“Teen Influencers Are Hyper-sharing, Hyper-purchasing and Hyper-consuming,” but here’s a secret — they are not Hyper Foursquare enthusiasts

It’s not so hip to be square for teens. In the largest survey about teen influencers in social media Foursquare didn’t fare so well.

The survey had over 500k answers and sought to understand how teens interact with friends, family members and brands online. It was conducted by  myYearbook and Ketchum.

Interesting enough, the teens who are active online are also social in other parts of their life. They are not nerds whose social skills are slowly eroding as they type away at their computers. These teens have active social lives and they are engaged in many ways (listening to music, reading newspapers, etc). They also buy more and like to share what they purchase with their friends (a brand’s dream come true, right?)

Here are some key points from the study:

• online influencers more likely than the average teen to participate in social media activities, such as updating their status at least once per day or sending 3,000 texts per month
• they also spend more time socializing and influencing their peers offline – in other words overall they are more social than their peers (going to parties, hanging out with friends in real life)
• teen influencers were surveyed from the myYearbook community and are defined as the top 15% most active an engaged on that site
• 97% spend 2 hours a day on social networking sites and 91% have more than 500 friends on those sites
• teens aged 15 to 17 are the most engaged online

Here’s the kicker (that could be bad for Foursquare): they’re not hip on checking in. According to the study “only 16 percent report using a mobile application that allows them to check in at a given location, such as either Foursquare or Gowalla.”

Bottom line: Social networking sites are big with teens but Foursquare – not so much. If your audience is teenagers, you’d be better off creating content for sites like Facebook.

Source Ketchum press release: http://newsroom.ketchum.com/news-releases/teen-social-media-influencers-wield-power-online-and-offline

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