This was not worth the click... and that study is a joke. This falls under that category of bait and switch.
Nikole Gipps
· 3 months ago
"phrase mentions that included age"??? What kind of variable is that? I actually have never once mentioned my age on Twitter, nor have I ever seen anyone else mention it out of the people I follow. All I think they just told you is that teen girls are more likely to mention their age than all other users.
Mike Murray
· 3 months ago
Wow, I'm surprised by this. Does this treat spam accounts as being real? Because... 95% of the spam accounts I see are fake teenage girl accounts.. and comprise a lot of people.
mashable
· 3 months ago
Thus totally contradicting all the other recent studies suggesting that Twitter skewed older than other socnets. :) That said, not sure I trust the methodology here at all - lots of room for error. Other studies were based on actual use data.
rebecca
· 3 months ago
exactly. unrelated, but i can't help but notice the big dip among 30-40 year olds. i must be the only dork my age tweeting!
pranman
· 2 months ago
'my age tweeting'? Surely you mean 'tweeting my age' :-D
rebecca
· 2 months ago
well, no. i'm guessing you're joking but just in case you're not, what i was saying was "... only dork my age who is tweeting."
but i'll tweet my age. i am not one of those people who will put the day/month of their birth online but not the year. i'm 35.
bradhart
· 2 months ago
This study has poor methodology, but honestly gives answers I believe are much closer to reality than those using so called data.
While you can't verify ages on twitter, it is obvious teens do tweet. You have to root out the evidence youself though. I use tweetdeck to monitor searches, which at the moment are mostly teenage/high school student oriented searches and can without a doubt attest to teenagers actively using twitter. Are some of them posers and stalkers pretending to be teens, most likely, but it doesn't take much to spot that type is very different from actual teens.
I readily back the notion that a large percentage of users are teen girls, and teenagers in general. How do I know, I follow them and talk to them. I never pretend to be other than what I am, an older guy who is working on YA Novels, and that is acceptable enough to be brought into their inner circle. This is where all the so call scientifically collected data in the world falls apart. Most teen girls I know on twitter, and a high percentage of teens in general use twitter via direct messages rather than open tweets, further both groups often lock their timeline.
Here are two examples.
Girl 1 is 17, been on twitter for 19 months, and follows 154 people (mostly celebs and news sources). Her account is public, but she actively blocks spammers and people she is unsure of when she follows them. She followed me for a month before deciding whether I could be trusted or not and followed me back. In those 19 months she has made 127 public tweets, yet her and I send 4 to 5 DM's back and forth a day, which she says is about average for the twenty or so people she regularly talks too.
Girl 2 is sixteen and followed me because I was interesting and was friends with one of her other friends. She follows and is followed by the same 60 people right now consistently and follows between 30 and 60 new people looking for interesting and trust worthy people to add, and on average adds only 1 or 2 of them to her follower list a month and unfollows the rest. Her account is locked and and has her own high standards about who she allows to see her tweets. She is more prolific in her tweeting, than my teen friends with public accounts, but still uses DM regularly.
Neither of these situations are ever figured into the collected data, they simply can't be, which is why the data is always skewed towards older users. Also I have noted this before as someone who has seen a lot of social media surveys, they too are screwed up and intentionally written to favor other services.
A couple of examples of the last comment are surveys which only allow users to pick one or two social media source as their favorite and lists half a dozen popular ones before twitter, such as FB, MS, YouTube, Flickr, LJ, Digg, Delicious, Stumbleupon or Friend Feed. For accurate information it should ask which services they use without limiting it. Asking for one service, especially of a teenager, is like asking asking a cable subscribe with 500 channels what single channel he watches. I have even seen Twitter not listed in the social media section of surveys, but rather the texting section. Any so called data collection source should provide a lot more of their methods before we simply accept they are scientific because they have collected "data".
cybergerac
· 3 months ago
why there are great peaks on 30, 40, 50, 60 and smaller on 35, 45, 55?
