Just give it time. I’ve been thinking about this same topic recently too.

10 years ago, I remember spending most of my time playing on the computer, chatting in chat rooms, and even writing in my online journal (before the term blog got coined.) If I told anyone in school about what I was doing, the reaction was, “You talk to people online?!” or “You have -friends- online that you don’t know in real life? That’s creepy.” or “You put your thoughts on the internet for -everyone- to read?” They didn’t understand.

I think it’s also has to do a little bit with how they wouldn’t know anybody. A lot of people in that age group aren’t going to join unless there is already a somewhat wide friend base on there. If you don’t know how to use it properly, then it’s kind of hard to find a friend. I remember when I joined a long time ago, I posted a couple updates, and thought, “Hm… nobody I know is on here..” and promptly forgot about it for a while.

I’m slowly trying to get all my friends from college to join. Maybe if it starts to catch on at the university level, it will drop down to the high school level. Kind of like Facebook did.

Who knows! I’m going to stop hypothesizing now. =)

However, from what I remember of my high school and college days, I didn’t care all that much about the news outside the small world of friends and family. I think that if some in the entertainment world twittered, it might catch on a little faster. Seems like there was someone mentioned recently, like a Lindsay Lohan type, who twitters. A few drunken twitters from a celeb and it may gain popularity. It will take some sort of viral thing along those lines to get the younger set involved.