Hunter Walk wrote a great article about Facebook Connect and how difficult it is to own the social web, called Trying to be the one true social graph is like trying to hold water in your fist. One of the fascinating parts is his observation about how the next generation is using technology:

Each new group of kids come of age wanting a space they can discover together and call their own. This is DNA, not computer science. It’s not about tech changing (oh, this is Facebook if it was build only for tablets) – it’s about getting to a dry piece of land when you’re 13 years old and being able to plant your own flag. I don’t see how you get beyond the anthropology of this.

In light of that, Josh Miller’s Tenth Grade Tech Trends and Justin Hoenke’s follow-up Tenth Grade Tech Trends (Take Two) are important data points to know about. These are very anecdotal, sure, but Josh and Justin’s takeaways are definitely worth debating. Here, for example, is Josh’s insight based on his 15-year old sister’s comment that Tumblr is just for middle schoolers:

I can’t get over the “middle schoolers use it” comment, especially since they use Tumblr as an identity tool. That’s exactly how my friends and I used Myspace in middle school, and we too abandoned it (for Facebook) once we reached high school. So in middle school you care a lot about your personal presentation (themes and cultural images on your Myspace or Tumblr page), but once you reach high school you care more about the people you present yourself with (photos on Facebook and Instagram)?

If you’re interested in how teens use social media, it’s worth following danah boyd’s blog. She is a researcher on media and youth culture, and her insights are always interesting. Here’s a particularly relevant excerpt from her post Risk Reduction Strategies on Facebook:

Shamika deletes every wall message, status update, and Like shortly after it’s posted. She’ll post a status update and leave it there until she’s ready to post the next one or until she’s done with it. Then she’ll delete it from her profile. When she’s done reading a friend’s comment on her page, she’ll delete it. She’ll leave a Like up for a few days for her friends to see and then delete it. When I asked her why she was deleting this content, she looked at me incredulously and told me “too much drama.” Pushing further, she talked about how people were nosy and it was too easy to get into trouble for the things you wrote a while back that you couldn’t even remember posting let alone remember what it was all about. It was better to keep everything clean and in the moment. If it’s relevant now, it belongs on Facebook, but the old stuff is no longer relevant so it doesn’t belong on Facebook.

With behaviour like that, it’s no surprise that ephemeral apps like Snapchat and Poke are so successful.