The epoch-making article on how teenagers consume media

A month or so ago Morgan Stanley was so excited by the work of a young intern that they published a paper that he had written for them. The Guardian covered the story at the time and the comments section is revealing of the disparity in opinion over the worth of the piece.

A full copy of the original note can be found here.

My thoughts are:

• CAUTION: what teenagers do and what economically active young adults do are very different things. As such this is an illuminating piece on the behaviour of today's teens but I would suggest that some of these trends (not paying for content and extreme price sensitivity) will alter as they have their own discretionary means.
• However, I would agree with other elements such as the agnosticism towards sources of content: no one cares whether the show you want to see is on BBC1, ITV, Dave, Sky or whatever - it is more likely that you will watch it on none of these but actually view it on-demand on an Apple TV or via a web TV service like Hulu or Boxee (which amalgamates other online services like iPlayer). As such massive marketing investment in media channel identities is potentially redundant.
• From my own experience I concur with the reduction in popularity of print media - even the better sources are getting to be sensationalist and intellectually lightweight. And even if this is not a complaint of the teens this is a classic case of the operation of the "long tail" insofar as niche areas of interest such as teens have on music, film, anime, world affairs etc can be catered for by blogs and other channels that write the way they want and discuss at the precise level they want. With technologies like RSS aggregating this you can create your own newspaper which is more informative, more entertaining, more mobile, more up-to-date and, perhaps most crucially, free!

Conclusion: teens and young adults have grown up with saturated advertising which has followed them from the real-world, on TV and now on-line from day one. They have developed a form of snow-blindness to this white-light of commercialism and now refuse to get engaged unless they are drawn in by something that is actually of use to them (e.g. a Google paid link that is relevant to their search) or interesting (in-game ads are an example that is mentioned). The digital world is one where theft of content is much easier and much more prevalent as a result. The furore over this is partially because teens with little money will always try to lay their hands on something they like at the lowest possible price (nothing) and their parents aren't sophisticated enough to be able to spot this digital shop-lifting so it goes unreprimanded. However, a large part of the blame lies in the fact that there has been a fundamental change in the perceived value of a lot of the content: the executives of the music industry still think that 12 tracks on a bit of plastic is worth £11.99. Kids don't. Until this and the many other examples of it are addressed by altering the prices (there is so much readily accessible digital content that in simple supply & demand terms the price should have come down by now) then piracy will continue. Just look at what is happening with items where perceived value matches price such as subscriptions to multi-player online games, computer hardware and the iPod: those who can pay, will pay.