Yoof not that different to other people shock horror!

Yes, despite the earnest entreaties by a number of Noo Meedja Scholars, it appears that Youth - that species of digital natives who will ostensibly put us old farts out to grass quicker than you can say "Lord of the Flies" are actually not that different to everyone else. The Pew Research Centre has done some research and found that their Noo Meedja consumption habits and Social Attitudes are similar to everyone else's (except for Tattoos....ah, youth ).

On many of the questions in this series, the opinions of those age 65 and older tend to differ more from the other age groups than the opinions of those ages 18-29 differ from the other groups.

I know, shocking isn't it! Next they will find out that Teens are Human Too, you can just feel it coming........

(Bear in mind that quite a few Teen Tech Revolution Revisionista's reputations were made in the 2004/5 era, those kids are now 18+ and clearly do not exhibit much differentiated behaviours from their elders)

To be fair what the data shows is that there is a slight increase of social conservatism as people get older, until hey hit 65+. I think its called experience.......

Update - there is an interesting article today (2 days later) in the NYT on a similar topic, called "Old Fogies by Their 20s" they argue that the "real" difference in Net Generations is with the current 5 ear olds, though the ne thing they note is that the teens of today are better at multi-tasking:

Another bubbling intra-generational gap, as any modern parent knows, is that younger children tend to be ever more artful multitaskers. Studies performed by Dr. Rosen at Cal State show that 16- to 18-year-olds perform seven tasks, on average, in their free time — like texting on the phone, sending instant messages and checking Facebook while sitting in front of the television.

People in their early 20s can handle only six, Dr. Rosen found, and those in their 30s perform about five and a half.

That versatility is great when they’re killing time, but will a younger generation be as focused at school and work as their forebears?

Being an owner of Teens, I think that this trade-off is fairly accurate - I suspect its a brain cycle thing, ie as your work gets more complex and important you have to focus more on it thus the ability to multi-task falls.

(Hat Tip Josie Fraser)