I’ve spent the last 12 hours in hybrid focus groups-usability tests with teenagers. Three teens participated in each 90-minute session. From behind a two-way mirror, I watched and listened to a total of 18 14-, 15- and 16-year-olds talk about their online experiences and expectations. They covered a range of backgrounds and socioeconomic circumstances. Most spend hours online every day; all of them go online at least several times a week. Nearly all of them connect at high speeds. They all instant message and text message. Yet not one of them had ever heard the term “blog.” Not one of them knew what RSS was. Not one had ever heard of a podcast.

While the word blog (which one called an “ugly word”) was new to every one of these dozen-and-a-half teens, they knew Xanga and LiveJournal. Among the African American participants, most had profiles on BlackPlanet.com. They’re journaling, but don’t see it as blogging. It’s not likely they ever will.

RSS was a difficult concept to explain to them and they were lukewarm to the idea. They dismissed podcasting outright. “Kids don’t have the patience to sit and listen to people talk” was a comment we heard repeatedly during the day. I question whether they would retain that attitude after listening to just one installment of The Dawn and Drew Show. But be that as it may, the experience was eye-opening.

The proclamations heard throughout the PR corner of the blogosphere insisting that little else is worthwhile in the face of the blogging phenomonen have always struck me as just so much hyperbole. There’s nothing new about predictions of the demise of old media in the face of new media. Radio was supposed to put an end to newspapers. Television was supposed to kill radio. The Web spelled the end to television. Now blogging is supposed to be the new face of public relations. Yet history makes it clear that new media are always additive and never replacements. We’ll see a convergence of blogs and older media. And if teens just aren’t excited about this stuff—the ones who embrace new media and technologies faster than their parents—you have to start wondering if all the gushing about blogs and RSS is more than a little over the top.

A few years back, author Marc Prensky divided the world into two groups: digital natives and digital immigrants. All the readers of this (and other PR) blogs are immigrants. Rachel, my 15-year-old daughter, is a native…as were each of the 18 teens I observed today. The natives are underwhelmed by the things that make us giddy. Yes, they undoubtedly will adopt and embrace RSS, but only as far as it serves their purposes, not as the latest Next Big Thing.

One day, all of the immigrants will be gone and nothing but natives will remain. It’s worth paying attention to their perceptions, like this one from a teen who was asked where he would go if he had a health issue that concerned him. We were wondering which site he would name. His answer: “My football coach.”

For me, these sessions served as a reality check. Perhaps it’s time to move beyond our infatuation with blogs and focus instead on integrating them into the mix. That’s a concept the natives would understand.