Young people's lives: 'self-directed media productions'

News.com: Teens' Lives: 'Self-Directed Media Productions'

Americans ages 13 to 18 spend more than 72 hours a week using electronic media -- the Internet, cellphones, television, music and video games, says a new study by the Harrison Group. So much technology makes teens feel they are playing a "starring role in their own reality TV show." Thanks to IWantMedia for the pointer. Excerpt:

For 2006, one-third of teens reported owning an Apple Computer iPod, up from only 1 percent in 2003, according to the study. More than half said they also own and play Sony's PlayStation 2, and one-third said they own an original Microsoft Xbox game console. But as many as three quarters reported playing video games on a regular basis. ...

An estimated 68 percent of teens have created profiles on social networks like MySpace.com, Xanga or Facebook. More than a quarter of the population keeps in touch with friends online on a daily basis, either through instant messaging, e-mail, message boards or chat rooms. According to the study, the average teen chats via IM with 35 people for a total of three hours a week. But the average teen will only call or e-mail with seven people who are not on their IM list on a weekly basis.

Poll: Teens, adults separated by 'instant message gap'

Associated Press: Poll: Teens, adults separated by 'instant message gap.' Excerpt:

* Almost three-fourths of adults who do use instant messages still communicate with e-mail more often. Almost three-fourths of teens send instant messages more than e-mail.

* More than half of the teens who use instant messages send more than 25 a day, and one in five send more than 100. Three-fourths of adult users send fewer than 25 instant messages a day.

* Teen users (30 percent) are almost twice as likely as adults (17 percent) to say they can't imagine life without instant messaging.

* When keeping up with a friend who is far away, teens are most likely to use instant messaging, while adults turn first to e-mail.

Raya Ribbius on youth culture

A 7-minute video interview with Raya Ribbius, program officer of the European Cultural Foundation, about youth media. Conducted at the Participatory Media in Vaxjo, Sweden, September 2006.

I shot this video borrowing a high-definition video camera from Swedish public television, SVT. Unfortunately, the conversion from PAL to NTSC required me to compress the video twice to fix the frame dimensions. (Ourmedia page | watch video)

Cross-posted to  Real People Network

Format: MPEG-4 (iPod compatible); 17.2MB; 6:58; Ourmedia page | watch video; video quality: **** (out of 5)

Teens turn away from e-mail

Today's San Jose Mercury News: Teens turn away from e-mail. Sites like MySpace offering instant social scene, fast messaging attract young users, study shows. Excerpt:

New statistics show that, for the first time, teen e-mail use is dropping -- apparently in favor of more ``instant'' alternatives. ...

Since February, teen e-mail use nationwide has been dropping compared with a year earlier. In April, it was down 8 percent -- 11.8 million users compared with 12.8 million users in April 2005, according to comScore Media Metrix. Even though the average time spent online by teens increased 11.6 percent from April 2005, to 22.5 hours a month, time on Web mail declined 9 percent.

By contrast, general e-mail users are increasing, growing 6 percent in April over a year earlier.

Even instant messaging, while popular, is slowing, comScore's surveys show. Total IM users increased only 1 percent, while the number of teen users declined 8 percent -- in part, some experts say, because of the rise of MySpace, which allows users to send comments and messages to each other.

Teens star at Earth Day Film Festival

Today's San Jose Mercury News: Films go green.

Admit that the word educational makes you cringe and you'll understand why the Greenlight Earth Day Film Festival is happening tonight. When it comes to getting a message across, the old saw is right: a picture is worth a thousand words.

In the hands of talented student filmmakers, this Palo Alto festival's program is a lot of fun, too.

From ``Bin There?'' to ``A Can's Life,'' the 46 entries go for the quick hit. Only four of the films are longer than 20 minutes and most fall into the less than five minutes time frame.

With most of the filmmakers still in their teens, the whole event may accomplish the intent of its organizers -- to reach an audience of young people who normally don't pay attention to Earth Day events.

``We've done festivals before,'' said committee member Kim Brown, who brainstormed new ideas with a consortium of local environmental agencies and media non-profits. ``What better way to have them tell us what they think about the environment?''

The entries came mostly from students in middle and high school, with one category for adults. The festival winners will be sharing $5,000 in prizes -- with recycled trophies donated by Palo Alto city employees.

The filmmakers took advantage of the most modern equipment and let their creativity roll. ...

Here are six QuickTime movies of festival entries.

Young people don't just use cell phones for calls

Associated Press: Poll: Americans using cell phones for more than just calls

People from age 18 to 29 are more likely to use their phones as personal computers, digital music players, cameras and more, an AP-AOL-Pew poll found.

``We've got everything on my phone,'' said Mark Madsen, a 24-year-old college student from Chattanooga, Tenn. ``I use it mostly for the phone, but I also play video games and use the MP3 player. I pretty much use it all the time.''

Almost two-thirds of young adults use their phones to send text messages. More than half use them to take pictures and almost half to play games. They use these features, as well as Internet connections, about twice as often as cell phone users overall.

Members of minority groups were far more likely than whites to use the phones to take pictures, send text messages and use the Internet, though the minority rates were influenced by enthusiasm among Hispanics, who tend to be a younger population, the poll found.

``We think of them as mobile phones, but the personal computer, mobile phone and the Internet are merging into some new medium like the personal computer in the 1980s or the Internet in the 1990s,'' said Howard Rheingold, an author who has taught at Stanford University and written extensively about the effects of technology. ...

Youths have no room for news

Sacramento News (registration required): No room for news. Today's tech-savvy youths lack an appetite for traditional media. Excerpt:

Reaching younger news consumers - people just like Krongos - is widely seen as the biggest challenge for media today. Study after study shows that young people (teens and 20-somethings) are ignoring the news in alarming numbers.

But alarming to whom?

Well, the news organizations, of course. But it also should be a societal concern, says David T. Z. Mindich, a former CNN producer and author of "Tuned Out: Why Americans Under 40 Don't Follow the News" (Oxford University Press, $20, 192 pages).

Mindich's argument: Our very democracy hinges upon an informed citizenry plugged in to current events. ...

when two dozen local college students were interviewed for this story, many said they felt they were talked down to by mainstream media.

"It's more interesting for me to log on to (Internet) forum boards and see what other people ... are saying about current events than listen to a report on the news for two minutes that isn't very informative at all," says Taylor Wang, a 23-year-old senior at UC Davis.

Avi Ehrlich, a senior journalism major at CSUS, put it more bluntly: "We get exactly what we want when we want it instead of somebody deciding for us what we need." ...

Kevin Krim, manager of the blog Livejournal, which has more than 2 million users, says [this]: "These kids are a hyper-connected, multitasking crowd with five IM windows open at once, the TV going, a video streaming on their laptop and their homework book open. How do you compete with that?"

The day Gen X grew up

My friend Kevin Smokler in the Baltimore Sun: The day that Gen X grew up.

It was 20 years ago this week that my generation, the Xers of slacking, hip-hop and dot-com foolery, stopped being children. ...