In recent years teenagers began to use or even overuse digital media in their social interactions. Pop culture has been influenced by TV series like Gossip Girl, in which the characters were constantly highlighting the fast evolving social networking trends. Teenagers quickly mastered skills that adults rarely would, like mobile blogging and mobile networking. A crucial part of the Gossip Girl developing plot, these new mobile networking become very popular among the young generations.
The TV series became a hit among TV audiences bellow 30. For instance, in China Gossip Girl is the most watched fashion & teen TV show right now. Gossip Girl is an anonymous character (who, in the last episode is revealed as a boy actually) who airs the dirty laundry of the young Manhattan’s elite. She is the storyteller of the show. She steers all the intrigues and schemes, by posting naked photos or private videos, texting about secrets and scandals. The rest of the characters are all showing up with their latest smartphones or tablets, sending messages, updating statuses, all the things teens are doing nowadays.
More and more people nowadays are running blogs and even mobile websites. There are web services providers who offer ready-made easy blogging solutions and one can go mobile really fast. However, blogging is not for every one and out of nearly a billion existing blogs less than 1% generates income.
According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, fully 95% of teens aged between 12-17 years in the US are online. A total of 80% of them are users of social media sites. A survey from July, 2011 showed that 77% of teens have cell phones, 23% of teens use smartphones, and another 23% of them don’t have cell phones at all. 49% of all
American teens reported they had gone online on their mobile phones in the past 30 days.
One can make a quite clear conclusion out of these numbers, but the survey provides even more interesting information. The researchers asked questions in order to determine the teenager’s communication choices. Texting dominated in all answers. 75% of teens sent text messages, and 63% said they used text to communicate with others on a daily basis. Most enthusiastic texters were girls aged 14-17 years with a median of 100 texts per day in 2011, compared with 50 for boys the same age. 80% of online teens said they used social network sites, 93% had a Facebook account, 24% had a MySpace account, and 12% had a Twitter account.
Statistical data points at just one thing – young people have become the major purveyors of the increased in the past few years’ mobile activity. Teenagers are fascinated and influenced by TV shows like Gossip Girl, because the fictional characters are something they crave, even if not exactly corresponding to reality. Teens nowadays not only use social networking and blogging every day, but now they live online through their phones.
In general, social activities moved to a more digital level, conversation and communication went mobile.
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