Most all forums I’ve posted on have a predominance of youth, average age less than 25, of the forum members. Why don’t the youth predominate here at the SD?
We have many young people who post here. Are you asking why more mature people post as well?
I guess we haven’t been driven off just yet. The moderators here have little patience for the kind of nonsense that infects a lot of other boards. If someone posted here in the typical manner of a Four-cha|| member they would be banned pretty quickly.
Fail as we do, we make an attempt to value content and coherent thought; it doesn’t always work out but we try.
Given the fact that we judge by a posters content rather than the number of candles they blew out this year, the real question is “why don’t more young people gravitate to a board that values input over age”?
Hmmm. I suspect this site is too straight and formal for many/most young people until they become more calm and reflective.
None of my teenage children despite education and intelligence, have ever shown any interest in internet forums. In fact they don’t even chat (except my son on the PS3 game channels), Facebook is the most talking they will do on the net. But mobile texting…??? They never stop.
I’ve glanced at boards with teenagers but its like another world and an alien culture so I do not go there. No problem, horses for courses. So I can’t see young people who abbreviate much of their written communication wanting to come here.
This forum strangles expression, or at least the way the younger users like to express themselves. It doesn’t allow gifs, lolcats, trollfaces, huge signatures that contain those things, and you cannot embed pictures and youtube clips - how are they supposed to get their points across?
That’s a whoosh, right?!
I’m sure it must be a whoosh…
I’m just here for the pie.
Young people emote, the majority of the SDMB reasons.
We talk about sex much too frankly for their tastes.
Must be, since older posters have been the ones clamoring for all those things on this board.
I was going to say about the same thing…we don’t allow animated .sig files.
I started reading this board around 16. I’m now 27. I only regret that I didn’t start participating earlier.
Ill echo the mod factor and also add that some people on this board can be brutal if you post or say something stupid.
Working purely from memory – I haven’t bothered to look up the actual threads/polls – the age that’s near the middle of the SDMB population who choose to share that information, is roughly 30-35. I’ll try to find supporting links to those threads, but I may not have even seen the most recent one.
If that number is good, that suggests that “youth” needs a definition to work from. Personally, 50 is “youth” to me! 
Sarcastic, I’m sure, but I’m pretty sure it’s intended as the real answer. This place looks boring, if you’re the type who wants bright colors, avatars, flashy animations and sig .gifs longer than your posts, rather than, you know, actual conversation.
No avatars, high premium on spelling and grammar, and low tolerance for angsty “my mum won’t let me buy an Ipod!” types of threads.
Agreed.
Here’s one of those poll threads, probably not the latest, but with a large number of Voters:
It’s because y’all tend to use words like predominate.
Instead of a smiley that means the same thing? 
You really think a lack of avatars is keeping youth away? Seriously?
I was 21 when I signed up with Straight Dope. For many years I would post a while, then someone would call me on my stupidity and I’d slink away for a long time–about a year–before coming back, posting a while, and getting myself in trouble again.
Some time in my late twenties, I finally figured out how to exist peacefully here. So I’d say the board culture requires a level of wisdom, or thick-skinnedness, that a lot of young people don’t have.