Morgan Stanley have ‘shocked’ the city with their ‘teenage scribbling’ about teenagers’ use of social media written by an actual real live teenager. Frankly, I am not sure whether to laugh or cry at the collective ‘dad at a disco’ reaction to what appears (in its published summary form) to be a series of sweeping statements which are a) not that difficult to believe if you have teenage children and b) get right to the heart of why markets find it really hard to predict anything useful about consumer usage of technology…
As someone who is still glowing when his T-shirt was denoted as a ‘cool’ by the teenage shop assistant in Jack Wills (the result of my daughter cunningly maneuvering my wallet into its vicinity last Saturday) I feel qualified to express a certain beggared belief that this report will form the basis of a whole series of Chinese whispers about ‘teens’ (that famously homogenous demographic!) do in their bedrooms.
It is important to emphasize that this post is not a critique of the teenage scribbler himself but a wider comment on the impact his so-called “scribbles” seem to have had on the collective consciousness of the square mile (and journalists both within and beyond!).
The Times wrote a short profile which painted a picture of a slightly reticent young man who is obviously bit non-plussed by all the attention he is getting (and has more important things to do than talk to dead media – at least according to his report!). The narrative of his report was admirably reflective and lacking first person narrative for a 15 year old and certainly beats the usual ‘what did you do today?’ conversations that it is possible to squeeze out of your average teen, but it can hardly be called ‘ground breaking’ in what it tell us. It also seemed to be lacking in explanation being a series of ‘factual’ statements based on thinking about conversations with his peers in the playground. But is the City really only focused in finding out the latest ‘what is’ rather than trying to ascertain the underlying ‘why’ which might actually inform investment decisions?
So while not wanting to detract from the obviously articulate (apart from one typo!) efforts of a 15 year old – his confident tone suggests he will go far in any career where a fair degree of ‘front’ is called for – it does at least provide some demonstration about how the time and perception lag between the ‘culture’ of the City and everyday life create distorted perceptions of the role and value of ‘new’ technologies.
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