Jessica
· 3 months ago
People are more likely to mention milestone birthdays such as those. Which is probably why the highest peak is at age 21.
pranman
· 3 months ago
Or spam accounts broadcasting ages of certain models...
Lorne Pike
· 3 months ago
Based upon my daughter and her friends, and the many teen girls who with them follow Demi Lovato (@ddlovato ) or Hayley Williams ( @yelyahwilliams ) or Miley Cyrus ( @mileycyrus ), I can certainly believe the research has some merit. I take more of an exception to your choosing to mention sexting when talking about what teens are generally doing on the Internet. Yes the comment may have been lighthearted in intent, but seriously, give teens some credit and don't even bring in the innuendo. They deserve better.
Hollis Thomases
· 3 months ago
I think that's just it with teenage girls. They may legitimately have Twitter accounts but they're on to follow all their favorite celebs. My teenage cousin admits to this as her practice for Twitter and says that she never tweets, she just lurks. And when she wants to talk to her friends, she still texts them, even if they're all on Twitter.
Isn't the point not who creates a Twitter account, but who's engaged with it?
bradhart
· 2 months ago
you will find a lot more of them (teen girls) who are engaged in twitter via direct messages rather than open tweets. They often send fluff via open twits, and DM links they wish to share and know it will be passed around and everyone will talk about it in their private groups. While adults and and savvy businesses like credit teen simply want the link out there where they can talk about it regardless of who sent it on.
Name
· 3 months ago
This doesn't make any sense to me at all. You all have reported from comScore an other that other demographics clearly outnumber the sub-25 as a % of all users. Are these results supposed to be for active users? Since its data pulled from July/Aug, on average how old were the accts?
johnburgin
· 3 months ago
bollocks.
David Spinks
· 3 months ago
Eh, not buying it. Mentions of age is not a representation of age on twitter.
pranman
· 3 months ago
Shh...they're a web consultancy. You cant criticize those folks ;-)
Glorielle Cat
· 3 months ago
I mention that I act like a 10 year old on a regular basis. Does that somehow make me a 10 year old? Crap methodology. Yay for the web re-enforcing its slacker image.
Michael
· 3 months ago
My god Mashable, your reporting on this is almost as flawed as the BBC's has become when dealing with stats over the past few years. If you want an example of quite *why* this is so clearly inaccurate, examine the peaks at 30, 40, 50 and 60. The reason for the peaks is simply because people mention those birthdays, and (forgive me for being blunt) to be honest the average chatty teenage person on Twitter who's on there to chat to their friends is going to have little better to keep posting about than their birthday.
Here's an example of a, say, 37-year old web developer just doing a brief post, say with 500 followers - all pretty reasonable as I see it: "Birthday today, had a quiet day with the family." Now, being realistic they'll get a couple of replies from personal friends, something along the lines of quick Happy Birthdays.
Nowhere in there did they mention *anything* about their age. They'd only mention it if it was a full decade birthday usually, as the graph shows.
As for a typical teenager with just personal friends for the most part - "16 Todayyy!! W00t. Time to party!" Yes, perhaps a little over the top, but you get the picture. Now there we have an age this research can use. In response a fair number of their friends might start posting birthday party pics/discussing the party, congratulating them on their birthday, etc, and most likely mention their upcoming/most recent birthday in passing - usually with an age, eg: "Was even better than my 13th B'day." Again, another date they can use.
@Elie_P
· 3 months ago
Looks more like the average twitter spam !
legitsquare
· 3 months ago
I call shenanigans. This is totally inaccurate and their data collection methods seem highly flawed.
bradhart
· 2 months ago
most data methods regarding twitter are highly flawed. They never take into account DM or locked accounts, something teens use a lot more than other groups.
Mike Serven
· 3 months ago
Correct data or not is this really something that needs to be made public? Think about it.
Wade Champeno
· 3 months ago
I wouldn't have thought that there was so many young girls on twitter. I didn't realize the more women tweeted then men either.
