Census Bureau's first-ever online headcount designed to reach millennials likely to miss
Census Bureau's first-ever online headcount designed to reach
millennials likely to miss
-Thursday, March 14, 2019
Tyler Barnett is
a millennial and runs his public relations firm in Los Angeles to target
members of his generation. Its website does not list a phone number on the home
page.
“Dropping the
number weeded out cold-callers and time-wasters,” said Mr. Barnett, 35, adding
that he prefers email and does not use business cards. “Millennials are
generally more stubborn regarding communications, and if you’re not
communicating with them in ways they appreciate, you could see them just not
caring.”
He is exactly
the type of potential respondent that Census Bureau officials are puzzling over
as they prepare to conduct the once-a-decade tally of the U.S. population in
2020.
Millennials
(born from 1981 to 1996) and Generation Z (born after 1996) account for about
35 percent of the approximate 325 million people in the U.S., according to
estimates, and census officials say their traditional means of outreach —
mail-in questionnaires, landline phone calls and door-to-door surveys — are
failing to connect with this significant segment of the population.
The Census
Bureau plans to conduct its first-ever online headcount, which it predicts will
generate 60 percent of the total responses for 2020.
But Mr. Barnett,
whose firm promotes Hollywood celebrities on social media platforms, expresses
doubt that “out-of-touch bureaucrats” can navigate the online universe that
millennials and Generation Z have created, although he believes Washington is
“right to recalibrate its approach to counting this generation that has grown
up with so much technology.”
Amanda Slavin,
founder of the Las Vegas-based marketing firm CatalystCreativ, agrees. She said
census officials must grasp how mercurial social media can be if they wish to
penetrate online noise, and she notes how little even experts understand about
what drives traffic and emotions online.
To illustrate
her point, she noted how a picture of a plain brown egg became the most-liked
post on Instagram. In January, Chris Godfrey, a 29-year-old marketing
professional, uploaded the photo with the aim of collecting more likes than
Kardashian celebrity Kylie Jenner’s birth announcement. Nine days later, the
egg surpassed Miss Jenner’s 18 million likes to set the record.
Mr. Godfrey
later acknowledged that his intent was to evoke debate about social media’s
obsession with celebrity versus the power of simple communication.
Ms. Slavin said the lesson for census
officials is that millennials and Generation Z gravitate to things that have a
ring of authenticity.
“Millennials and
Gen Z have grown up in such a content-heavy environment that they have
well-developed filters for endorsements and advertising that is not authentic,”
said Ms. Slavin, who frequently lectures on millennial consumers and online
culture.
Census officials
are keen to get the constitutionally mandated count right because about $800
billion in federal funds, the redrawing of congressional districts and major
business decisions depend on it.
However, social
scientists suggest that millennials and Generation Z could have a hard time
appreciating the importance of the census, having grown up amid a distorted
media landscape of instant online gratification, “fake news” and a culture of
likes on social networks.
Census Bureau
officials declined to provide details about the agency’s online strategy and
social media efforts for next year’s count. A spokesperson said, “The world has
changed, and we’ve changed to keep pace.”
Last month,
census communications chief Burton Reist was quoted as saying endorsements from
celebrities such as LeBron James are being considered. He described a
hypothetical situation in which the NBA superstar urges young people during
halftime to pull out their cellphones and “answer the census.”
Ms. Slavin
warned that celebrity endorsements are tricky and can backfire easily.
“If the census
is going to use celebrities, they need to make sure there is a legitimate
context to create credibility and believability,” she said.
More than
credibility, security concerns about the collection and storage of respondents’
data should be paramount for the census, cybersecurity analysts say.
Census officials
have said cybersecurity is a priority and that specific measures will remain
secret to avoid giving “adversaries wanting to discredit the federal government
an advantage.”
Harvard
researcher Shom Mazumder studies the political and social forces that shape the
census, including the complexities of counting America’s population after the
Civil War and during the major waves of immigration from the 1850s to the
1930s.
For the 2020
count, he sees “digital literacy” of less tech-savvy Americans as the major
issue.
“The census will
be competing for younger individuals’ time,” Mr. Mazumder said. “But have
people looked at this from the other side and asked if older individuals have the
digital literacy to access an online census?”
Copyright © 2019
The Washington Times, LLC.
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