New Research from Tween Online Life

The latest findings from Tween Online Life were released last week. The new research explores behaviors and usage for a variety of digital and online sites including online video, e-commerce, gaming, communications and entertainment destinations.

YouTube, ESPN, Google and AddictingGames remain the most visited sites for tween boys. Tween girls favor YouTube, Disney, Yahoo and Facebook.

Where the tweens are
Well, over 60 percent of tweens said they viewed at least one video on YouTube during the past month. Hulu is also catching on too… about one in six tweens said they watched a TV show or movie on Hulu. Over the past two years, tweens have become the heaviest consumers of movies and TV shows online

Game on
For tweens gaming is increasingly popular in social media. Nearly nine out of ten tweens participate in regular (monthly) online gaming for either casual online play, multi-player games or console-based games. Today online gaming is fairly gender neutral. Things don’t start to be male-oriented until the early teen years.

Born to shop
E-commerce is also gaining as Tweens have become loyal online shoppers, with more than a third shopping (and buying) online at least once during the past month, as compared to only 25 percent just a year ago.

We all know that kids need to be at least 13 years old to register for social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Tweens who really want in just need to fudge their birth date to register. And the research confirms that the “fudging” becomes all the more common as kids approach their thirteenth birthday.

Writing in the Digital Age

In an age where college applications are mainly accepted online, some universities and colleges now accept videos instead of essays. Our educational concept of literacy is evolving and so is the definition of “writing.”

Schools are beginning to recognize that students are writing in new ways. Our culture is no longer about pen and paper so writing teachers are seeking new ways to teach writing in the digital age.

Collaboration is a key component in digital writing, defined as a combination of words, images, audio, and website links. Students are collaborating in different ways. Often they create a text jointly, through shared documents or wikis. Other projects may involve taking turns posting on a collective blog. Teaching this type of collaborative writing is new to most classrooms.

In tech-savvy elementary and middle school classrooms the students are required to include digital content in their oral presentations. They may show a word cloud created with Wordle or an interactive poster made on
Glogster.

Digital Content Tools
Students are using many different websites and apps to add digital content to their writing projects.

Animoto
Using photos, video clips, text, and music, students can produce a short video. The finished product can be uploaded to YouTube, Facebook, and other sharing sites.

Glogster
Combine text, audio, video, animation, data, and other multimedia elements to make interactive posters and collages. Facilitates online collaboration on projects.

Google Docs
This free document-sharing program allows users to create, store, and share documents, spreadsheets, and presentations online. Multiple users can work on the same piece at once.

Puppet Pals
This iPad application allows users to create and record their own animated story. The author(s) can select characters, a setting, and a title and narrate the story into the microphone while moving the cartoon “puppets” manually.

Wikispaces
Students create wikis, or collaborative websites that are managed and edited by groups of people, through Wikispaces.

Wallwisher
Users can create a “wall” or Web page, where others can add their own messages to this “online notice board.” Each new message looks like a post-it note. Videos and images can also be added.

Digital Playtime

Do play and learning go together?

According to the Pew Study on Teen Gaming and Civic Engagement, teens spend about half of their screen time playing games. Some of the most popular games have to do with racing, puzzles, sports, action, adventure and learning.

The new wave of gaming is highly social. Teens (and tweens) are becoming hooked on games that are a working model for online collaboration and problem solving. Some games even incorporate aspects of civic and political life.

My favorite interns from Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society created a video on this topic that covers this topic very well.

I have seen some of this social gaming first hand since my son participates in Future Cities competitions through his middle school. The participants start out by creating cities using Sim City software. The students work in groups to develop the infrastructure of their future city. Sometimes they go online to consult with teams in other parts of the country. Eventually each team builds a model of the city and develops working prototypes of their infrastructure projects. My son’s team went to a regional competition where they won an award for their transportation system.

What is interesting about the future cities program is that the kids learn how to build models to represent their virtual cities. They learn how to adapt their designs to real-world conditions, much like an architect or engineer must do. Then they meet with other kids and the engineers that judge each entry at the Future Cities competition.

Do T(w)eens Tweet?

Harvard social media researchers ask the question: Do t(w)een digital natives use Twitter?

