Anastasia Goldstein’s panel of 7 teens.
From the Q&As it appears that each teen has different ways of using technology. All are on MySpace and a few are on Facebook. They don’t like complicated websites with lots of ads.
Blonde teen paid $1000 for her LG phone with $2 ringtones and a 500 text messages a month. Cute-looking black guy uses a Blackberry.
Where virtual worlds are concerned it’s lukewarm. The guys mention gaming like Halo and Counterstrike. One girl uses Yahoo! Avatars. The blonde mentions going to a channel on Yhere.com.
**Question session**
Marketer asks the teens what they think of generating their own content for contests. Black guy responds he produced a video on Youtube. Blonde says she’s made her own videos but not for contests yet.
Goldstein asks if companies approaching teens to contribute creative ideas to their campaigns, makes teens feel better about that company. Blonde says yes.
Gal in the middle is interested in the Democratic debates but none of the teens goes to CNN.com or times.com. Blonde hates being inundated with political messages. A couple have been to teenage website & vogue website. But teens feel good when they know they’ve helped a cause.
White guy on left says online campaigns catch his attention. The teens watch a variety of online videos. One gal watches Disney Channel on her phone.another gal watches drama shows. Brunette watches CSI. Blonde loves CSI too, there’s nothing else good on tv. Brunette beside her watches it too.
Anti-marketing guy wants to know how to stop advertising from influencing teens too much. Black guy mkes good point that I they see ads it should be more targetted and relevant to them. Blonde accepts advertising but agreed it must be in the right places. MySpace is too cluttered with ads and she’d join a campaign to ban popup ads.
They don’t like websites that make them click here and there to get to what they want.
One guy saw a health site(?) but was not interested in being made to read the labels.
**Gaming**
Online gaming is cool to them. They love them. They play games in Flash. But in school, Flash games are blocked but they know how to get around proxies.
But the teens still have a real life. Black guy’s ok the basketball team. White guy plays football. Blonde girl also has an active life. I picked u the sense that for the guy’s at least, sports gives them a sense of belonging and in some cases, achievement.
The teens re-iterate that they don’t mind don’t mind advertising.
Overall an OK panel with some teens more vocal than others. Nothing groundbreaking to me, but this is the third SXSW panel in as many years that I’ve attended, on teens.