How Much Time Do Millennials Spend on MySpace & Facebook?

Authored by Scott Goldberg on March 12, 2007 - 12:17pm.

As part of DMW’s Millennials Conference April 18th we’re making a documentary about the Millennial generation (roughly defined as age 15-25) with Victorhouse Films. We made UCLA our first stop for interviews, partially because the conference will be on its campus, and partially because its students, located in LA, are among the most exposed to digital media. As a disclaimer, I am not, nor have I ever been, a MySpace or Facebook user. And what I found in our student interviews is that never, in my life, have I been so out of touch with a pop culture phenomenon.

Imagine interviewing someone in their twenties in 1980’s LA and asking them what they thought about Guns N Roses, only to get the reply, “I’ve heard of them, but I know absolutely nothing about their music.” Well that pales in comparison to my ignorance about MySpace and Facebook, as I came to find out.

We made sure to ask each subject one particular question: “What role does MySpace or Facebook play in your life?” The students would answer with a laugh or role of the eyes, as if to say, “That’s all I do.” Some described their MySpace/Facebook life as a love/hate relationship. In other words, they hate how much they love it. I asked a girl who gave the love/hate answer why she continues with Facebook when she hates it so much. She said it’s out of her hands at this point: You either have a Facebook or MySpace page, she seemed to say, or you have no life.

We asked one student how much longer she plans to use MySpace. Is this something she foresees doing the rest of her life, in other words? “Yeah right!” she laughed. But then you could see her trying to picture life without it, and realized she couldn’t. So I chimed in, “For the next 10 years at least?” And she nodded. “Probably.”

Some students confessed spending all of their free time on MySpace or Facebook. I asked one if he checked email or MySpace first thing in the morning, and he thought he had misunderstood the question. Of course he checks MySpace first, he was saying. But he then admitted to checking email first, occasionally, if only to find out if there were any updates to his MySpace page.

It donned on me eventually that asking the students about their MySpace and Facebook usage was like asking whether they watched television or not. Forget the skeptics who talk about dormant accounts and exaggerated traffic numbers. If UCLA is a barometer for the rest of the country’s Millennials, there is no doubt that MySpace and Facebook are as much a part of their lives as eating and sleeping.

It also goes beyond pop culture in the way that cell phones do. No one would call cell phones a fad, but they likely would MySpace and Facebook. This, as we found out, is a mistake. It crosses gender and race, something interviewees noted as a hallmark of this generation. MySpace and Facebook has come to represent an indispensable, irreplaceable commodity.

Be sure to check back for updates on the Millennials Conference, as well as the documentary, which will debut at next week’s Future of Film. Whatever you thought you knew about the Millennials, you’ll come to find more than a few surprises.

Scott Goldberg

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Submitted by Martin Zwilling (not verified) on January 22, 2009 - 8:07am.

I find that most business people are equally in the dark about social networking and millennials. See my article on http://blog.startupprofessionals.com for a series to educate startups and business people about the implications of millennials entering the job stream. Marty Zwilling, Founder & CEO, Startup Professionals, Inc.