Why Most 5-Year-Olds are More Digital Than Your CMO

This past weekend I couldn’t help but notice all the kids in my family staring at some sort of screen. From texting on their phones to watching YouTube videos on their tablets, they didn’t seem to take their eyes off of the devices. I realized how the people in the room, who are a quarter my age, were a lot more technologically sound than I thought. That’s when my research began.

During this research I found how Facebook gave a 10-year-old $10,000 because he hacked Instagram. The boy isn’t even old enough to make a Facebook account and yet was able to find a major flaw in Instagram, earning him a nice lump sum of cash. He earned this money via Facebook’s Bug Bounty Program; which offers cash rewards to people who find bugs and flaws in Facebook’s digital infrastructure. The young boy discovered that he was able to delete what people wrote on Instagram; he even went as far as to say that he could even delete Justin Bieber’s comments with the flaw he found.

If that doesn’t blow your mind maybe this will. Among kids 2–5 years of age their computer skills trump their early life skills. 63% of them can operate a computer, 58% can play computer games, 52% can ride a bike, 37% can write their name, 20% can make an emergency call, and only 11% can tie their shoes. Hello generational differences! In fact, the average 11 year old already has adult technology skills.

Meanwhile, some of our CMO’s biggest challenges consist of data explosion, social media, growth of channel and device choices, and shifting consumer demographics. When asked, most CMO’s deem technology-savviness as the skill and competency they see opportunity to improve in. Does this relate to the CMO’s fear of missing out? The constantly shifting market place, diversity in talent and need for unified and synchronized messaging across all channels brings the utmost stress to these individuals.

These are opportunities for CMO’s to develop new strategies to keep the lead/marketing funnels full. Creativeness is bound to come into play in order to market to these ‘already tech savvy’ 5-year-olds. Managing campaigns and strong brands have always been a challenge; these young digital geniuses will add a more robust challenge to all CMO’s plates demanding out of the box creativity. LGC looks forward to staying on top of these fascinating changes that the future holds. Who knows, maybe hologram commercials will pop out of our phones soon…