May 2016
Written By: Nancy Clift
Whether you are a Millennial, a Gen-Xer, or a Boomer, you should not be relying on your memories of your own childhood to imagine what kids today are thinking, feeling, and living.
My 15-year old son calls them the “Angry Birds Generation” – you know, the kids you saw in the corner of the waiting room with their mom’s iPad a few years ago? Well, now they’re in school – elementary and high school, getting ready to be the next generation of consumers with their own budgets, and already influencing their families in how they spend their time, energy and money.
When you think about communicating with kids, developing services and products for them, meeting their physical, entertainment, emotional and psychological needs, it is important to remember something: not only is the world they are growing up in different from the one you did, their language and context for responding to it comes from a completely different place.
Consider just this simple list of things that are part of the air these kids breathe:
The lives of young people in 2016
1. Smartphones -- Many kids have smartphones, access to the internet and information about anything anytime, games and messaging – and phones at school!
2. Staying in touch with friends all summer, and even when they move away. Constant contact, even when on family vacation. Instagram and snapchat constantly with friends all the time.
3. Broader worldview -- Young people can become aware of attitudes of wider range of people -- from the internet: YouTube, BuzzFeed, Facebook – and they are sharing their own opinions too.
4. Camera on hand -- Taking photos and videos anytime they want – selfies and pics of friends, things they want to remember. Imagery they can share with one another.
5. Instant entertainment -- Streaming – binge-watching shows, current or otherwise & music at their fingertips – free via YouTube, kids can watch and listen to what they want, when they want
6. Responsibility to get their own information -- Imagine being home sick from school, being expected to look online on Schoology or some other platform to find out what you missed, and to get the work done asap. Teachers don’t want to be asked. Turning in assignments online and hoping they are received correctly.
7. YouTube relationships -- Watching videos by other kids all over the world – it’s a smaller global community.
8. YouTube learning -- Kids can learn how to do anything – it’s at their fingertips (literally – how to decorate fingernails is a big hit; but also how to do anything they want)
9. Fear -- They have grown up in a post 911 age of global terrorism, and climate change has become very real. Whether they are aware literally or whether they absorb the attitudes of the adults around them, the culture has shifted from that of the ‘80’s and ‘90s.
10. Sexuality attitudes and exposure continue to morph -- Kids are hearing about and learning about sex at a much younger age. ABC Family Channel programming includes teens who have sex lives. Sex is in the media for younger and younger children. One impact of this is that young people start to consider and define their sexuality and gender younger, and today with many more options and pronouns.