Email : belinda@ladygeek.org.uk
Sep
The Jungle of Facebook
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I feel old. Ancient. Positively archaic. I am doing some ethnography research for a client in the area of technology. I am spending the day with Amy. Amy is 18, turning 19 and just received her A level results. Amy is confident and incredibly articulate for an 18 year old. I am asking Amy questions which she dutifully answers in a very text book way. She then mentions facebook and her whole face lights up. Amy comes alive at this point. She runs over to her Dell laptop and logs on to Facebook. She shows me she her 353 ‘friends’ on Facebook. She tells me that Facebook is as important to her as chocolate. Its an addiction. Its a craving. She wakes up in the middle of the night and thinks about what happened that day in Facebook. She asks me if I want to speak to any of her friends on Facebook.
This got me wondering, are social networks a much more effective and authentic way to research young people? Are online omnibus studies and traditional ways of researching teenagers less effective in an age where the currency of the ‘yoof’ is through the lens of Facebook?
Amy shows me today’s events. Jo has split up from Anthony (I am shocked that people put when their relationship ends on Facebook. Do people dump people by Facebook as well?). Emma has tagged her in her holiday photos. The guy she met in malia has written on her wall. Amy is organising a ‘results’ party for 200 people (she has just done her A-levels). She couldn’t organise a party without Facebook. I ask her if Facebook is a fad. She tells me undeniably its not. MySpace was a fad but now everyone has moved to Facebook. Facebook has the ‘durability’ factor. The ‘talkability’ factor. She has 33 friends online at this moment. I feed her questions to her friends. I get answers from her friends immediately. I then ask more questions. Its rich information. Its visceral. It is not pre-determined. Its authentic. Amazingly, its free.
I recently completed an online research study for the Future Foundation. Not only was it incredibly boring to complete (and I am a researcher by trade so god knows how boring it was for everyone else), if I am totally honest I felt compelled to write the ‘right thing.’ To write the ‘intelligent thing.’ Most importantly, to write ‘the expected thing.’ When I received the final report, many of the things I had said I actually disagreed with. To really go ‘one floor down’ as a pyschotherapist would say, surely we need to get that visceral instantaneous reaction which is not going to come from a online omnibus or a focus group? If you want to see how the tiger hunts, don’t go to the zoo. You need to go to the jungle. Or in this case, the jungle called Facebook.
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It’s hardly surprising that your 18 year-old gave such cool responses before you talked about Facebook. Communicating in the analog world to this generation is a bit like visiting grandma’s place, with its old clocks, brass ornaments and Mr Kipling cakes.
This lot have grown up in a digital world. It’s nothing new to them, unlike old farts like me. My teenager is constantly in touch with his mates by mobile, MSN, Myspace. He’s not quite old enough for Facebook but it makes more sense to keep up with events this way.
The flip side is that even though they’re more online savvy, I think this generation are so used to connecting and finding info quickly that their attention spans are suffering (the whole “Is Google making us stupid?” issue), so God help BMRB when their big floppy TGI survey book is waved in front of Gen Y and Z noses.
Yes quite agree. It seems that the research world is so out of date with how young people think about things and relate to each other. Most clients still seem convinced that the traditional focus group is the only answer, bunging a group of strangers in a room and asking them to ‘be honest’ and there is ‘no right and wrong.’ When your identity is formed by those around you, surely people must realise that we need to research teenagers on their terms?
As for the Google point, its an interesting debate. You could argue that we are so much more informed now. When I wanted to know something when I was little, I had 2 choices. Ask my mum who normally wouldn’t know the answer or hunt around for one of those huge encylopedias that were in the attic getting dusty!