How do teenagers communicate?

[womblingfree]

I know this sounds weird, but am going for an interview on Thursday for job with our local Youth Council and have to come up with a presentation about how to increase the numbers of teens voting in the youth council election.

They vote online and have a facebook page and do text polls, but can't find facebook page, and am aware there are many other social networking sites, twitter etc.

Would be helpful to have some idea of which of these are the most popular with teens.

Own DD is nearly 5 so not much help !

MSN, Facebook.

do you mean that you can find the face book page?

Both DD2 19 and DD3 17 spend a lot of time on facebook. They don't use MSN much now. They do text a lot.

bebo-not very popular ow

adium
msn
facebook

Yep, facebook & text mostly, msn less these days (there is a facebook chat function now I believe?)

(I have a son aged 16)

Facebook and MSN almost exclusively IME. Twitter seen as something a bit sad and grown up. So tweeting the latest hot local political news won't work.

Windows Messenger as well - Bebo and MySpace too. Although my DS1 has switched to FB as most of his friends use that.

i think the question you have to ask is - what's in it for them?

why should they vote in the local youth election and what do they have to gain?

if you went out into the street and did a straw poll of teenagers in your town do you think that they would have heard of the youth council and elections?

only with these questions answered will teens vote.

it doesn't matter how accessible it is.

i think this is the point that you should get across - i also think that this point beats the shit out of the other intervewees who will also be presenting on facebook, texting etc.

i am not saying you have to answer the questions posed above - i am saying that you should put them in your presentation and pose them to the intervewers rhetorically.

i suspect that there would be a severe lack of knowledge and information. this requires hard input into people resources to go and talk to youth clubs and work with teenagers on the street

that kind of thing

Twitter - not popular with my DC (teens) or their friends as too "mainstream"

Facebook seems to be preferred method of communication.

Custy makes a good point.

Just don't sit on it.

Sorry, couldn't resist.