Am I the only one who doesn't think Morgan Stanley's kid will change the world?

Thankfully, it appears not.

Suw Charman-Anderson of Strange Attractor wrote this afternoon of the statistical flimsiness of the piece, which was part of my concern.



Charman-Anderson, who like me applauds the sentiment but not necessarily the rigour, saliently points out:

This is one teen describing his experience. It is not a reliable description of all teens’ attitudes and behaviours, yet both Morgan Stanley and the media seem to be treating it as if Robson has Spoken The One Great Truth.

There is barely a number in the whole of the research note, which weakens any sort of 'data'. Furthermore, as far as can be gleaned from the media reports, it seems to be taken from an unspecified sized sample of an unspecified cross-section of one 15 year-old's circle of friends and acquaintances.

It takes a certain type of 15 year-old to get an internship at Morgan Stanley, and you'd expect such a type to have reasonably like-minded friends. Was the report circulated as a questionnaire? Did the intern himself project his own habits forward?

It would be easy for me to be suspicious of research that goes against my instincts. It wasn't so much the headline that Twitter has not gained traction amongst teens. My own feelings on Twitter are for another post, but suffice to say I feel it will retreat back towards the sort of usage that originally saw its popularity rise - factors like networking, link sharing and website promotion rather than celebrity snooping.

Far more troubling was the suggestion that teens "may watch no television for weeks"(who can go that long without Hollyoaks?), that "the majority of teenagers I speak to have Virgin Media as their provider" (aside from University students, how many teens make these decisions?), that more teenagers are reading The Sun since it dropped to 20p, and that most teenagers have never bought a CD. Really?

Additionally, a lot has been made of the inference that the way teenagers behave is critical because they will grow up and shape the future media behavioural landscape. I have attempted to find the piece I read about teenagers not holding the key, but actually mothers being more important, as they have less time to spend and only stick with things that are truly useful or efficient. Thankfully David Cushman gave me assurance that I wasn't dreaming it:



Others, like Catherine Gee, see teenagers as less relevant than other age groups, a debate that could go on and on.



There are things to be learnt from the research, particularly if we can find out more about the sample demographic and how much depth was actually covered. In the meantime it's worth noting that financial services titans the size of Morgan Stanley will take potentially the musings of an individual 15 year-old as PR-worthy research.

UPDATE: This doesn't add much, but made me chuckle: