Antenas

Teenagers are probably not shouting this about “social” from the rooftops, but they could. Maybe they should.You see, we’ve come to define “social” in unintentional Orwellian double-speak. “Social” has come to mean the exact opposite of what it’s meant for centuries. Instead of actual interaction and communication, we define “social” as once- or twice-removed ego validation through button-clicking.“Social” is what happens when someone posts personal information—photos, thoughts, announcements, favorite songs, jokes—on the internet and another person comes along and clicks a thumbs up icon or a star or a heart. If someone’s really “social,” they’ll even type a comment or reply.Kids aren’t leaving social networks. They’re redefining the word “social.” Rather, they’re actually using the word with the intent of its original meaning: making contact with other human beings. Communicating. Back-and-forth, fairly immediate dialogue. Most of it digitally. But most of it with the intent of a conversation where two (or more) people are exchanging information and emotion. Not posting it. Exchanging it.That’s “social.” That’s why they’re increasingly skipping over static, interface-based URLs and apps in order to define “social” as messaging services.

Kids still text. No doubt. Between my two girls, there were more than 5,000 mobile, over-the-network cell-tower-based texts sent or received in March 2013. That’s fairly incomprehensible to me, but it’s also almost 2,000 texts off of their peak about a year ago. I suspect that has a lot to do with them using an “older” social channel that’s seeing a resurgence, as well as usage of two of the “social” apps that teens mentioned as “write-ins” on the Piper Jaffray social media survey.