- danah boyd shares what she means when she says "email is dead" in reference to teens. "Now, let's talk about youth. They have email accounts. They get
homework assignments sent there. Xanga tells them that their friends
have updated their pages. Attachments (a.k.a. digital Netflix/Amazon
packages) get sent there. Companies try to spam them there (a.k.a. junk
mail). Sifting through the crap, they might get a neat penpal letter or
a friend might have sent them something to read but, by and large,
there's not a lot of emotional investment over email.
That said, take away their AIM or MySpace or SMS or whatever their
primary form of asynchronous messaging with their friends is and they
will start twitching and moan about how you've ruined their life. And
you have. Because you've taken away their access to their friends,
their access to the thing that matters most to them. It's like me
taking away your access to blogs and email and being forced to stay at
the office just because you showed up late for work.
I'm part of the generation caught between email and IM where IM
feels more natural but most of the folks just a little older than me
refuse to use IM so i'm stuck dealing with email. Today's teens are
stuck between IM, MySpace/Facebook, and SMS. There's another transition
going on which is why there's no clean one place. IM replaced email for
quite a few years but now things are in flux again. Still, no matter
what, email is not regaining beloved ground."
- Mobile Youth Trends - some excerpts from an interview with Nick Wright, a Research Associate at the Wireless World Forum, who is a co-author of the mobileYouth 2006 report : "The relationship between youth and their mobiles is not necessarily
based on being “fun, cool, or entertaining”. It’s a key social tool
employed in the dynamics of the peer group. Youth consume mobile
products - as they do others - to make statements about themselves and
their relationship with their peers.
Self-expression is such a key aspect of young people's lives that
they would rarely choose a non-branded alternative over an identifiable
brand. 98% of teens for example would choose a brand/logo designed
T-shirt over a plain one.
Mobile is most importantly a symbol of belonging to a group, both as
a physical product (you must own a phone to be part of our group) and
its communicative possibilities: texting is essential to youth not
because of the content (very limited) of the texts themselves but
because each text is a reaffirmation and a reminder that "I'm with
you".
And:
"However, overall it is fueling the more extrovert and allowing shyer
teens to communicate more easily. One of the more interesting findings
is that mobiles have come to take the place in youth culture
traditionally held by cigarettes. They provide or allow private
communication, the activity is carried out largely unsupervised and
they effectively create a rare private space for youth to interact in."
- Businessworld has a special issue on What India's Youth Wants. No surprises there. Needs simple registration to access the article. From the opening essay: "What makes India's youth worth studying is evident; one of the
world's hottest economies, a billion people, roughly half of them
between the ages of 15 and 29 years, and rising purchasing power. It is
a demographic gold mine for marketers and a case-study-in-progress of
democratic capitalism. There is much happening to make us a happier,
more chilled-out country. Why, then, are our young turning into
somewhat moralistic people with limited ambitions?
You
could argue, of course, that we are jumping to conclusions based on
some interviews and a survey. No survey, especially in a terrifically
heterogeneous country like India, can fully capture the complexities
and nuances of an entire generation. You could also argue that there is
no harm in being anti-smoking, anti-drinking or traditional. That it is
to the credit of their parents that this generation is less rebellious
and bonds better with its elders.
And maybe
that is true. Maybe this, then, is this generation's way of rebelling.
The fact is that in spite of the malls, media and the positive cheer
surrounding us, India remains a poor, half-illiterate,
difficult-to-live-in country. Getting the basics, a home in an area
with decent electricity, clean surroundings, water supply, schools and
so on, in any city is still a difficult and expensive business. Earlier
generations spent decades trying to get just these. The young see no
virtue in huffing and puffing over what they think are hygiene factors.
They want to get them out of the way before they deal with some of
life's more interesting pleasures - foreign holidays or alternative
careers. So, they are alright doing a boring job (how interesting can
call centres be?), not working too hard (over one-third do not think
hard work is essential for success), and making money.
This
is a self-centred, goal-fixated generation that will, with full
comprehension and at any price, secure its future. The sacrifices and
martyrdom for a cause is not for them, unless it means signing an
online petition or holding some candles (though 30 per cent of them are
keen on a career in politics). No rough backpacking or exploring the
world for them. This generation seems happier achieving the status quo
their parents did, only faster. Their enthusiasm for life seems very
rooted to the here and now, and the immediately achievable."
Tags: youth, india, communication
12:27:19 PM
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