In other news check otu this up and coming website www.freewayauction.com. Buy - Sell - Trade. Free Classifieds and Auctions. Follow this website on Twitter @FreewayAuction.. They post all the newest ads listed on twitter.
bradhart
· 2 months ago
If you don't think there are a lot of young girls on twitter ask yourself why a lot of popular tween and early teen topics find themselves at the top of trending topics. There simply aren't enough fat middle aged women or gay guys on twitter to cause #EdwardCullenisSexy (or the likes) to trend.
Of the 5500 people I follow on my public account I will guarantee the women out tweet the men by both number of active users and how active they are. There are exceptions for example on days I actively tweet I tend to be as loquacious as the most active women in my list, but day to day they are always active.
I think this data is flawed and incorrect. Does not add up to other stats.
heygregwood
· 3 months ago
this study is misleading at best and inaccurate at worst and should not have been published by you. does nothing but add noise to a very important question, who uses twitter?
bradhart
· 2 months ago
Oddly enough the methods are bad, but I think it is a lot closer to accurate than most scientific data collection that ignores locked accounts and direct messages, two very common twitter methods for teens.
@benrobbins
· 3 months ago
The data is mildly interesting. The conclusions however, have little to nothing to do with the data, and appear to be complete nonsense. Michael's examples appear to be right on the money. I wonder too, if there are so many teenagers on twitter, why they are rarely seen, and why with 50M users we're not hearing all the horror stories about predators, privacy and all that like we do with FB/MS/etc?
bradhart
· 2 months ago
If you think they aren't seen ask yourself why all the popular teen and tween topics keep hitting the top of the trending list?
You won't hear very many of those sorts of horror stories involving twitter for two reasons. One Twitter is not conducive to developing that sort of relationship. By simply not providing a place to post age and all sorts of things about yourself like MS or FB and forcing 140 character conversations a predator would really have to work much too hard to get anywhere. Secondly, teens on twitter are a lot more private about what and how they share things. You can find a person by searching twitter for what they say, but if their account is locked and they don't want to share with you, then you are left in the dark. Furthermore teens as often as not use DM for sharing with their friends.
Jodi Church
· 3 months ago
i haven't seen any yet. i agree this can't be right.
Alex
· 2 months ago
I never ever tell anyone about my age .The statistic could be wrong
bradhart
· 2 months ago
The gathered data is correct according to the methods it was gathered under, but the interpretation is wrong. A mentioned age doesn't necessarily mean it is the age of a person at the present time.
I can give two examples of how the interpretation is wrong. I often talk about 10yo son, If I mention his age it flags me as mentioning 10 years old. If the message is RT there is a second tweet and a second person associated with the age. Another example of this may actually be reflect in this survey. I participated during the right timeframe in a long discussion with dozens and possibly hundreds overall of how old we were when we became sexually active. Can you imagine how many people said between 14 and 17?
amber
· 2 months ago
Its just that women are more prone to lie about their age! LOL!
Name
· 2 months ago
How would you distinguish when someone is mentioning a value that is related to age as opposed to say, their house number?
Johny Ho
· 2 months ago
I'd be less doubtful about the results of this study if the graph didn't skew so much for one of the sides. Even if it does somewhat "disproof" all those teens don't tweet stories.
Malachi
· 2 months ago
Again, stastically with such a small set as 83,000, from a potential pool of millions of users, the difference between 59% and 41% is not too significant. Seriously, do we need these skewed studies here?
All Comments
but i'll tweet my age. i am not one of those people who will put the day/month of their birth online but not the year. i'm 35.
While you can't verify ages on twitter, it is obvious teens do tweet. You have to root out the evidence youself though. I use tweetdeck to monitor searches, which at the moment are mostly teenage/high school student oriented searches and can without a doubt attest to teenagers actively using twitter. Are some of them posers and stalkers pretending to be teens, most likely, but it doesn't take much to spot that type is very different from actual teens.
I readily back the notion that a large percentage of users are teen girls, and teenagers in general. How do I know, I follow them and talk to them. I never pretend to be other than what I am, an older guy who is working on YA Novels, and that is acceptable enough to be brought into their inner circle. This is where all the so call scientifically collected data in the world falls apart. Most teen girls I know on twitter, and a high percentage of teens in general use twitter via direct messages rather than open tweets, further both groups often lock their timeline.
