Mashable - The Social Media Guide - Latest Comments in STATS: Average Twitter User Is a Teenage Girl

Re: STATS: Average Twitter User Is a Teenage Girl

Malachi — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 12:36:06 -0000

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?

Re: STATS: Average Twitter User Is a Teenage Girl

bradhart — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 07:02:13 -0000

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?

Re: STATS: Average Twitter User Is a Teenage Girl

bradhart — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 06:54:30 -0000

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.

Re: STATS: Average Twitter User Is a Teenage Girl

bradhart — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 06:46:41 -0000

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.

Re: STATS: Average Twitter User Is a Teenage Girl

bradhart — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 06:42:26 -0000

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.

Re: STATS: Average Twitter User Is a Teenage Girl

bradhart — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 06:35:51 -0000

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.

Re: STATS: Average Twitter User Is a Teenage Girl

bradhart — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 06:33:46 -0000

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.

Re: STATS: Average Twitter User Is a Teenage Girl

bradhart — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 06:29:03 -0000

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".

Re: STATS: Average Twitter User Is a Teenage Girl

Johny Ho — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 08:07:15 -0000

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.

Re: STATS: Average Twitter User Is a Teenage Girl

Name — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 04:44:16 -0000

How would you distinguish when someone is mentioning a value that is related to age as opposed to say, their house number?

Re: STATS: Average Twitter User Is a Teenage Girl

amber — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 01:51:53 -0000

Its just that women are more prone to lie about their age! LOL!

Re: STATS: Average Twitter User Is a Teenage Girl

Alex — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 23:46:39 -0000

I never ever tell anyone about my age .The statistic could be wrong

Re: STATS: Average Twitter User Is a Teenage Girl

rebecca — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 23:18:42 -0000

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.

Re: STATS: Average Twitter User Is a Teenage Girl

Pranay Manocha — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 21:01:12 -0000

'my age tweeting'? Surely you mean 'tweeting my age' :-D

Re: STATS: Average Twitter User Is a Teenage Girl

Thomas Detko — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 20:25:58 -0000

This was not worth the click... and that study is a joke. This falls under that category of bait and switch.

Re: STATS: Average Twitter User Is a Teenage Girl

rebecca — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 20:00:26 -0000

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!

Re: STATS: Average Twitter User Is a Teenage Girl

Pranay Manocha — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 18:56:40 -0000

Looks like spam to me...

Re: STATS: Average Twitter User Is a Teenage Girl

Pranay Manocha — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 18:56:10 -0000

Shh...they're a web consultancy. You cant criticize those folks ;-)

Re: STATS: Average Twitter User Is a Teenage Girl

Pranay Manocha — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 18:54:26 -0000

Or spam accounts broadcasting ages of certain models...

Re: STATS: Average Twitter User Is a Teenage Girl

Jodi Church — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 18:44:32 -0000

i haven't seen any yet. i agree this can't be right.

Re: STATS: Average Twitter User Is a Teenage Girl

Nikole Gipps — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 18:25:03 -0000

"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.

Re: STATS: Average Twitter User Is a Teenage Girl

futuristic_concept_juice — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 16:25:18 -0000

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.

Re: STATS: Average Twitter User Is a Teenage Girl

heygregwood — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 16:24:24 -0000

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?

Re: STATS: Average Twitter User Is a Teenage Girl

hollisthomases — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 16:23:05 -0000

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?

Re: STATS: Average Twitter User Is a Teenage Girl

ace247 — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 16:08:38 -0000

I think this data is flawed and incorrect. Does not add up to other stats.