Within this blog post, we hope to show you a candid view into how we, two 16 and 17 year old teenage girls, living in the South East of England, view social media and how it is used by us and our friends.

Intro

The majority of teenagers in our modern world today use social media and it plays a huge role in their daily lives. On the other hand, the way in which they use social media greatly differs to the way in which most adults utilise social media, in both the sites that they choose to go on and the way in which they use them. 

Most teens use social media as a means of communicating with friends, whether that be through sending a Snapchat using the bee filter, so their voice seems to have jumped 3 octaves higher, or by posting a ‘candid’ photo on Instagram which only took 20 tries to get. For this reason, teenagers generally prefer different forms of social media to adults, as they try to communicate using the social media platforms, which are fun, quick and easy to use. This therefore explains Snapchat's increasing popularity amongst teens because it is instantaneous and amusing to mess around with, whilst Facebook is being used less and less by teens as they can get more visual, safer experiences elsewhere, without their mum commenting on every single photo that they are tagged in. 

There are many preconceptions linked with how teenagers use social media channels, from the expectation that teenagers are deprived and send inappropriate photos to each other over Snapchat or that they harass adults on Facebook for expressing what teens believe are ‘outdated’ opinions. Even within the social group of teenagers there are stereotypes attached with how we use social media. For example, when going through Facebook or Instagram, every 15-18 year old is dreading the inevitable encounter with a ‘Twelvie’, that one friend everyone has who is twelve and thinks they are the coolest person in the world. They regularly post pictures of themselves with the caption ‘I didn’t choose the thug life, the thug life chose me’. The pictures tend to consist of poses which cause scorn and second hand embarrassment from the older teenagers, mainly because they remember a time when they thought that was a cool thing to do. 

Likewise, even within the older branch of teens, we dread running into that one friend who has very strong opinions and is not afraid of saying them, whether that be through a post on Instagram with a caption a mile long or 100+ seconds on a Snapchat story ranting about some injustice they encountered that they just had to mention. This became particularly prevalent in the lead up to and the aftermath of the EU Referendum…#Brexit. Certainly in our school common room, you couldn’t go five minutes before someone closed their apps and locked their phones in disgust, professing that ‘Suddenly everyone’s a politician’.

Most Popular Types of Social Media in the UK (In Order of Popularity) and How We Use Them:

Happy #BackToSchool time everyone!!! Yes, it's the new academic year and you might just be wondering what social media breakthroughs have crept up on you over the summer holidays. 

Here is our handy summary of the social media you should be on RIGHT NOW, or at least getting very excited for! So...where shall we begin?

STATS!

Yes, statistics. We all love them - don't lie. These numbers and facts help us to see the reality of how entities such as social media effects us. More importantly they offer guidance in where your school should be driving its social media marketing strategy.

Overall

Keeping up-to-date with social media trends is difficult enough without worrying about future trends! Fortunately, the guys at TwinEngine have this covered for us all. Twitter is expected to position itself as the global newsroom and we are still waiting for Facebook to enter the world of search. 

This infographic explores different social media marketing trends and how they will take flight in 2013. 

Do you agree with these predictions? Do you have any of your own? Let us know in the comments below. 

Source: TwinEngine.

Google+ is the coolest new thing on the web, everyone in the social world is talking about it. According to Mashable, in its ‘first three weeks, Google’s competitor to Facebook and Twitter has amassed more than 10 million users, and its users are sharing more than 1 billion pieces of content daily.’ It’s become a hotbed for early adopters, tech luminaries, marketers and businesses around the world.

Now it is opened to the public - invite free. We are extremely excited about the potential Google+ has within schools and education. Some schools are still yet to adopt social media but we believe Google+ is the one for schools. Why?

Targeted Sharing with Circles

Unlike Facebook you don’t add someone as a friend, you simply follow them - ahem, Twitter. But what makes it different to Twitter is that you have the ability to group these people you follow into different groups - or Circles as they’re known on Plus. I believe this is one of the main reasons Google+ is going to become huge in the education world. The ability to group people into circles allows a great amount of 'targeted sharing’ and helps build and nurture relationships with specific groups without the pain of having unnecessary news or information filling up people’s feeds which is a problem on Twitter and Facebook.

What could a Circle be? We think the basics should be 'Parents’, 'Students’ and 'Public’ should be the groups that are essential. Once a suitable level of students are engaged on Google+ then go niche with subjects and topics such as 'History’ and 'WWII’. This allows not only engagement and relationship building and student collaboration but also the ability to be able to teach and help the student with and problems.

Privacy

A recurring problem that schools find with social media is the lack of privacy and that everything is public. But this is especially not true with Google+. By having a 'Public’ Circle you can choose which  information you wish to share out to the public.

Teach with Hangouts

Many educators have found Skype to a be a hugely popular tool in the classroom. The ability to bring guests have speakers into the room and help better the student experience has been a great asset. However, Skype is a desktop app and many people have wished for a web app that can be accessed anywhere. Now its here, and better! Google Hangouts can allow up to 10 people at once to be part of a video conference. Being able to see up to 10 experts on a subject discuss their passion is very exciting.

Future

Google are constantly innovating and don’t expect Google+ to be the final product. However, do expect a great number of new features to be rolled out in the future. Some of the potential updates could include integration to Docs, apps and other collaboration tools.