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On Medium a couple of weeks ago, a teenager named Andrew Watts wrote a piece called A Teenager’s View on Social Media. To say it created a conversation is putting it mildly.

Matthew Ingram at Gigaom picked it up…and then he wrote a second piece after Danah Boyd, a sociologist who focuses on how young people use social media, wrote a retort in the comments.

She provided some criticism on how we (human beings) group people into buckets for marketing purposes. We like to generalize. There is a reason stereotypes exist.

During the time that conversation was happening, Andrew Watts published a second article on what teens think about some of the other social networks…the ones he didn’t include in his first piece.

The four pieces are the topic of our conversation today.

We talk about:

• Storytelling and how this young man’s piece picked up steam because it was interesting and personal;
• YikYak and the advantage of smaller social communities;
• How communicators must be open-minded to how different generations use social media and do some testing of our own;
• Whether there is a difference between a teenager and a college student (which Andrew Watts is);
• Why it’s important not to generalize;
• How social media allows us to find direct communication with like-minded people around the globe; and
• Different perspectives from our own community among those who have teenagers.

Martin ends the discussion by leaving it in your hands. He asks, “Are we moving into the next phase of social media?”

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Thank you to the people behind Inside PR.

Our theme music was created by Damon de Szegheo; Roger Dey is our announcer.

Inside PR is produced by Ashlea McGrath.