Here are two examples.
Girl 1 is 17, been on twitter for 19 months, and follows 154 people (mostly celebs and news sources). Her account is public, but she actively blocks spammers and people she is unsure of when she follows them. She followed me for a month before deciding whether I could be trusted or not and followed me back. In those 19 months she has made 127 public tweets, yet her and I send 4 to 5 DM's back and forth a day, which she says is about average for the twenty or so people she regularly talks too.
Girl 2 is sixteen and followed me because I was interesting and was friends with one of her other friends. She follows and is followed by the same 60 people right now consistently and follows between 30 and 60 new people looking for interesting and trust worthy people to add, and on average adds only 1 or 2 of them to her follower list a month and unfollows the rest. Her account is locked and and has her own high standards about who she allows to see her tweets. She is more prolific in her tweeting, than my teen friends with public accounts, but still uses DM regularly.
Neither of these situations are ever figured into the collected data, they simply can't be, which is why the data is always skewed towards older users. Also I have noted this before as someone who has seen a lot of social media surveys, they too are screwed up and intentionally written to favor other services.
A couple of examples of the last comment are surveys which only allow users to pick one or two social media source as their favorite and lists half a dozen popular ones before twitter, such as FB, MS, YouTube, Flickr, LJ, Digg, Delicious, Stumbleupon or Friend Feed. For accurate information it should ask which services they use without limiting it. Asking for one service, especially of a teenager, is like asking asking a cable subscribe with 500 channels what single channel he watches. I have even seen Twitter not listed in the social media section of surveys, but rather the texting section. Any so called data collection source should provide a lot more of their methods before we simply accept they are scientific because they have collected "data".
Isn't the point not who creates a Twitter account, but who's engaged with it?
Here's an example of a, say, 37-year old web developer just doing a brief post, say with 500 followers - all pretty reasonable as I see it: "Birthday today, had a quiet day with the family." Now, being realistic they'll get a couple of replies from personal friends, something along the lines of quick Happy Birthdays.
Nowhere in there did they mention *anything* about their age. They'd only mention it if it was a full decade birthday usually, as the graph shows.
As for a typical teenager with just personal friends for the most part - "16 Todayyy!! W00t. Time to party!" Yes, perhaps a little over the top, but you get the picture. Now there we have an age this research can use. In response a fair number of their friends might start posting birthday party pics/discussing the party, congratulating them on their birthday, etc, and most likely mention their upcoming/most recent birthday in passing - usually with an age, eg: "Was even better than my 13th B'day." Again, another date they can use.
In other news check otu this up and coming website www.freewayauction.com. Buy - Sell - Trade. Free Classifieds and Auctions. Follow this website on Twitter @FreewayAuction.. They post all the newest ads listed on twitter.
Of the 5500 people I follow on my public account I will guarantee the women out tweet the men by both number of active users and how active they are. There are exceptions for example on days I actively tweet I tend to be as loquacious as the most active women in my list, but day to day they are always active.
http://www.tomhcanderson.com/wp-content/uploads...
You won't hear very many of those sorts of horror stories involving twitter for two reasons. One Twitter is not conducive to developing that sort of relationship. By simply not providing a place to post age and all sorts of things about yourself like MS or FB and forcing 140 character conversations a predator would really have to work much too hard to get anywhere. Secondly, teens on twitter are a lot more private about what and how they share things. You can find a person by searching twitter for what they say, but if their account is locked and they don't want to share with you, then you are left in the dark. Furthermore teens as often as not use DM for sharing with their friends.
I can give two examples of how the interpretation is wrong. I often talk about 10yo son, If I mention his age it flags me as mentioning 10 years old. If the message is RT there is a second tweet and a second person associated with the age. Another example of this may actually be reflect in this survey. I participated during the right timeframe in a long discussion with dozens and possibly hundreds overall of how old we were when we became sexually active. Can you imagine how many people said between 14 and 17?
Seriously, do we need these skewed studies here?