 
 

Their answers are revealing about how many t(w)een social media users use various social media platforms and adapt their messages to the medium. They theorize that teens and tweens are developing code to avoid parents from spying on their conversations.

According to Harvard researcher, Dana Boyd, “Teens turn to private messages or texting or other forms of communication for intimate interactions, but they don’t care enough about certain information to put the effort into locking it down.”

Photo courtesy of Media Shift

Twitter is becoming a preferred platform for private communication among tech-savvy teens in affluent communities. Boyd has found that these teens keep their their Twitter accounts under wraps, sharing only with their inner circle of friends. They find that Twitter offers better crowd control (aka privacy) than Facebook. “Facebook is like shouting in a crowd, Twitter is like talking in a room,” stated one teen she studied.

The Harvard research indicates that teenagers have adapted to social media by developing their own private language which is based on song lyrics, personal jokes, na’vi etc. They communicate in code so that only insiders and close friends will understand the true meaning of their messages. There is even an online decoder to help parents understand what their t(w)eens are chatting/tweeting about.

Socrates offered up this critique on the youth of his day: “children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise… They contradict their parents, chatter before company… tyrannize their teachers.” Sound familiar?

Underage Facebook Users

According to The Daily Telegraph, about 20,000 members are removed from Facebook every day for lying about their age. Last week Facebook’s chief privacy adviser Mozelle Thompson admitted to Australia’s cyber-safety committee that underage users were taking advantage of the site.

Video courtesy of WKRG

The Pew Internet and American Life Project finds that nearly half of all 12-year-old kids in the U.S. are using social network sites, despite not meeting the minimum age requirements for sites like Facebook.

Clearly, the honors system does not seem to be an effective way of checking a user’s age when they register. Do any of you have/know kids that are under thirteen on Facebook? Is thirteen the appropriate age to start engaging in social networking? What age is appropriate?

Facebook Depression?

Video courtesy of the Today Show

During the past week I have read at least five articles that talk about “Facebook depression.” Apparently this happens when kids (or adults) becoming obsessed with the social networking website and feel they are not getting as much attention as they would like.

Pediatricians and psychologists warn that Facebook puts vulnerable children at risk for depression. Being shunned on a social networking website may even be more serious than if a child is ignored by their friends in real life, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.

For the first time, the AAP has published a set of social media guidelines. They believe that that cyber-harassment “can cause profound psycho-social outcomes.” Sometimes these cases can lead to suicide.

The AAP guidelines state that teenagers need to be monitored when using Facebook. And it goes without saying that children under thirteen should not have a profile on Facebook at all.

Parents should not think that the Facebook site causes depression. They just need to realize that some dramas that used to play out in the cafeteria or the locker room are now taking place in social media.

Learn more:
Pediatricians Should Discuss ‘Facebook Depression’ with Kids, Time
TechBytes: Facebook Depression, ABC News Technology
Aren’t We All Suffering From ‘Facebook Depression?’, PCWorld

Media Usage among T(w)eens (continued)

We continue our conversation with Mike Bloxham, whose research has documented how this generation has grown to expect true interactivity. Brands see the increasing need to adapt to this mode and are starting to learn to engage with their audience without creating an interruptive experience.

This can explain why many brands are focusing on telling a story and tuning into the emotional benefits that lie behind their products. When they manage to weave these stories and benefits into a “conversation” that is taking place in social media they can strike gold with this elusive audience.

At Ball State University Mike Bloxham led an extensive study that examined how people watch screens of all sizes, such as TV, cell phones, computers, and others. Check out this video if you would like to learn more about the research conducted at Center for Media Design:

Media Usage among T(w)eens

As Director of Research for Ball State University’s Center for Media Design, Mike Bloxham has directed numerous studies involving media consumption. I called (actually skyped) Mike to ask him a few questions about how he observed tweens and teens using media… social or otherwise.

During our discussion he talked about how tweens and teens are “natively attuned” to interactivity. From their early intro to Webkinz and Club Penguin virtual worlds, today’s tweens are remarkably comfortable with play and interactions that cross various media. This experience is informing how they view the world. As touch screen devices become the norm, many young children expect the world around them to respond to their touch or comment.

Bloxham’s research has documented how this generation can expect true interactivity. Brands will need to adapt to this mode and engage with their audience without creating an interruptive experience.

