On Authoring Our Future & Social Media
If you’re over 30 then I’m sorry to tell you that you’ve “read” your cultural future. If you’re under 30 then you’ve got the sheer delight of “authoring” your cultural future.
If you’re over 30 then you’re spending less than 20 hours, on average 12 hours, per week online; in Social Networks, on blogs, Twittering etc. But if you’re under 30 then that average starts to climb. Under 20? Research shows you’re spending more than 50 hours per week online.
Under 20? You’re creating content on a scale never before known to humanity. Video, photo’s, text. You’re writing the culture of the future. Suddenly, since I’m over 40, I feel rather ancient.
What an incredibly powerful concept; to have the opportunity to write your future culture. Those that succeed in the future, will be able to work in collaborative groups. You’ll come together on political and societal issues. Today, it’s all new and it’s about entertainment, silly simple things.
But then, you’re going to want to start changing things. If we think the Hippy Movement was something powerful, well, we ain’t seen nothing yet. Think anyone under 20 will listen to us 40+ folk? We see this in our ongoing research into Social Technology usage as well. Powerful.
Think about that: Youth is writing our cultural future.
What do you think? Are you helping to write our cultural future?
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This post was mentioned on Twitter by Webconomist: If you’re under 20, you have the privilege of authoring your cultural future http://ow.ly/143rG cool!…
If the youth under 20 are spending 50 hours per week social networking – what the heck are they doing to earn a living, creating a future of economic growth by actually making something instead of writing, dreaming, researching, being a voyer – I’m baffled how someone can actually profess to believe that these are healthy patterns for a future generation of movers and shakers. Your past generation created growth, created ideas that worked, created prosperity by working more than 50 hours a week (mostly around 80) not by being a watcher of what cyber reality is doing…think about this just for a minute.
I’m going to assume you’re in the 40+ demographic (although 40+ is increasingly using Social Media tools) The 40 under group aren’t just being voyers; they’re creating as well, exploring. Only they’re exploring in ways the over 45 groups couldn’t because the tools didn’t exist. if they had, we would have been using them; the under 30 crowd wonder what being a Hippie was all about and think that was silly. It’s just context.
Many are using these tools to collaborate, developing new ways of thinking and working together to make ideas happen. Once they grow older, expect to see these tools evolve, and their uses evolve to have very meaningful impacts on society.