxiety where you don't want to look at
other people's stories if they don't look at yours. So I just avoid it
altogether.

Similarly, when I first got Facebook, I never sent any friend requests. So I
have about half as many friends as most of my friends have, and over time I
realized "number of friends" serves as a surrogate for real-life popularity.
There's exceptions; some people deliberately limit their number of friends.
But for the most part, those people with 1,100 friends are the social,
outgoing, and extroverted whereas those with less than 400 are the weird,
introverted quiet people (myself included). So as soon as Facebook released
the option to hide your friend count from your profile, I applied it
immediately.

I never liked the trend of "trying to be popular" when I was in high school
and undergrad, and I like it even less with social media. I wish the newer
social networks would design away from concepts like number of followers, and
number of likes. It's somewhat disheartening when you post something like "my
work was feature on such-and-such national lab's homepage" and it gets 20x
less likes than your friend who posts "Shopping at the mall with my
friends!!!!"

~~~
heyheyhey
> There's a lot of weird things that I notice many people do (including
> myself) related to metrics like this. I'm 24, and a lot of my friends use
> Snapchat; however, they've switched to using the personal stories over
> sending actual messages. I really don't like this, mainly because you can
> see who has viewed your story. And there's a sense of anxiety where you
> don't want to look at other people's stories if they don't look at yours. So
> I just avoid it altogether.

Really? I never got that feeling. While I do check to see who looked at my
story, I always figured people who didn't check either don't use Snapchat on a
daily basis or just didn't have the time to see it within the window. I do get
your anxiety when it comes to FB's likes or IG's hearts but since Snapchat
doesn't have that and is so ephemeral, I don't get any of that.

------
samirmenon
YikYak is sweeping our high school. It's mostly used to make fun of school
administrators and bully other students. It seems much more popular with kids
than Secret.

[http://www.yikyakapp.com/](http://www.yikyakapp.com/)

~~~
Kiro
What is it? I don't understand what I should enter as my "digits".

~~~
anonetal
Phone number -- I tried a zipcode, and it asked me for a "valid phone number".
I didn't try entering one.

------
vlunkr
This was a good confirmation for how much I don't miss high school.

------
mullingitover
> “Only big social network with ‘albums’ for pictures…”

As a decade-old flickr user, I wept. Poor flickr, they coulda been a
contender.

------
morgante
Why are we paying any attention whatsoever to a _single_ anecdotal data point
when there are literally troves of data available about who is actually using
services?

Facebook is about as dead as email: not at all.

~~~
mturmon
You raise a good point: the post is just one anecdote. Yet, if you read the
post, you have to admit it _was_ thought-provoking. How to explain this
contradiction?

The reason, I suspect, is that a survey may average out all the trends and
observations about specific use cases for services. You start with colors, you
end up with gray-brown.

Of course, billions of dollars in valuation are at stake. Facebook and Twitter
among others were built very fast and are probably still open to disruption if
they are not watching these trends. People are jumpy.

~~~
morgante
> You raise a good point: the post is just one anecdote. Yet, if you read the
> post, you have to admit it was thought-provoking. How to explain this
> contradiction?

No, it wasn't. I personally don't like sandals. I'd happily give you lots of
reasonable-sounding explanations for why I don't, but it's just the
preferences of a single guy in the end. Nobody would spend more than a half-
second considering whether my personal choice is relevant to the futures of
the footware industry.

Yet suddenly because it's the internet and teens, we think the subjective
personal experiences of a couple teens is more important than actual data.
It's ludicrous, and not at all thought-provoking (except in the sense that
humanity's continued inability to think statistically is provoking).

~~~
grkvlt
> I personally don't like sandals. I'd happily give you lots of reasonable-
> sounding explanations for why I don't [...] Nobody [considers] my personal
> choice is relevant to the futures of the footware (sic) industry.

