Hit the ground running today, coming in on the midst of an amazing presentation of the Twitter Kids of Tanziania. The first full panel I was plugged in and attending was….

Growing up with the Real Time Internet

Sarah Cooley’s panel! Four panelists 23 and under talking about living within the Real Time Internet for their whole adulthood!

Sarah (@sarahcooley): “We have strangely accelerated careers for people our age.”

Lauren (@beebow): Found her job/career through social media connections.

Kelly (@kellysutton): Even though his post-graduation job is secure (at blip.tv), he’s still using Social Media

Sarah: When she first started in social media she kept it a secret that she was an undergrad and only 21! She didn’t want to be discriminated against in her job search. Now it’s open knowledge that she’s a student, but “just because I’m back in school doesn’t mean I’m an intern again.”

Though she (and the rest of the panel) has mentors, because SM is a new career path there is no person who has done SM since they got out of school – there’s not an established path.

Corvida (@corvida): “It encouraged me to be a leader in a way that school wasn’t doing. … It’s allowed me to go beyond what was originally there.”

Kelly: “Facebook is still the main player in a student’s life. … People are still finding jobs – doing things we do on Twitter a lot – in their Facebook status updates.”

Lauren: “I don’t use Twitter as a portal to tell everyone what I’m doing – I use it to share resources. Whereas if I’m posting a Facebook status update, it’s one-sided.”

Sarah: Moderates the panel to talk about using internet to locate resources, products, recommendations.

Kelly: Uses HackCollege to find out how students use the web, and found social media is rapidly replacing search engines as a source of answers. “A lot of people our age are quickly realizing that’s where the real value is coming in.” More likely to use social networks first.

Sarah: “Search has been huge forever, but if you have this huge network of people that you trust … they’re much more apt to provide you with an answer that suits your lifestyle.”

Sarah: Has SM changed the way you interact with your family?

Corvida: Her whole family follows her! Mother, cousins – everyone. Mom uses it to keep up “with her inner geek .. prior to this we were in our own separate world.”

Kelly: “When my mom joined FB I thought – great, my mom isn’t going to call me every day. Quite the contrary.” Laughter from the audience – parents still want to check-in and follow-up.

Sarah: Both of my parents joined FB and Twitter “my mom came up with the idea that she would get me faster with an at message or a DM than texting me.”

Peter: Privacy question – you’re the savviest generation regarding privacy, but what about the generation just below you? Are they cognizant of what they’re revealing?

Sarah: Millenials are on the cusp, and “we still remember when we first got internet in our life. … But there’s a generation – privacy’s not even an issue for them. … Twitter is one of the only networks that has trended down.” High school students use Twitter differently, and it’s partially because they’re using it from different devices. They are using SMS phones, which was the original intent of Twitter!

Question about digital footprint we’re leaving behind – are they conscious of it? Are they managing it?

Kelly: “There are pictures of me in a skirt on Facebook – freshman year, I don’t want to talk about it. I am very, very aware of what’s left online. … Rather than try to remove the negative, I try to counteract with positive – more difficult, but more worthwhile in the long-run.”

Sarah: Your footprint never really goes away, “it already changed someone’s impression of you.” Has always gone into job interviews thinking that people would look her up on Facebook, “Yeah, I hope so.”

Kelly: Your digital footprint is your portfolio, and it was a tremendous bonus. “I didn’t know what I was doing on Twitter for the first year, but I was branding myself.”

Sarah: Especially in SM, the resume might be dying.

Question about disappointment in people not interacting with your socially-searched questions, or if the recommendation is off-point.

Corvida: The recommendations are never that bad!