

Tech Trends I’ve Noticed As A 16 Year Old - colbyaley
http://www.launchside.com/blog/tech-trends-ive-noticed-as-a-16-year-old/

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RobertHoudin
I don't think this a particularly unique or noteworthy perspective, and nor
does it provide any real insight into the youth demographic.

As a sidenote, I've noticed that teenagers love to declare their age when
posting on the internet, as if their youth entitles them to an audience.

Now get off my lawn.

~~~
alexhawdon
I think the crankiness will be justified when HN fills up with "I'm a 15-year
old who just made this app/website/blog post", but until then it just strikes
me as a bit po-faced. No offence, this might be the first time you've had this
particular grumble, but someone seems to do it every time a post like this
hits the front page.

Incidentally, I agree with you on the blog post. The other stuff this kid's
doing - quite impressive really! Wish him the best of luck. I'd LOVE to see a
better thought-out follow up post along the same lines. It makes me think back
to when I was his age and completely immersed in all the new, cool technology
happenings - so many things I instinctively knew were 'right' and about to go
massive (and they did), so many things that weren't even products that I
assumed were (and later became)... Basically, I want to consult with my
teenage self and use that advice to invest time/money!

~~~
RobertHoudin
It is the first time I've had this grumble, but I migrated here from Reddit to
escape the onslaught of everybody-look-at-meeeeee-I'm-a-teenager!!! Apologies
if I come across as grumpy; I guess others found more value in the post than I
did.

~~~
scrumper
One cynical way to look at it: it's free market research from a high-spending
demographic that's completely impenetrable to outsiders. I'm grateful for it,
although I share your wary distaste of age-declaring youths. (Shades of those
irritating, high-achieving 21 year olds who declare with no sense of irony
that they've done more than people twice their age.)

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choxi
That last trend of people using Facebook less and Instagram more bolsters the
justification for Instagram's large purchase. I wouldn't be surprised if Zuck
can see that trend from their internal data, and the community at HN hasn't
noticed it yet because it's happening with the younger generation first.

~~~
nhebb
I was talking to my daughter (17) about this. As others have said, Facebook is
out, and Twitter, Instagram, and Tumblr are in. The one comment about Facebook
that stood out: _"It's been taken over by moms."_

~~~
mahyarm
Do they tend to keep private profiles, use pseudonymns or just broadcast it
completely publicly with twitter? I don't recall twitter having 'friend' only
posts.

~~~
nhebb
Anecdotally, no. IMO, Twitter is half social engagement, half narcissism. You
can make your account private, but that would void the narcissistic half.

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nthitz
Interesting but this screams white upper class. If I went back to my middle or
high school, (Madison WI, which is hardly as diverse as other areas) I don't
think it would be the case that every 8th grader has an iPhone or iPod touch.

~~~
colbyaley
That's a good point. My school is often criticized as being a white upper
class school, mainly because of it's location in my city. I thought about
trying to mention this in my article, and in hindsight should have.

~~~
acheron
Why is "white upper class" a "criticism"?

~~~
herval
You're supposed to feel guilty for being rich, these days. Specially if you're
white. Double that if you're a male.

~~~
EliRivers
Fortunately, if there's something you should feel guilty about, you can
complain about a liberal conspiracy to sooth your conscience.

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davidtgoldblatt
It's a testament to the speed at which technology moves that, despite being
not very much older than the author (he's 16, I'm 23), I feel separated by a
significant age gap. I'm still often shocked that Youtube can afford all the
bandwidth required for streaming video; he barely remembers the world where
unlimited streaming video _wasn't_ the norm.

~~~
daeken
> I'm still often shocked that Youtube can afford all the bandwidth required
> for streaming video; he barely remembers the world where unlimited streaming
> video wasn't the norm.

You know, looking back it's silly, but when Youtube came out and started
getting attention (I was still in school, so this must've been 2004 or so), I
remember thinking to myself "so what?" -- the idea that it was novel just
never occurred to me.

Back in 2002-2003, I ran a little startup (at 14-15) that did online music
streaming. Built around a little PHP (later C++) daemon, you could set up
playlists on the site and then connect to an icecast stream to play that
playlist from any device you wanted. The music was ripped from CDs that my
friends and I had, and we even added advertisements every X songs or N
minutes. It eventually failed due to not being able to raise money to get
licensing rights (my dad was running the business side and simply had no clue,
but neither did I at the time), but it was just... no big deal to me. I had no
idea that it was supposed to be a hard thing to do until a few years later,
when I ended up working for MP3tunes trying to build the first online music
locker.

I always just assumed that the trend towards storage and bandwidth being
"free" was going to move fast enough that anything I could come up with would
Just Work (TM).

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AVTizzle
Reading this brought a smile to my face. It took me back to the days of AIM
chats, the silly screennames, Casio messagers that we could program to work as
remotes for the school TVs to baffle teachers, et al...

I never really considered how technology was evolving during that time of my
life, but it definitely was, and I'm getting nostalgic just thinking about it
:)

~~~
herval
I once hacked the office's coke machine (a tap, not a vending machine) with a
Palm Pilot and a modem. Good times.

