UPDATE: A GenY blogger, Josh Groth made some great comments. (His blog is http://echodemic.blogspot.com/) Please read them in the comment section. But some stuff he pointed out is that GenY uses email for business communications and Facebook for personal use. They look stuff up on Wikipedia when they don’t understand something. And they subscribe to magazines. I would love more input from anybody else out there who is a GenY person.

Full disclosure: I am a member of Generation X.  I have been “fortunate” to meet many members of GenY and have come across some universal behavior that impact communications with this young group of people.

GenY loves to text. In fact, if you want a GenYer to respond to you, you should send a text first. Do not call and do not email.

GenY loves Facebook. Well, so do many other people, but GenY is the first generation to adopt Facebook, and it could be argued, it was designed for them.

GenY does not read printed materials as in a daily newspaper. Online baby! Yes, they read the Washington Post/NY Times/LA Times, but ONLINE only. I would venture to guess that the subscription level among this group for printed newspaper hovers near 0%.

Other things to bear in mind when communicating with a 20-something:

Frame of reference. They are not historically minded and will not get a reference to Ronald Reagan or LP records or anything that happened prior to 1990.

They tend to be conflict-averse. GenY has been brought up to get along well with others (thanks to Rodney King and other influencers). If they don’t like you (your product, your service) they won’t argue or discuss, they will IGNORE.  You probably won’t get much feedback unless you ask them nicely. Via text.

Their social mores are more fluid than previous generations. They aren’t easily shocked.

Any other tips for communicating with GenY? Please comment.