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It’s easy to assume that social media – especially Twitter – mostly attracts young adults. My own experiences, combined with a recently-released study, challenge those beliefs.

Earlier this year, I asked a class of college students to rate their familiarity with about 15 social media networks that have gained traction in the past year or two. It was an unscientific, five-minute survey to gauge their awareness.

Some answers were expected: Most students were very familiar with YouTube, blogs and Flickr. And Facebook, of course, is huge.

Other findings were more insightful: Twitter awareness was very low. RSS was barely on the radar. Social bookmarking knowledge was virtually nonexistent. Wiki familiarity wasn’t much better.

My informal survey is consistent with a recent study that only 22 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds use Twitter. In contrast, 99 percent of young adults have a social network profile.

This doesn’t mean that young adults will never use Twitter, wikis and other tools. Instead, the findings challenge the convenient assumption that adding social media to your marketing efforts will instantly create a connection with younger audiences. 

In a post to the journalism community, Amy Gahran emphasized the importance of knowing your audience and where they already lurk:

It’s always easier to join a conversation than start one from scratch. This is especially true in social media. Whoever you want to connect with online, chances are that some of the most influential people in those groups already have their favorite social media hangouts: Facebook groups or fan pages, community sites, Twitter hashtags, LinkedIn groups, and more.

Social media remains a great way to engage, connect and converse – assuming your messages, networks and audiences are properly matched.