The Disloyalty of Generation Next
In this modern era of the instant, we have become the most disloyal customer base ever to exist.
You can't deny it's the era of the instant either. Everything that was previously asynchronous communication is slowly losing ground to more instant forms. Want to get a hold of someone? Call them. Voicemail. Oh who leaves voicemails anymore? Just text them. No response? Get online; I'm sure they're logged into some instant messaging app - GTalk/AIM/Facebook Chat/Skype/the list goes on. It's almost rude not to respond to a wall post or tweet addressed to you within a few hours. I remember when you could respond to a voicemail within 24 hours and be considered polite.
This constant demand for our instant attention has changed us. I saw so many New Year's resolutions this year to go on an "information diet". This is the result of people realizing that in our quest to be always-on and instantly connected, we have lost a bit of our collective sanity.
I'll be writing more about this in blog posts to come because it fascinates me (and because my New Year's resolution was to write more regularly!). In this post I wanted to write about how this has affected our loyalty to media sources.
We Landed on the Moon!
Half a decade ago, the names of TV news anchors were household names. In fact, I was just reading reddit yesterday when I saw this post on the moon landing. Walter Cronkite every night on CBS was the news back then. Not in a celebrity-gossip—Jersey-Shore-cast-is-the-news way, but more like a families-would-get—together-each—evening-and-tune in-because-he—was-their-sole-source-of-news way. He was part of the family if you grew up back then.
Flash forward to 9/11 - you have to admit it has been the biggest news story on that scale to occur recently. I can remember where I was and what I was doing, but I can't remember what channel I was watching or who the anchor was. It must have been CNN or some other national news network, but I can't be sure. And forget about having even a foggy idea of who the anchor was.
Where do we get our news from today?
There are so many sources bombarding us with news that we've become disloyal news readers. This may be a good thing - taking in many different opinions rather than just one is always a plus. And it may be a bad thing - for the news industry of course, and for our attention spans.
I was speaking to some friends and told them if I was the same way with news as a child as I am right now, I would probably have been diagnosed with ADD. I think I went through a phase in college where my sole source of news (more like comedy than news!) was The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. That's probably been the most loyal I've ever been to a single source of news since then. Now if you check my Twitter feed, you'll see I follow and re-tweet so many different sources of news on a regular basis that I don't even know what to read anymore sometimes.
I think this is indicative of the current generation. Most people who have BBC or CNN in their bookmarks toolbar, or download their apps for their mobile devices are part of the last generation. These news organizations are going to need to adapt to fit this societal ADD we have developed over time because the previous generation won't be around forever.
Information aggregators are where it's at now. This is how I use Twitter. I'll do a detailed post on it later, but the point is we're never really vested in media companies.
It doesn't matter who gives us the news as long as we get it. This is the beauty of a Twitter stream with many sources - news repeats through the sphere and whenever you tune in, you can pick out the news from whatever source was "on" at the same time you were. People ask me why I like Twitter so much - this is why. This is what social media means for many of us - it's a twist on the normal usage of connecting with friends. Social media is more of a twist on an old form of news media for me and many others.
And I'll be the first to admit it has spoiled me and made me disloyal to traditional news companies and I'm glad.
