A 15 year-old intern at Morgan Stanley investment bank caused controversy this week when he wrote a report about teenagers' consumption of media. Teenager Matthew Robson raised eyebrows when he pointed out that few teenagers use the social networking doyenne of the day, Twitter, on the grounds that it is "pointless". No sooner had the guileless youth spoken when a number of grown-ups clamoured to the fore to insist that, on the contrary, the Emperor was indeed wearing new clothes, and mighty fine they were as well.
One such was self-proclaimed 'social software consultant' (no vested interests there then) Suw Charman-Anderson, who patronised the lad thus: "He has written a very well thought out piece which describes the media habits of him and his friends... It is not a reliable description of all teens' attitudes and behaviours."
Tellingly, Ms Charman-Anderson concluded her blog: "If I relied on Morgan Stanley for anything, I'd be rather concerned right now regarding their lack of critical thinking." Downtime thinks there are far better reasons to be concerned about Morgan Stanley's thinking. Compared with the deeds of some of its fund managers in recent years, young Matthew's rather modest revelation looks sheer bloody genius. Thus it is in the spirit of the moment that Downtime wishes the record to show the pearls of wisdom uttered by his three year-old daughter only this morning, when she breezily damned another social networking phenomenon: "Yammer? POO!"
You heard it here first.
