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52 percent of boomers will like brands in exchange for offers, compared with 42 percent of millennials. Both groups had trouble remembering all of the brands they had liked — 63 percent of millennials and 60 percent of boomers. Like doesn’t necessarily lead to love, as just 16 percent of millennials and 36 percent of boomers said they truly “liked” brands they have liked on the social network. The opinions of friends remain important, as 68 percent of millennials and 52 percent of boomers said they turn to information about brands from friends.

While there’s no disputing the fact that Facebook provides a valuable channel for brands to engage with their fans, the value of a like is diluted if the people liking them won’t remember who they are tomorrow. That’s why it’s vital for marketers to understand the driving factors behind online behaviors so that they can convert fans into loyal, interested, and paying customers.

Even as millennials (those born and raised around the turn of the century) enter college with far more exposure to computer and mobile technology than their parents ever did, professors are increasingly finding that their students' comfort zone is often limited to social media and Internet apps that don’t do much in the way of productivity

most Millennials use technology for fun and games.

Even as millennials (those born and raised around the turn of the century) enter college with far more exposure to computer and mobile technology than their parents ever did, professors are increasingly finding that their students' comfort zone is often limited to social media and Internet apps that don’t do much in the way of productivity. One professor at the University of Notre Dame, for example, reports that many of his students don't even know how to navigate menus in productivity applications. 

advertising technology called remarketing has proven alienating to online consumers. Remarketing, which lets advertisers follow someone around the Internet with a display ad, based on a previous search engine query, specific site visit, or other online action by the user, has increased in popularity in recent years.

The rapid spread of SnapChat--the picture sharing app that auto-deletes photos after ten seconds--shows that young people increasingly understand the need to keep some things secret, or at least to control the visibility and content of their communications. The migration of Millennials away from Facebook to the more anonymous Tumblr may be another sign. And the outcry raised by young Tumblr users in the wake of news that Yahoo! was purchasing the platform--driven by fears of more corporate control and increased advertising--only underscores the point.

Millennials are in the vanguard of mainstream online behavior: they were first on Facebook (after college students invited to the join in its earliest days), followed by their parents. A Millennial move towards greater online secrecy could represent the beginning of a larger shift that warrants additional research.

U.S. vinyl sales grew for the fifth consecutive year in 2012, with a 19 percent year-over-year increase.

As digital becomes more pervasive, it seems that we are increasingly fetishizing the physical and tactile. We’re embracing things like old-time typewriters, wristwatches, physical books and face-to-face time with friends and loved ones—things being rendered obsolete in the digital era. As we spend ever more time in the digital world, we increasingly value the time we don't spend in front of a screen—the time we spend with real people and real things.

more than two-thirds of American adults sometimes feel nostalgic for things from the past, like vinyl records and photo albums, and more than six in 10 have a greater appreciation for things that aren’t used as much as they used to be, like record players and film cameras. This appreciation is felt more by the younger generations, with 67 percent of millennials and 65 percent of Gen Xers in agreement, compared with 56 percent of baby boomers.

57 percent use Facebook to coordinate social plans at least once a week; and 62 percent use Facebook to post about what they’re doing, where they are, and/or who they’re with.

It’s a matter of culture and how they consume. They publish everything to the world. They like to share, are open to share, and want to share. They want people to know what they’re doing. They don’t think about privacy and are more transparent.

A recent Pew Research study found that while millennials are more lax on their privacy, they are less trusting of others than previous generations.

A writer for USA Today shows that all ages are in on this trend, but instead of an age group, he blames the change on the cloud, the heavenly home our entertainment goes to when current media models die. As all forms of media make their journey into a digital, de-corporeal space, research shows that people are beginning to actually prefer this disconnected reality to owning a physical product.

Even in this strange new world, the economic laws of scarcity apply, and they are precisely what's shifting. To "own something" in the traditional sense is becoming less important, because what's scarce has changed. Ownership just isn't hard anymore. We can now find and own practically anything we want, at any time, through the unending flea market of the Internet. Because of this, the balance between supply and demand has been altered, and the value has moved elsewhere.

The biggest insight we can glean from the death of ownership is about connection. This is the thing which is now scarce, because when we can easily acquire anything, the question becomes, "What do we do with this?" The value now lies in the doing.

About two-third of Instagram users in 2012 were female, but eMarketer projects that by 2016, the discrepancy between the two genders will drop to 55 percent female, 45 percent male.

Although Twitter and Instagram are quite different, their user counts and demographics are strikingly similar. eMarketer estimates that 43.2 million U.S. consumers used Twitter monthly last year — or 17.6 percent of the total Internet user population. Meanwhile, Instagram users represented 16.1 percent of internet users in 2013. On smartphones — where Instagram activity almost exclusively takes place — Twitter had just 30.8 million users in 2013, and this number will increase to 37.3 million in 2014, or 22.7 percent of U.S. smartphone users. Both figures fall slightly below those for total Instagram users — 34.6 million in 2013, increasing to 40.5 million in 2014, eMarketer estimates.

Overall, Twitter’s U.S. user base shows signs of maturing in its demographic composition, spreading the user population more evenly across age groups, while Instagram is still largely limited to a pool of millennial and Gen X users. Last year, nearly 70 percent of Instagram’s U.S. users were ages 18 to 44; this year, that figure will drop, but only to 67.5 percent. In 2014, Twitter’s user base from 18 to 44 will account for about 60 percent of its overall users.