HN Explorer

Ask HN: Is Twitter non-existent among my age group?

2 points by Scriptor ↗ HN
I am in my late teens and currently going to college. None of my friends either at my college or friends from home who go to other colleges use twitter. Those latter friends at the same time don't know anyone else who uses it. I've come up with a hypothesis that maybe Twitter is mostly popular among people who have already started professional careers. Is this correct?

Otherwise, it amuses me that so many people, especially corporations, view Twitter as the "cool" thing to do and that all the "young" people are doing it. If anything, seeing someone promote Twittering has the opposite effect on those I know. So I'd like to ask HN if they have any clues to this, why is it that Twitter is huge on the Internet, but rarely spoken of among people I know?

4 comments

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chaosmachine
Twitter is caught in a massive media hype feedback loop. Everybody is writing about Twitter because everybody is writing about Twitter. However, there's an entire demographic that doesn't read any of this press, and doesn't care about Oprah or Ashton Kutcher.
noodle
i know people who use twitter across all age groups. not really that many, though, and none in my real core group of friends.

i think that the biggest correlation to twitter use is actually iphone ownership. at least, thats the case with the people i know. and that probably tends to skew towards younger professsionals.

catch404
I agree with this but also think the OPs sample size may be a bit small :) , look at the timeline for an example.