Derek E. Baird :: Barking Robot

Trend Watch: China's 'Angry Youth' Movement

The transcript of Kai-Fu Lee's keynote on China's 'Angry Youth' at The Brookings Institution is a fascinating read full of insight and observations of Chinese youth made by someone with the experience and knowledge to do so.

Dr. Lee was the founder of China-based Microsoft Research Asia and was the founding president of Google China. Kai-Fu Lee, is a household name in China, has written three best selling books and all them aim to help people understand, educate or mentor China's young people.

According to Dr. Lee China’s "angry youth," or fenqing, present a challenging phenomenon to both China and the outside world. These young men and women often use the Internet and other channels of political discourse to publicly express their critical views.

Earlier this year Accenture released a report that found young Chinese (14-27 years old) spend an average of 34 hours each week using real-time communications and social media/networking tools. At 34 hours a week, that number is almost triple the average of the other 12 countries profiled in the report.

So who exactly are China's "angry youth?" According to Kai-Fu Lee:

"So when we talk about angry youth, I think we're talking about post-80's, people born after 1980, that they had access to the internet, and that they often use it to vent their frustrations and that frustration often comes from either their patriotism or their desire to seek that which is righteous, fair, true and transparent.

They care about social issues. They're concerned and they feel that they need to be outspoken to have their voices heard, and they often use the internet to gain knowledge and to have their voice heard.

...when we talk about angry youth, I really don't want to think about this as a very negative term because I think if we think deeply about what angry youth are about, this is people who are young people who have access to information, who have a sense of social repsonsiblity, who have their sense of right and wrong--they are not always right--but they have a sense of right and wrong.

Their hyper-nationalistic and often anti-Western sentiments, which first emerged in the late 1990s and are widely disseminated today, stand in sharp contrast to a generation of Chinese youth just 20 years ago.

What gives rise to the frustrations of China’s "angry youth?" How representative of China’s youth are fenqing? What implications does their existence have for the country’s political trajectory? How will the growing influence of China’s "angry youth" impact China’s foreign policy in years to come?

This keynote aims to both answer these questions as well as educate Westerners on the emerging trends among Chinese youth.

China's 'Angry Youth' Movement

 

Related: Barking Robot@Tumblr > China's Top Social Networks

Trend Watch: Election 2010, Youth & Mobile Politics

In a post-election nationwide survey of adults, the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project found that 82% of adults have cell phones.

Of those cell owners, 71% use their phone for texting and 39% use the phone for accessing the internet. With that as context, the Pew Internet survey found that:

• 14% of all American adults used their cell phones to tell others that they had voted.
• 12% of adults used their cell phones to keep up with news about the election or politics.
• 10% of adults sent text messages relating to the election to friends, family members and others.
• 6% of adults used their cells to let others know about conditions at their local voting stations on election day, including insights about delays, long lines, low turnout, or other issues.
• 4% of adults used their phones to monitor results of the election as they occurred.
• 3% of adults used their cells to shoot and share photos or videos related to the election.
• 1% of adults used a cell-phone app that provided updates from a candidate or group about election news.
• 1% of adults contributed money by text message to a candidate or group connected to the election like a party or interest group. 

If a respondent said she or he had done any of those activities in the last campaign season, we counted that person in this 26% cohort. Throughout this report we call this group “mobile political users” or the “mobile political population.”

Pew Internet Project: Election 2010 & Mobile Politics

Some 71% of cell owners say they voted in the 2010 election, compared with 64% of the full adult population in this survey who say they voted. (Note: The overall reported turnout was about 40% in the election. It is common for post-election surveys to hear from a greater number of people who say they voted than was actually the case.)

There was no partisan tilt in the makeup of the mobile political user population. They split their votes equally between Democratic and Republican congressional candidates – 44% to each.

About 2% said they voted for other candidates and 10% didn’t answer the question or said they didn’t know. Generally, there were few partisan or ideological differences in way this group used their cell phones for politics.   

In most cases, those ages 18-29 were more likely than those in older cohorts to use their cell phones for getting and sharing political information.

Trend Watch: U.S. Hispanic and Latin American Digital Youth Trends

 

• A 2008 report by the Pew Hispanic Center forecast that "the Latino population, already the nation's largest minority group, will triple in size and will account for most of the nation's population growth from 2005 through 2050. Hispanics will make up 29% of the U.S. population in 2050, compared with 14% in 2005";

• According to Internet World Stats, Latin America (28%) has the highest rate of Internet penetration. The world average is 23.5%;

• The most wired Latin American countries are Brazil (67%), Mexico (23%) and Argentina (20%);

Hispanic Youth Marketing

View more presentations from Sensis.

