Social media is integral to millennials’ lives

• In our increasingly globalized world, social media offers youth a shared experience and powerful ways of interacting and working together.
• Just as with boomers and rock ‘n’ roll, a teen or 20-something who’s not plugged in to SoMe is detached from a fundamental generational experience.

Social media fulfills a special function

• Music provided the soundtrack, style, and ideology for baby boomers, while SoMe enables millennials, from anywhere, to interact, communicate, share, learn, inform, congregate, create, mobilize, and/or play, seamlessly.
• SoMe lubricates and energizes millennials’ lives at school, work and home.

Social media shapes behavior and attitudes

• Rock ‘n’ roll was the vehicle for an entire set of distinctive cultures still visible today among aging boomers.
• Among millennials, SoMe is so pervasive that academics and researchers are seriously wondering whether it is “rewiring” the brains of users.
• Judging from the rapt attention today’s youth give to their screens (computer and mobile), there can be little question SoMe is shaping behavior and creating a different view of the world and how one interacts with it.

Millennials identify with SoMe

• Rock ‘n’ roll shocked pre-WWII generations and, for that, was all the more embraced by rebellious boomers.
• Now, people of all generations recognize that millennials have a natural affinity for digital technology in general and social media in particular.
• Social media is millennials’ “thing”—and its impact shows no signs of waning.
• In culture and commerce, the implications of social media on this newest generation will be profound.