(shouldn’t this be *wireless* teens??)

Linda Stone:

youth patterns show us where things are going
anil dash said email isn’t used by the 20-year olds at Six Apart (they use Basecamp)

right now we’re doing what the computer does well and we haven’t figured out what to make the computer do to enhance our lives, which we will crave the more noise we have in our lives

“continuous partial attention for continuous partial friendship” (which Liz and Lili took issue with - it’s not partial friendship to them!)

an interest in presence says I want grounding on where I am

Anastasia Goodstein - http://ypulse.com/

wrote a book for parents about what teens are doing
new generation gap
some of the questions she gets asked by parents
- “will they lose their social skills?”
- “will they take this stuff down, can it go away?”
- “how can recruiters and others see my kid’s profile if it’s private?”

when is it okay to take someone’s picture and put it online?
the other big challenge is setting limits when kids have

powerful tendencies to stay connected 24/7
teens will migrate (they left Xanga when adults found it)
growth in virtual worlds
blurring of wall between marketing and advertising
need for marketing literacy

widget explosion - teens have always decorated their rooms, lockers, shoes, etc.; now having a virtual space means tricking it out

glittertext

social media @ school
mtv did a study where they took away the internet for a week and then asked them what they missed most about it; answer was they couldn’t do their homework
most schools are very reactive right now

generational differences at work
more structured growing up, so need structure in work
need more feedback and input
not doing summer jobs but doing service that will help them get into college
how can we help young people manage their online reputations and learn appropriate technology use?
how can we teach information literacy, credible sources, and marketing literacy?
how can we get parents and teachers caught up?
how can we deliver contextual resources to teens “in trouble” online

Stefana Broadbent

looking for opportunities for convergence
visited 250 households each year in Switzerland
75% of Swiss teens are apprentices; at the age of 16, there is a strong selection process that decides which kids go on to finish higher education; the rest go into apprenticeships 4 days a week and school 1 day a week

stefana’s group collects timelines of days; showed an example of kids with the same timelines (schedules) as their father
these kids are using all of the “youth” channels
the group also collects the kids communication diaries (on paper) where they jot down every interaction for professional activities

adults have found special uses for each channel
- fix phone: the Collective Channel
- Mobile voice: the Micro Coordination Channel
- SMS: the Intimate Channel
- Email: the Administrative Channel
- IM: the Continuous Channel
- Social Networking Sites: the Channel for Weak Ties

teenagers have the same pattern with the exception of SMS and IM, which are flipped: SMS is the Micro Coordination Channel and IM is the Intimate Channel
- some shift between written channels - from SMS and email to

IM
- slightly less usage of mobile phone channels teens like to use
- IM is their main communication channel, including on mobile

devices
- mobile phone is preferred for last minute coordination and

longer conversations

channels teens use but don’t like
- email is practically nonexistent (used for contacts with school administration and older people), is perceived as asynchronous and therefore not interesting for maintaining daily contacts
compared to other countries, Swiss teenagers are more multimodal; they are just as multimodal as 25-35 year olds

use of social networking sites is limited to supporting “usgang” (means “going out”)
- heavily connected to partying and going out - as a souvenir, as a way of finding people or mild flirting
- a space where you can share pictures
- not a space where you communicate with friends

communication with friends is still on IM and the mobile phone
their real buddy list is their IM buddy list

is teens’ social online behavior affected bybeing in an adult work environment?
do you need to share a lot of daily activities such as going to school together to really hang out with them online in the “third space?”
are online spaces a continuation of school environments?
how much daily contact do you need to feed your online presence?
associations, clubs, etc. are the environments where teenagers that work, share common activities
importance of shared context
“The Way We Really Are” book by a sociologist
teens in Switzerland are getting an adult, professional role

long before teens in the U.S.

