Are young people getting over shallow Facebook chats?

A new study (ok, here we go again... :) of 16-30 year olds shows that music is no longer what defines young people - today young people look to friends to validate who they are, what they consume and what’s important in life. It is the first time since Lifelounge started their data collecting that music is no longer number One.

When it comes to marketing the study says they young ones want nuance over noise. They prefer subtle messages they themselves can explore, discover and unearth.

Researchers have noticed a new trend: the need to pause and absorb. Young people are finding ways to balance their connected lives with more organic, offline forms of entertainment like reading a book, dinner parties, movies and going to the gallery. Multitasking has intensified in recent years; people regularly spend their time Facebook-ing, cruising Twitter, texting friends and downloading music while catching a glimpse of what’s on the box. But maybe this is why they now seem to crave “single-minded experiences” as opposed to “multi-minded experiences”.

It´s a new search for depth we can see here - or is it? I would have loved to take a deeper look at the values behind “friends means more than music” to make the statistics more meaningful, but assume it means that we are heavily influenced peer-to-peer rather than from above. Or is “from friends” actually “from above”? Are young people still watching the cool kids and following their moves? Wasn´t this actually the case when music was the main influencer as well?

Most people simply want to fit in to be loved... And while the frontrunners have always found new bands, they are now the ones blogging, writing about their life on Facebook walls, showing the followers how to dress and act, what to like and do.

What can brands learn from this? Follow closely what the cool kids are doing. Use word-of-mouth marketing. Create contest where people get involved in the brand. Meet them when they are pausing rather when multi-tasking.