The takeaways:

• Teens don’t see buying a software program (like Adobe Photoshop) as a major “life event.” Whereas people in their twenties and thirties may sign up for classes and buy instruction manuals after purchasing a program, teens churn through many different technologies quickly, using programs only for what they need and then moving on.
• At the same time, teens feel as if they have mastered these programs. Westerman [one of the session presenters] pointed out that when he asks an adult, professional Photoshop user if she knows everything there is to know about Photoshop, that adult will usually answer, “No, I haven’t even scratched the surface.” Teens, on the other hand, will answer, “Yeah, I know Photoshop.” Nor are they concerned that they haven’t learned all the “right” ways of doing things with a program–they’re concentrated on the outcome, not the tool. They don’t ask, “How do I use the masking tool?” They ask, “How can I create a cool rain effect?”
• That’s not to say that teens aren’t asking for help. They are! But they’re going to their peers online or typing queries into Google. There’s a return of the “apprenticeship”–teens learning skills from their more knowledgable peers, actively seeking critiques of their work, and really adopting a craft mentality. Learning is a process of watching and doing on the fly. “There’s no more learning curve,” Westerman said.
• Any niche site can become a social hub–teens aren’t just using Facebook for social networking. One subject in the study, “David,” spent most of his time on the “Silverfish Longboarding” discussion boards. (A longboard is a type of skateboard.) These microcommunities give teens, who tend to define themselves through 2 or 3 major interests when creating online personas, a sense of belonging.
• Teens aren’t using the fanciest, newest technology. Most of those surveyed had fairly old computers and older versions of software. They were making do with what they had. And they were not pirating software. One teen, “Gina,” bought a copy of Adobe Photoshop with her friend at Costco, and the girls took turns using it at home, since they only had one license.

While middle-aged Gen X’ers and older users approach the Internet as a tool, younger users (teens and Gen Y’ers) see it more as a source of entertainment.  Among users 12-17 years old:

• 78% play online games
• 57% watch videos online
• 69% send instant messages
• 65% use social networking sites
• 59% download music
• 55% have created a profile on a social networking site
• 49% read blogs
• 28% have created their own blog
• 10% visit a virtual world

Access to the full report is here.

The big news?  Only 12% of registered users are between 13 and 17 years old.

Other highlights:

• Nearly 25% of all Facebook users are over 35.
• 45% of users are 26 years old or older, which is where FB continues to expand. The fastest growing age group by total users is 26-34.
• The number of female users aged 55 and over grew 175.3 percent since late September making them the fastest growing segment.  Males in that age group grew by 137.8%.  (This age group still accounts for only 3% of all users.)
• Overall, more women than men are registering in almost every age group. Women now comprise 56.2% of Facebook’s audience and outnumber men in the 18-25 and 26-34 age groups.  Those groups have 1.4 females for every 1 male user.

Is FB running its course as the go-to site for prospective students?  Or is it a big enough tent that teens will tolerate some crowding by those they consider old folks (meaning, of course, everyone over 35)?

[I]t’s not just when a tool comes along that change happens. It’s really when it becomes ubiquitous and even boring. And what’s happened now is that the Web has gotten boring for a whole generation of teens and twenty-somethings. And so, because they can take it for granted, they’re using this platform to add interactivity around regular media consumption.

Haug has himself raised the issue of the boringness of the Web previously.  Both are useful reminders that digital technology and interactivity are just part of the furniture for prospective students.

And since Haug sent me back to reread Shirky’s interview, I’ll share Shirky’s take on why information overload is a generational phenomenon:

[Y]ou know, you never hear twenty-year-olds talking about information overload because they understand the filters they’re given. You only hear, you know, forty- and fifty-year-olds taking about it, sixty-year-olds talking about because we grew up in the world of card catalogs and TV Guide. And now, all the filters we’re used to are broken and we’d like to blame it on the environment instead of admitting that we’re just, you know, we just don’t understand what’s going on.

…

I mean, the thing that people say about young people is just that they understand the technology so well. Well, I teach in a graduate program, I see twenty-five-year-olds all the time. They actually don’t understand the technology particularly well. I think I understand quite a lot of it quite a bit better than they do, which is the reason why I’m teaching there and they’re students. The advantage they have over me is that they don’t have to unlearn anything. They don’t have to unlearn the idea that a card catalog is a helpful thing to have. That you need a librarian to find things. That you have to figure out where you’re looking before you what you’re looking for. None of those things are true anymore. And so one of the problems that old people like me suffer from is just we know too many solutions for problems that no longer exist. And it kind of freaks us out to realize that all the things we mastered don’t really add up to much value anymore.

It’s not so much that young people are smart and old people are scared. It’s that young people don’t have to unlearn all the stuff that old people do have to unlearn if we want to understand this world. And unlearning is just about the least fun activity in the world. So, you know, it’s easy to understand why people don’t want to sign up for it. But it’s also kind of pathetic that the people going around talking about information overload don’t stop to factor in the idea that if the twenty-year-olds aren’t complaining about information overload, it probably isn’t the problem we think it is.

What the implications of this are isn’t clear, but if you have an unauthorized Class of XXXX group on Facebook (and, of course, you do), it’s worth checking out Ward’s list of suspicious names and paying attention to this.

UPDATE: The president of College Prowler has taken responsibility (this comment was posted to Squared Peg):

Yes, College Prowler has been directly or indirectly involved with the creation of multiple Class of 2013 groups. The original purpose was to use these groups as a way to inform students that they can access a free guide about their new college on our site. No employee or anyone else associated with College Prowler has used these groups to send out messages or wall posts.

Until about an hour ago, I was unaware that College Prowler was working with another company that may have been using fake aliases to create to these groups. The groups that College Prowler was responsible for creating were set up with real accounts. Here are the names that are associated with College Prowler, and they will all be removed immediately from the Class of 2013 groups(all other names are not controlled by College Prowler):
• Mark Tressler
• Ron Tressler
• Brenna Young
• Lisa Young
• Lauren Plavchek
• Jessica Lash

From a big picture perspective, having a marketing strategy using social networking sites (like Facebook) is something that is necessary to be effective in our business. We do pride ourselves on being forward thinking and aggressive. In this instance, in its current form, we have crossed the line and to reiterate, we will be removing our administrator privileges from all of these 2013 groups immediately.

Millennials (ages 14 – 25) spend more time with media per week, but less time watching television, and mobile devices are primary entertainment channels for them.

Television remains the most impactful and influential advertising medium across all age groups, and watching television was the most preferred type of media for consumers as whole. Millennials were the exception with their media preferences scattered across TV, movies and the Internet; all were important to them

Fewer people are willing to pay for content in exchange for an ad-free environment. The percentage of people willing to cough up for no ads dropped to 26 percent in 2008 from 37 percent in 2007.

Millennials watch more UGC than professionally-produced content online, and they say they do so because it is more entertaining than traditional media choices.