Mike Bloxham

Mike Bloxham is the former Director, Insight & Research for the Center of Media Design (CMD), Ball State University. He champions research in interactive television, eye tracking and usability testing, the Digital Home and Heathcare Facility, the Digital Middletown Initiative, and was part of the team that produced the ground-breaking Middletown Media Studies – observational research that measured the exposure of 400 people to fifteen different media and seventeen different life activities throughout the day in 15-second increments. He has worked in media research and consulting for 17 years and his clients have included Microsoft, Cablevision, BSkyB, Le Monde, Procter & Gamble, MTVEurope, Time Warner and the British Government. Mike has recently left his position at Ball State University to pursue an opportunity in the private sector.

OMG, Are Text-isms Changing the English Language?

My high school English teacher surely has her knickers in a twist this week. The latest update of the OED Online includes LOL, OMG and other common abbreviations “<3″ed by texting tweens and teens. Chat and Internet slang like LOL and OMG are de rigueur for Twitter and Facebook, IM and SMS, but do they really belong in the dictionary?

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is adding many “initialisms” to the authoritative reference book’s latest online update. The dons who update the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) did some etymological research and found that these terms actually have pre-Internet roots. The first quotation of OMG, was traced back to a personal letter from 1917 and FYI originated in 1941. The original LOL was used as an abbreviation for “little old lady” and dates back to 1960.

The OED editors explain that “initialisms are quicker to type than the full forms, and (in the case of text messages, or Twitter, for example) they help to say more in media where there is a limit to a number of characters one may use in a single message.”

Mashable summarizes with a quote from the OED Blog:
“The intention is usually to signal an informal, gossipy mode of expression, and perhaps parody the level of unreflective enthusiasm or overstatement that can sometimes appear in online discourse, while at the same time marking oneself as an ‘insider’ au fait with the forms of expression associated with the latest technology.”

Watch what the OED editors have to say about the March 2011 update here:

Other examples of new OED entries include:

• muffin top – ”a protuberance of flesh above the waistband of a tight pair of trousers.”
• wag – “wives and girlfriends.” It was first used in 2002 to describe the female partners of members of the England soccer team. Now it denotes the glamorous and extravagant female partners of male celebrities.
• meep (think Road Runner cartoon character) – a short high-pitched sound
• heart or <3 (used as a verb) – a casual equivalent of “to love” that is represented with a symbol, as seen on millions of souvenirs proclaiming “I (heart) New York.”

Tweens learn What’s What or What’s Imbee in Social

As I continue to research tween social media sites I keep finding more tween networks that are either new or relaunched. Here are two of the kid-friendly social networks I uncovered this week.

WhatsWhat.me was just launched in January and it looks like it would appeal to younger tweens. The site has some new “facial recognition” technology that helps keep the site safe and prevent someone from hacking into a kid’s profile.

• Only for kids – Webcam and facial recognition software is used for login. Photos are encrypted and stored for authentication.
• Protected content – The site claims they don’t use or sell user activity. Content is not searchable outside of the site.
• Professional moderators – Trained monitors review site content and activity.
• Community rules – Users are reminded of the rules and can be blocked for unacceptable behavior.

I found it interesting that WhatsWhat.me only allows kids to “friend” within their grade, one grade above and one grade below. Parental approval is needed for any other “friending.” I can see how this type of control would appeal to parents, but it could get a little frustrating for kids who have siblings and friends with siblings. We should not teach younger kids to be wary of some kids just because they are a couple years older.

This WhatsWhat.me’s promo video gives parents a preview of how kids interact on the site:

Imbee is a kids social network that has been around for a few years and recently decided to relaunch with a more robust privacy settings. Common Sense media reports that Imbee is best for kids over 12. From my brief experience with Imbee I tend to agree with their age rating. Right on the home page there was a Mindless Behavior video where the boys were doing a little bump n’ grind with Ciara.

It’s also worth noting that the Federal Trade Commission fined Imbee in 2008 for collecting personal information about more than 10,000 kids without properly notifying parents. According to recent statements on the site, they’ve updated their policies to comply with COPPA. The relaunch is their latest step to clean up their image.

Imbee’s promo videos appeal directly to the older tween/ young teen target audience: