Is there any real evidence that these kids don't watch any tv and only do snapchat and watch makeup gurus on YouTube? I know it's fun to say but I mean what about reality? ....
Evidence in our house, yes. The TV delivery industry shot their feet off in this area because they have a pricing model where they want to charge per "screen" (we use Echostar, but I believe the other providers have similar pricing). They also insist (or did until yesterday) that the data gets to the screen by coax. My two kids have tv screens in their bedrooms but I was not interested in paying an extra fee to have the signal delivered to them, nor was I keen to crawl around under the floor pulling coax (they have perfectly fine GigE connections already). They could in theory watch TV on a screen in the family room but they'd need to fight someone else for control of the set top box (and get out of bed). The result is they spend all day watching YouTube and Snapchatting on their phones. The TVs are only used for Netflix.
OK, but you know what they say about anecdotes, right? I'm sure there are many people on HN that have never watched a show in their entire life; there is an Onion article about "Area Man Constantly Telling People He doesn't Own a TV" [1]. Also, there is a group of people in America I understand called the Amish. That's fine but I'm not sure how to generalize from that .... My response is to this kind of often repeated idea that I think lacks a lot of merit or evidence in reality. For that view to be true, there better be a statistically insignificant number of kids that have ever seen any of these shows or any of their associated advertisments because they are too busy with Snapchat.
One thing I am aware of is that kids have a lot of free time and they do a lot of different things, is what I understand.
This appears to be the wrong link or doesn't really support the claim at all.
It says "usage is down for 18-34 year olds" so 18-34 year olds are not kids, not like 14 year olds. And saying it is down is very different from saying "kids don't watch TV, they use snapchat, therefore brands like Coca Cola are irrelevant."
This is what I'm saying. There is this unthinking, uncritical, and unskeptical self-congratulatory sort of "ding dong the witch is dead" about anything related to "traditional media" and the reason for this is "because Internet" or something like that. But, I think it is a very naive view and is fun to say but it's not actually real.
I mean, this article is an example of just weak evidence. Again, it is not about kids but its about the 18-34 demographic. But let's see, it says:
"In 2011, 21.7 million young adults tuned in to their TV sets. By the end of last month, that figure had fallen to 17.8 million, according to Nielsen figures."
OK, whatever that means, let's just accept the numbers as they are presented. Just elementary math tells us 17/21 is hardly nothing or "no one is watching" anymore.
Now, the article cited, to support this claim, says:
"In the era of smartphones and Netflix, it’s no surprise that traditional TV is losing relevance for younger viewers."
Wait ... so instead of watching actual TV sets with bunny ears, they are watching things like Netflix (which I understand is much different than Snapchat) .... OK, let's peruse the content of Netflix .... OK, wait a minute, all this content on Netflix looks familiar ....
Do you mean to tell me all this stuff on Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon are mostly .... from the TV? With the exception of a handful of originals, which honestly are produced in a similar way as the TV, most of this stuff coming from the evil "dead witch," the TV. I don't find a lot of "Vine Comps" on Netflix. Also, on some level it seems silly to me to point to Netflix and Amazon as evidence that these other things are dead; it's not like Amazon Originals are like "The-New-Internet-Meme.com" they are much more like "In addition HBO, Showtime, Starz and Cinemax there Amazon and Netflix" than some totally fundamental shift in the kind of content consumed ... whether it is over bunny ears or choppy wifi is sort of an implementation detail to some extent than a cultural revolution.
If one wants to say "People don't watch TV anymore" and then what they really mean is "They watch ABC shows on the ABC App on the iPad instead" .... Then claims like the "The Coca Cola brand is dead because Snapchat" seem to lose their luster.
I assumed that you'd be able to extrapolate the behavior of the 18-34 year olds to younger people, and I assumed that you didn't mean any literally.
Of "youth" (13-24 year olds)[1]:
96% watch online video ("Youtube and similar, social media") for an average of 11.3 hours per week.
71% watch online subscription services (Netflix etc) for an average of 10.8 hours a week
57% watch free online TV services (amctv.com, ABC app etc), average of 6.4 hours a week
81% watch scheduled TV, average 8.3 hours a week
56% watch catchup or recorded TV, average of 7.5 hours a week.
Additionally, "The five most influential figures among Americans ages 13-18 are all YouTube creators"[2]
I'm not sure if this supports or doesn't support your arguments. I know I sure don't agree with the claim "The Coca Cola brand is dead because Snapchat". I didn't really understand the argument there at all.