Sean Kelly - Zoodaloo

small company with staff spread out
using Basecamp’s chat channel every day, all day
no corporate storage - it’s all on basecamp

most folks who have a webkinz got it from a female and they use it to stay in touch with kids
casual gaming and storytelling
animal avatars are the most popular right now
secret codes and the ability to find out information you can

use socially (like how to skip when walking)
kids created a code of numbers in club penguin that only they

knew, so cp turned off the ability to type in numbers
sites popped up with Club Penguin Cheat Codes
kids want to believe that everything in the world is interactive

Mike D’Abramo - youthography (marketing company)

did 200 focus groups, 120 studies, on 120,000 youth

youth is a different attitude than it used to be - it’s a way to experience your life, not a number
the 4 x 5 factor = the 10-29 group divides into four equal five-year cohorts (10-14, 15-19, 20-24, 25-29)

self-reliance
21% of youth live in a household with no borthers or sister (so online with friends)
families aren’t traditional anymore, over 11% of Americans were born elsewhere
if you don’t understand immigrants, you’re missing out on 1 in 10 people (1 in 5 in Canada)
my downtime at home
even when kids go to college, they may not be leaving home
at a younger age, you’re taking a certain number of adult responsibilities, but at an older age you’re staying home longer, postponing marriage, etc.
“rolelessness” - if you can stay at home until you’re 29, you do because it’s cheaper, etc.
- “prolonged pre-adulthood”
you start becoming an adult very young, but you don’t really do

it until a much later age
there are many things young people do, but they do them differently at different ages
younger people wanted to be like older people - now it’s going both ways

fewer siblings at home = greater reliance on friends
single parent households = greater self-reliance
balanced demogrpahics = lifestyle sharing
immigration = clour blindness and diversity
six-pocket syndrome = more as-needed cash
==> it’s not only the culture changing, it’s the people

trends:
- integration culture: used to be in tribes, a way of creating identity at school; now, though, young people aren’t being categorized so easily now; no longer so easy to define
kids grew up in a world where this wasn’t normal
- hedonormalization: things that are self-indulgent and make us feel good are part of our experience
now have pharmaculture, talk about sex frankly, exploding influences, information, standards have created a larger

culture of general permissivness, gambling on TV
- rehumanization: not a backlash against technology, but idea that we want to get back to something more authentic
the ipod is very isolating, but we make it social (playlist playoffs); taking an intimate item and turning it into a social experience
the return and rise of rock n’roll over the last few years, comfort food, natural food

on the horizon:
- greater concern for public health (especially kids’ health)
- organizations with multigenerational workplaces need to have all staff get along
- privacy issues grow, especially with regards to data mining

social networks and loyalty cards
- business models: distributed models for mass ownership of businesses at a low cost threshold

we need to think about the people and the culture as much as you think about the product or service
- how do we reach new immigrant populations with technology?
- how do the negative effects of these trends get blamed on the technology itself and what can we do to mitigate this?

Fiona Romeo - Children’s Digital Lives: Risk Scenarios 2014

social play creating codes that would be adapted when banned
“dictionary dancing” (Club Penguin)

“Watching You, Watching Me” scenario from the BBC
low fear, centralised, digital assistance with life
“Paying to Play on the Multinet” - high fear, decentralised

digital life, free market delivers branded entertainment
“Left to Their Own Devices” - high fear, decentralised digital

assistance with life, gadget-enabled sociability and play

reduced scope for play (which means exploration)
increasingly institutionalized time
people overestimate risks in situations they can’t control and they underestimate them in situations where they do have control
overestimate on issues discussed in the news, too
there aren’t many designated play places in the world
fewer children cycle to school anymore - they get driven to school
nowhere to let mind roam freely
kids don’t feel welcome in places like shops

showed latter two scenarios
advertising may be the greatest risk to kids in the “paying to play” scenario; specter of an ad-based youth mobile network in the UK; Disney tracking phones; banning of free ads there

children’s mobility and monitoring
mobile phones are the new bicycles, as they are giving children more freedom and range, personal and portable, increasing in interactivity
let parents monitor from a distance

kids expect things like fingerprinting in school and believe they have nothing to hide but go “nuclear” when you talk about parents monitoring their phones
ongoing dialogue between parents and kids
no need for constant updates anymore; parents and kids negotiate the number of updates

most parents aren’t aware of internet-capabilities on the phone

discussion from questions

in Switzerland, finding that 80% of the calls are to 4 people

most people hold their breath when they download email
continuous partial attention and not breathing as a phenomenon means your personal CO2 level goes up
people over-breathe when on the cell phone
food and sleep issues, too (some don’t eat until they get home at 3:30; staying up late and not sleeping

http://www.whateverlifemagazine.com/