Of course it is relevant. In your case, the footwear industry would like to
know whether the general public likes sandals or not, in order to decide
whether to make more or less of them, and what types of advertising should be
purchased. We can go with the initial assumption that there is nothing special
about you, as a sample, and work on the principle that you are representative
of the footwear buying public as a whole. So, we now know that not everyone
likes sandals, and since we know other people that also hold the same view, we
can be confident that you are not absolutely unique. Of course we want to seek
out _more_ opinions, and determine more accurately how widespread this dislike
of sandals is, but I would be foolish to completely ignore this data point.

Similarly for teens and Internet services, the single data point here is
interesting and thought-provoking because we know it isn't a freak outlier,
and is instead somewhat representative of teens as a group. Since the actual
quantitive information (that is, user retention and engagement at Facebook,
Snapchat et al) tells us only _what_ is happening, we must seek out
qualitative opinion pieces like this to determine _why_. Everyone here is
capable of understanding the limitations of small sample sizes and self-
selection effects, and should be able to control for that. And of course, it's
also just interesting to know what ones fellow human beings _feel_ about a
subject, and even _important_ when there are business models predicated on
these same humans doing things because their friends are. Network effects like
that are obviously one of the main drivers for social network adoption, and
thus increasing the value of a product.

~~~
morgante
> We can go with the initial assumption that there is nothing special about
> you, as a sample, and work on the principle that you are representative of
> the footwear buying public as a whole.

That's an absolutely terrible assumption. A sample of one is never ever
representative.

~~~
grkvlt
A sample of one is more likely to be representative than an outlier, although
I admit I'm making assumptions here about the underlying distribution.

------
dozenal
Something just feels wrong to me about kids being trapped in these closed,
proprietary communication systems. It's like things are moving backwards.

~~~
pablobaz
Although it appears there's a diverse ecosystem of competing systems. The
worst scenario would have be a total domination by a single player.

------
mattgreenrocks
The drivel about Instagram ratios hurts to read.

They're Internet Points: inherently worthless, and they exist to manipulate
your brain's pleasure centers.

------
indielol
Here in India, all college communication happens on WhatsApp, except when
communicating with teachers, for which everybody exclusively uses email.

------
Kiro
What's a subtweet?

------
nitin_flanker
I am from India and I really feel that these technologies are decreasing the
grey cells from the minds of the youngsters. Using FB, Twitter and Whatsapp
like SNS is a must have for a 10th grade student. This is the time when they
have to learn the basics of science and the life. If you will ask someone
about Newton, they are going to stumble . However, if I ask them about FB they
are going to tell the full form of acronym and as well as the use of the SNS.

The time they can spend on improving themselves and their gray areas, they are
spending that time on FB and other SNS and wasting it.

As Patja said, email is really a big NO for them. Just two days back, one of
my friend who is in her high school asked me to edit her pics. I said her to
send here pic as an attachment in an email. Her reply was amusing. She was
saying that she has to do extra work. I just didn't know how it is an extra
work to send the same stuff over email rather than on whatsapp.

~~~
eitally
Discounting the first part of your post, I do the same thing re: pics. I use
Android and take advantage of Google's auto-backup to G+ feature, from which I
then share pics. It's not convenient for the people I share them with, but at
that point doing anything else with them becomes their problem, not mine.
Editing pics on a mobile device is an awful experience, and getting pics from
a mobile device to a pc to then edit is unpleasant, too. I feel her pain.

To your first point, social networks are what you make of them. Don't judge.
:) It's also still a fact that, especially in India (when trying to get hired
by a western tech company), being able to effectively communicate using
western idiom and being up to date on trends, etc, is almost as valuable as
your technical chops. I can train you to program. I can't train you to work
well with others.

~~~
nitin_flanker
yes you are right that social networks are what we make of them. We should not
judge anyone. :) I am seconding your views. But I didn't understand that how
social network can help someone to work well with others? Yeah if they are
meeting personally then it makes them more socialized. However, if they are
just chatting and exchanging text and nothing else then it is waste of data
and as well as time.

