The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Did you know that in an average year, most kids spend about 900 hours in school? While to many of them this may be 900 hours too many, another issue is that they also spend about 1,500 hours in any given year watching television. Well, this isnÕt really true. Actually, they spend about 1,500 hours each year in front of a screen. I asked the kids in my class about this last week and they were really and genuinely surprised. They also didnÕt really agree. So we had to talk. I asked how many of them watched more than three hours of TV on an average night. Out of a class of 24 kids, this turned out to be two of them. The rest of them had a much smaller answer: maybe an hour. While they all agreed that they had shows they liked to watch, they really were quite few. Asked what they do instead, they all had the same answer: go online. I really feel sorry for the marketers who need to make something for this generation. My generation was pretty easy to work with. We had a few TV channels, a few magazines and newspapers and maybe a radio station or two. If people wanted to advertise to us, they knew where to find us. Today? Today there are hundreds of channels and millions of websites. And as for newspapers? Who even reads those any more? Kids have more money than ever in the past. They have more disposable income and they are fussy consumers. Almost every single kid in my class has a Facebook account. A few years ago, every single one of them had a MySpace account. What changed? Nothing, really. Something new came along that had a few more features and was a bit easier to use, so they all flocked to a new space to try it out. Why? Simply because it was new. The students in my class also have no problem with freely admitting that eventually something new will come along that will replace Facebook, and they will move along to it. Brand loyalty isnÕt their strong point. The other thing that IÕve learned lately about people this age is that they expect to fully interact with their media. For us, media is often an escape. WeÕve been well trained by the TV to sit on the couch and consume everything it throws at us. Teens, on the other hand, have been trained by the Internet to want to take part. They want chatrooms, blogs and Facebook to tell the world about their lives. They want YouTube and flickr to share their creations. They want people to listen to them and they are growing up expecting that. My generation never expected to be noticed. We hoped 10 people might some day listen to us. For todayÕs youth, fame is simply a link away. Andy Warhol once said that everyone would have a chance to be famous for 15 minutes. The Internet generation is instead famous to 15 people. The age of the micro-celebrity is upon us. This change in habits is important. Our generation drove the creation of the 500-channel universe because we wanted more things to watch as we sat on our couches. What changes will todayÕs generation bring? How will interactive media be different? What kinds of things will they be making in the future? ([email protected]) Tech Notes runs Mondays.
