Jolanda (16) decided to spend her work experience week at Casengo HQ. Yes, we had a resident teen for 5 whole days!It was a delight to learn more about today's adolescents, tomorrow's consumers...

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I know people who put everything they do online. I’m not like that. I enjoy social media, but I don’t want to bore anyone. You might have read here how I – born in 1997 – communicate with my peers and other people, but how do I behave on social media?

Social media 1: Snapchat

I love Snapchat. The pictures you send over Snapchat vanish after 10 seconds. This means you can happily send your ugliest grin to your friends, without being afraid to be faced with it again later on, at a party or something.

Social media 2: Facebook

I definitely wasn’t an early bird when it comes to Facebook. In fact, my account has only been up for a year. I just didn’t believe it could be fun… But guess what? Facebook is the place to be for a good laugh. That’s mainly thanks to the Vines: 6 to 7 second long videos in which people do funny stuff, like spoofing a rock star. Facebook is part of my daily routine. I check it on my mobile at least every night, right before bed, to see what has been posted during the day. I don’t post a lot of updates myself; I’m the kind of person who likes seeing what the rest of the world is doing. I have about 220 friends on Facebook – not very much, in comparison with my friends, but I don’t think the number of friends or followers is all that important.

Social media 3: Instagram

When a friend of mine had had persuaded me to join Instagram, I had great ambitions. However, I never posted more than two pictures! I guess I’m just too lazy to take pictures of everything and then post them on Instagram. In addition, I found out that ‘Insta’ (that’s what everybody calls it here) is the about same as Twitter, only with photos instead of tweets. Recently I saw a Vine in which a girl said: ‘Mum, I don’t need dinner tonight… Instagram is down! And if I can’t post a picture of my food, it’s like I never ate it.’ Seriously!

Social media 4: Twitter

In the beginning I used Twitter as a diary, in which I expressed all my frustrations. I tweeted things like: ‘Aaargh, I broke a nail!!!!!’, ‘I wish he would like me…’ or ‘ Some people are just fake.’ Such ‘emo tweets’ have three consequences: 1) A friend realizes you’re not happy and gets in touch with you. 2) You get in a quarrel because of your UCS. That’s short for UnderCoverShot: a tweet meant for someone without mentioning that person. 3) Your tweet gets ignored, which makes you feel even sadder because you think nobody cares about you. See? Two out of three consequences are negative, and that’s why I barely tweet. Tweets like: ‘In the bus’, ‘At School’, ‘Hungry!’ annoy me as well. This is another reason not to visit Twitter anymore. Sure, I love to know what is going on with my followers, but I don’t want a report every other minute.

Social media 5: LinkedIn, Hyves & forums

Hyves (which used to be like the Dutch Facebook) is totally passé, and LinkedIn is for the older, business orientated generation. I do often go to forums like Girlscene. I like reading about problems and interests I share with other girls. I also enjoy websites like Fashionchick, a social shopping platform for girls, about fashion and beauty. _

This is Part 2 of Jolanda's trilogy.

Read Part 1 here (it's about how teens like to communicate). Read Part 3 here (a teenage view on online retail in 2018).