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dfield
I'm twenty - four years older than the author. Pretty crazy to compare our
experiences...

5th grade (1/2): Everyone hangs out on Neopets, lots of people are excited
about the GameCube. First time I ever heard of Google.

6th grade (2/3): Neopets is still popular (but popularity is starting to
wane), people hang out on AIM, some start getting cell phones. lots of
students carry their CD players to school and wear their headphones whenever
they can.

7th grade (3/4): iPod Mini is the "hot device", more people have cell phones.
everyone hangs out in AIM chat rooms.

8th grade (4/5): iPod Mini still in, most people now have cell phones. nerdy
friends start playing World of Warcraft (some never stop, stealing to support
the habit). Not many people know / care what MySpace is. A few people have
gmail accounts.

9th grade (5/6): Everyone has MySpace. Most people are now using gmail. A few
friends have blogs / Facebook. People torrent everything.

10th grade (6/7): MySpace is the hub of all social activity. Some start using
Facebook once in a while. A few people create Twitter accounts. Only one or
two rich kids have iPhones - they are teased mercilessly.

~~~
klipt
> (some never stop, stealing to support the habit)

Wow. I wonder if anyone's done a study on the societal effects of WOW as
compared to "real" drugs.

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biolime
As a fellow 16 Year old I too have noticed a trend, especially in the popular
iOS games. Last spring it was Temple Run then Draw Something. The game going
through the school now is Bike Race. If you guys have any questions about what
trends kids at my school are following feel free to ask but it's pretty much
on par with the original article.

~~~
kevinconroy
Advice from a 30 year old: Go learn to code now. At a minimum know
HTML/CSS/JS. It takes 10,000 hours of practice to master something. Cut your
teeth in high school and college. When you get out, you'll be incredibly
hirable because you'll actually know how to get things done and launched.
College doesn't (usually) teach you that.

Need help getting started? Find a small company in your town that needs help
with their website. Offer to do it for $10-$20/hour. You'll build up your
resume and portfolio in a single go.

Sorry for unsolicited advice - just cheering you on!

~~~
biolime
Thanks, I actually began teaching myself HTML and CSS two years ago and a few
months after, I learned PHP. I created a few projects and feel PHP is
currently my strongest language. I'm now learning RoR and taking a Java class
in my High School but it's fairly easy because I already have some experience
with C++. I'm also in an HTML class currently (not my choice) and the teacher
recognized that I already know the curriculum so she lets me use her Lyna.com
subscription to learn things that interest me (currently RoR). My first
impressions of RoR are that it's awesome! Each video I watch I think to
myself, "Wow, this simplifies some of the things I used to do in PHP
immensely." Anyways thank you for the advice, I definitely plan on going to
college and I've already been looking at some schools. I've also already
created a few websites for some local businesses. I believe the company
MediaFire is actually based in my town so I was considering possibly reaching
out and asking them if I could be some sort of intern. Thanks for the comment!

------
kevinconroy
They're leaving Facebook because their parents (and parent's friends) are now
on Facebook and are friending them. Sure, there's privacy settings and groups,
but what teenager wants to hang out at the same place as their mom?

~~~
majorlazer
That may be a small part of the reason, but here are some other reasons I
would like to propose:

1\. Up until a few weeks (months) ago Facebook's iPhone app was complete shit.
My younger highschool brother (and all his friends) who are not techies in any
sense, always complained about how it sucks. One time I even asked them why
they switched to Instagram, and they told me the app works much better than
the Facebook app and it's a lot more simple to just post pics/browse. That
brings me to my next point.

2\. Facebook has grown to the point where it doesn't know what it wants to be.
Kind of like myspace was trying to do everything, Facebook is in a similar
position (except their products actually work). Instagram specializes in just
photos, and makes it easy to use. There is no other crap to get in the way,
you upload pics, like them, and comment on them. That's it. Twitter
specializes in just short, to-the-point comments. Where does that leave
Facebook?

3\. Facebook is establishing itself as a kind of social media aggregate. When
I post anything to twitter, instagram, or tumblr, it automatically gets posted
to my Facebook. But I rarely ever post anything directly on Facebook. From my
experience, nobody is leaving Facebook, they just use it less. And as a side
not, I think Facebook's strongest features are Groups and Events, I use those
two features more than anything else. It is so easy to create groups and
invite people, it's awesome.

4\. Instagram has cool photo filters that make it very easy to make your
photos look "cool" and cover up any imperfections in the pictures. Take any
shitty picture and apply a filter, all of a sudden it doesn't look too bad.
Sure it looks generic, but it doesn't look like complete crap (most of the
time).

