Twitter users are getting younger

Twitter is slowly changing. Or that is to say it is broadening as almost 30% of its audience is now made up of people under the age of 24.

In particular the 18-24 year old group has grown almost 8% in the last year while the 17and under group is up more than 6%.

Clearly the growing use of mobile and smartphones is driving this. It is a natural progression. As while figures last year showed 79.8% of 18-24-year-olds use instant messaging the number blogging is rapidly declinning. Short form blogging and status updates (more akin to IM) is where the growth is.

Those figures were confirmed again recently with stats from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project showing a steep decline in the number of teens who blog: 28% pin 2006 to 18% in 2009.

The same survey also showed growing Twitter use among young adults ages (a third of 18-29 year olds).

Another survey from Best Buy found that a third of 18-24-year-olds who do not have a smartphone want one.

This is good news for Twitter and it is also clearly why Facebook is upping its mobile game with the coming launch of lightweight mobile service Facebook Zero (not to be confused with Facebook Lite on the web — clearly the Coke theme is continuing. I’ll stick with Full Fat Facebook).

For Twitter the change means it should get bigger and more evidence to counter talk that its growth is stalling. It started out being used by grown-ups with jobs more than kids because it has such an appealing work centric model. Great for business networking and sharing useful nuggets of information that help us all do our jobs.

What’s also interesting is that it changes the idea that Twitter isn’t used by teens. Remember that amusing story last summer? When a work experience kid amazed some Morgan Stanley bankers with his knowledge about the web (Bunch of noobs; kid says stuff about web, City amazed!)?

Part of his insight was that teens didn’t use Twitter because no one follows them. Clearly as more of their friends pile online with their smartphones people will be following them (mostly each other) as they grow and establish their own networks. Banker news flash. Some get the word out.

[Twitter]