3by9

The Coming Generation

When I first got access to the Internet it was Summer of 1996 and I started out with AOL v2.x on a 28.8 baud modem. I was 13 at the time.

Kids are now growing up and from birth are consuming media over fat broadband pipes and creating their own interactive playgrounds online. There are social networks for babies. They eat, live, and breathe connectivity. Clay Shirky made the point that screens that ship without a mouse are broken in the mind of a child referencing how a little kid ran around the back of a big LCD television looking for a way to interact with what they were watching on TV. They are soaking up every bit of technology they can get their hands on, and they think it’s all normal. They grew up with it, they’re used to it, they can’t live without it, they have assimilated technology into their lives faster than any previous generation.

It is seriously astonishing to me to think about how connected teenagers are these days. Cellular devices that allow them to send SMS messages like it’s second nature; connect with friends via MySpace, Bebo, Facebook, or a dozen other similar sites; share photos, music, videos, ideas, hopes, fears instantly at any time of day, with any of their friends. One of my wife’s niece’s recently had her MySpace page “hacked” into (social engineering, of course) and some photos were deleted. It nearly ruined this girl’s life. That’s how important the Internet is to the coming generation.

Teenage girls are using the Internet so much that it’s been linked to causing weight gain across the whole spectrum. That’s how much they are plugged in.

Targeting a niche within a niche is hard. Targeting the next wave of voracious, plugged-in individuals is definitely not easy, but it’s a bigger target that just keeps getting closer.