The mastodon and lemmy content I’m seeing feels like 90% of it comes from people who are:

  • ~30 years old or older

  • tech enthusiasts/workers

  • linux users

There’s nothing wrong with that particular demographic or anything, but it doesn’t feel like a win to me if the entire fediverse is just one big monoculture.

I wonder what it is that is keeping more diverse users away? Is picking a server/federation too complicated? Or is it that they don’t see any content that they like?

Thoughts?

  • CrunchyBoy@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2533·
    1 year ago

    Younger folks have been raised on apps and other polished devices with oodles of effort put into UX design.

    Older folks grew up learning DOS commands, memorizing the IRQ of their sound card, and other clunky shenanigans.

    In their current state Lemmy, Mastodon and other services are too complicated for most young folks to bother with. Not all, but most, especially the filthy casuals.

    • Addition@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      1051·
      1 year ago

      This is the answer. I’m 26 and most of my peers didn’t really use the internet beyond the occasional usage of the school library computers until Apple released the first iPhone. By that time places like Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit were up and running.

      That’s all their experience with the internet is. Polished experiences through dedicated apps on extremely popular platforms. Now those people have had kids and all those kids know is the same thing. It’s all apps on phones and tablets.

      Lemmy: A) Is too complicated in it’s current form for those types of people to effectively understand and use.

      B) Lemmy is currently emulating a type of early internet experience that only nostalgic older millennials nerds crave. General users tend to prefer bigger platforms.

        • nnullzz@lemmy.worldEnglish
          6·
          9 months ago

          No I feel the same way. I think it’s because it’s part of an ecosystem of concepts built with all its predecessors mistakes in mind. There’s still learning to do but the foundation is simple but is also modern.

      • TheWoozy@dmv.socialEnglish
        43·
        11 months ago

        Lol, older millenials never saw the early internet experience. UUCP, FTP, Gopher, Mosaic, et al.

      • Brkdncr@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        12·
        8 months ago

        Most people didn’t use the internet when the first iPhone came out either. That shit was slow and unusable at the time, and locked to AT&T.

        • Addition@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          3·
          8 months ago

          This thread is a couple months old at this point but I figured I’d reply anyway.

          Maybe you had a different experience but I experienced this transition in middle/high school in west MI. The first Gen iPhone released in 2007. 3G was widespread and while that might be considered slow these days, it was state of the art speed at the time, so it wasn’t considered “slow and unusable”.

          In 2007, kids my age didn’t have much tech beyond an iPod or MP3 player. By 2009, almost everyone had a smartphone. That was a huge leap in internet accessibility.

    • Dark_Blade@lemmy.worldEnglish
      40·
      1 year ago

      I mean, Reddit killed off ‘polished UX’ and that’s what drove me here. All the great 3PAs are on the Fediverse, after all!

      • DogButt@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4·
        1 year ago

        Ahh, the great modem connection sounds, letting you know that the internet was only just (roughly) 2 minutes away. Or longer.

        56k4life

    • koopercupp@lemmy.worldEnglish
      15·
      1 year ago

      I’m 26, probably among the oldest of gen z. I love lemmy. The quality is higher here because the community is smaller. There are much less reports than there used to be on reddit.

      • Dackel@programming.devEnglish
        4·
        10 months ago

        Yeah Im like one of the youngest with an age of 14.But thats okay because lemmy is just awesome for me.

    • EliasChao@lemmy.oneEnglish
      4·
      1 year ago

      I use Ivory for browsing Mastodon, and I’d bet that the app is more polished than any other first-party social media app.

      The problem with Mastodon (and Lemmy to some extent) is that the onboarding process is not as straightforward, thus causing some friction for the less tech-savvy users.

    • tool@r.rosettast0ned.comEnglish
      4·
      1 year ago

      “No, I can’t come out tonight, I’m optimizing my CONFIG.SYS file so I can have a mouse AND my Soundblaster work at the same time!”

    • wolfcatreader@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      10 months ago

      Word! I feel active learning and feeding off one’s brain curiosity diminished for younger folx.

      With that comes laziness to “set things up”. “OMG, it’s too complicated for me. I’m having a headache. I can’t, I just can’t.”

    • liontigerwings@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      I agree but I can also ok imagine a world where the website remains similar to how it is now with 3rd party apps actually making it user friendly for the masses. Memmy already seems to be getting close to an ease of use similar to Apollo. They’re also attempting to solve the issue of a very confusing onboarding process.

    • OverdueSandwich@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      Couldn’t agree more

      We are used to Comfort and once you are used to it (or even never experienced else) its hard to lay it off for other benefits