Media Habits and Millennials
The media habits of millennials are something old media has been trying to crack for the last decade. It took 48 hours and an excel spreadsheet, for me to figure it out.
After participating in our class experiment of logging our news intake over the past week, I’ve figured out two things. I consume news all day and I access the majority of my news through social media outlets. No surprise there, like the rest of millennials, I’m always on social media and always on my phone.
The days of tuning into the morning and evening broadcast on TV are long gone. Millennials no longer have the time or patience to watch traditional news formats. We want our news now and we want to know first.
My days are a constant stream of information, coming at me from whatever illuminated screen I can get my hands on first. The best part being, it’s all information that I can specify to my individual needs and interests. If I don’t care about something, I’m not going to read, listen or watch it. As a media outlet, if you want me to pay attention to something, you better get creative.
Because we are receiving so much information in our day to day lives, we don’t have time for things that don’t interest us. Even if I am loyal customer to outlets like The New York Times and National Geographic, they have a very short amount of time to capture my attention in order for me to follow through with the information they are presenting to me. If you think the attention span of my generation is bad, it’s only going to get worse. At least there was a part of my life that involved me being outside playing in the dirt rather than staring into a screen. Children literally grow up with screens in their faces all day now. There are five year olds with better technology than I have.
My point is that media outlets need to adapt to the market and they need to do it quickly. They need to be making more content and experimenting with emerging platforms like VR and 360. They need to have interactive websites that make people want to stick around longer and hold attention. Your website should basically be an online playground.
Earlier this week, I was talking with a consumer experience director for an average to small media outlet that I won’t name. During our conversation, I was telling her about tracking my own media habits. When I told her that I accessed most of my news through social websites, predominately Twitter, she said she was surprised. I politely nodded but meanwhile I was thinking, “How in the hell do you not know this already? Isn’t this your job?”
While, looking at my own media habits didn’t surprise me, it did re-instate what I already knew, the game has changed and will continue to change. If you want to be successful, or more importantly, a leader in this industry, you need to be ahead of the curve, embracing new technologies and formats consistently. After all, if you don’t show your audience you care, it’s only a matter of time before they’ll leave you for someone else.