Anyways, that's my take on fb/twitter/instagram.

~~~
onedev
What if I told you that people use these services in different ways?

My usage patterns are quite different from yours. Facebook is my primary
service. I don't post on Twitter at all, and I rarely even check it, but
sometimes I'll retweet something. I have friends that use twitter a ton, but
they're actually the few power users. The majority of my friends either don't
have a twitter or never post at all.

I also use Instagram very sparingly. I have an account but that was just to
see what the hype was all about. I've posted a couple of pictures but a
majority of my pictures and albums go on Facebook, where I can tag my friends,
and have the vast amount of my friends see it in their feeds. A lot of my
friend do have Instagram account but either they use it a lot or they don't
use it at all, so again, it varies between those extremes. Those that post
their pictures to Instagram, also post their pictures to Facebook, and since
Facebook owns Instagram, I feel like it's a win-win for them (driving traffic
in both places). They also recently blocked out twitter, so there's that too.

I actually think people are using Facebook more than ever from what I've seen.
It's trying to do everything, but at the same time, it's doing everything
well. It's powerful, and all your friends are on it.

The iOS app used to suck but it's actually one of the best apps I've seen now.
It's super duper fast and they are continually adding functionality to it.
Combining the FB and Messenger apps was such an awesome change and I haven't
heard people complain about the iOS app ever since the redesign. I still hear
complaints about the Android one though, and they definitely are working on
that.

So yeah, I think different types of people use these platforms in different
ways, but at the core they're all using Facebook, and also Facebook Connect,
so I don't think FB is having an identity crisis at all.

EDIT: Another point I'd like to make is that above I pointed out how a lot of
users use services like Instagram or Twitter in an "All or Nothing" manner.
However I think we can agree that people on Facebook use it on a much wider
scale. However,the important thing is, you don't have clustering at the
extremes. More importantly, you don't have the clustering at the "Nothing"
end. There are some people who don't have Facebook, but those that do, tend to
use it in SOME manner in varying degrees which works out to FB's advantage.

------
jiggy2011
Substitute in _the internet itself_ , Nokia 3310 , ICQ , IRC and MSN messenger
and that could basically describe my own late school years.

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brianchu
As someone who only recently graduated high school, many of the trends are
ones I saw as well, but many I also did not see.

At my school Google Talk ("gtalk") was as popular as Facebook chat. It is
still used, but I personally prefer FB chat (for convenience). Not many people
from my high school have a Twitter account, and many still don't. Even fewer
use it regularly. I do see more and more friends using it though. I only use
it because I'm involved in the tech scene. Quite a few people have Instagram
accounts (about a third of my FB friends), and use it frequently. The only
shift I see going on is that more of my friends are posting photos on
Instagram than they used to on FB. But everything else gets posted on FB.

Maybe some of this truly is due to a difference in generations (only a couple
of years).

~~~
irollboozers
I'm not sure, maybe it's a more fundamental thing.

It was 8 years ago when I was in high school, and back then everybody used AIM
(AIM profiles anyone?). And before that, kids in the 80's used BBS's. I guess
kids today use 'gtalk'.

It seems teenagers at a certain age just really want to be able to talk
exclusively amongst friends, away from parents and prying public eyes.

~~~
18pfsmt
Kids in the 80s used telephones. Very few people knew what a BBS was and had
the means to get on a BBS. I certainly didn't know anyone that was using a
modem in the 80s.

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asfdfdasfafdsss
I have been on Twitter since the beginning but I have no idea why people use
it. The length restriction is totally lame, UX is rough, and it seems infested
with wannabe's (followers), selfish people that live to share their lives with
hashtags and pics of innane shit, Ashton, self-proclaimed "social media
experts"), and hookers. Facebook has old people, and I'm one of 'em.

~~~
oscillator
To me, Twitter seems more compatible with the older internet user's view that
what you do on the internet should, if you want it to be, be somewhat
anonymous. Or at least feel that way.

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tedmiston
I've noticed that in the past few years so many different services built
around sharing, liking, and commenting on images from another person have
evolved (and maintained momentum). They don't seem to be doing anything
special are technologically exciting, but they just keep proliferating.

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nealabq
Let's see, YouTube, iPhone, Palm, iPod, Google Talk, gmail, Facebook, iOS,
Twitter, Temple Run, FarmVille, Instagram.

What's next? Google+, The Elder Scrolls, Google Glass, Telepathic Siri. And or
course Windows 8.1. It's the cat's meow.

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pdog
The more things change, the more they stay the same :)

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signalsignal
Very interesting, especially for me as an iOS app developer. Thanks for
writing this.

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boristhespider
Thought this was going to be about Jony Ive. It isn't. Dead to me. (Sorry.)