• Research conducted by U.S.-based Bromley Communications finds that the Hispanic Latina is quickly replacing Anglo moms as the dominant consumer target from now to 2050;

• Hispanic trends firm Packaged Facts reports that Gen-Y Hispanics (ages 18-29) Gen-X Hispanics (ages 30-44) are particularly influential, because they control more than 60% of all Hispanic buying power;

• U.S. Hispanic mobile consumers have a subscriber growth rate two to three times that of the overall U.S. teen market;

• Hispanic teens aged 12-17 represent 2.5 million subscribers. By the age of 15, penetration of wireless services among US Hispanic teens is 64% - by the age of 17, the penetration rate rises to 78%;

• According to Politico.com, in the 2008 election 76% of young Hispanic voters preferred Obama, compared to 67% of the overall Hispanic vote. That marks a 14-point rise in young Hispanic support for the Democratic candidate since the previous election, and a 10-point improvement with the Hispanic population overall.

Related Resources

• Demographic Research on U.S. Hispanic Youth & Mobile Phones
• Latin American Internet Population Stats
• McD's, Pepsi Score Best with Young Hispanics
• Hispanic teens set for strong mobile growth
• Exploring the Dora Uproar
• Hip Chicas Launches Beta for Latina Virtual World

Myth Busters: Facebook, Teens & Cyberbullying

Facebook handles 2m abuse reports through its site every week, and 80% of those are false. But of those cases that are genuine, by far the biggest issues are cyberbullying, addiction, oversharing and 'sexting' - when girls are bullied into sending photos of themselves to 'boyfriends'.

Balkam cites research by Ncmec, the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children in the US, which found that 1% of child victimisation cases involved the internet. "Those cases are shocking and disturbing and they make the nightly news, but therefore they seem a greater problem than they are."

The future of online safety is also about far more than just Facebook, which bears the brunt of the publicity because it is the most visible site.

via www.guardian.co.uk

Pew Research: Teens, the Internet and the Future of Digital Diversity

Teens and the Internet: The Future of Digital Diversity

View more presentations from Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project.

This presentation, compiled by Kristen Purcell, from the Pew Internet Project provides a really great breakdown of the findings from their series of reports that explored the behaviors, values and opinions of the teens and twenty-somethings that make up the Millennial Generation.

This slideshare presentation focuses on how teens connect to the Internet, how they share content and also looks at the rate of mobile web access and usage among teens and young adults.

Learn more about the findings and take the 'How Millennial Are You?' quiz.

Pew Research: The Millennials | Confident. Connected. Open to Change.

This is part of a Pew Research Center series of reports exploring the behaviors, values and opinions of the teens and twenty-somethings that make up the Millennial Generation.

Pew Research: The Millennials | Confident. Connected. Open to Change.

Generations, like people, have personalities, and Millennials – the teens and twenty-somethings currently making the passage into adulthood – have begun to forge theirs: confident, self-expressive, liberal, upbeat and receptive to new ideas and ways of living.

Learn more about the findings and take the 'How Millennial Are You?' quiz.

Weekly Wrap: Democrats & Millennials, Disney's "Alice" Goth Party, Vancouver 2010 Social Media Experiment, John Lennon Education Bus, Google Buzz Lawsuit & More!

Democrats Edge Among Millennials Slipping: While the Republican Party picked up support from Millennials during 2009, this age group continues to favor the Democratic Party more than do other generations. And the underlying political values of this new generation continue to be significantly more liberal than those of other generations on many measures. [Pew Research]

Harvard Law Student Files Class Action Suit Against Google Over Buzz: One of her attorneys, Gary E. Mason of Washington, D.C.-based Mason Law Firm LLP, said, "It's not so much that we're expecting to get millions of people hundreds of dollars. What we'd like to see as result is a commitment from Google that they're not going to do this again the next time they launch a product." [ABC News]

Why Gen Y Isn't Buying Your Products: To put it bluntly, if you’re uncomfortable with marketing to Generation Y, or refuse to understand our unique demographic, your store will not see 2020. To understand Generation Y is to overcome many obstacles in the retail industry. [Retail Customer]

Twitter Users Do It In the Car: Twitter is checked more often while driving than other sites, such as Facebook, according to a recent survey by research firm Crowd Science. Sounds like it's time to take Oprah's No Phone Zone pledge! [NBC San Francisco] [Oprah.com]

John Lennon Educational Bus: Throughout TEDActive, TEDsters had a chance to participate in something truly magical: the making of a music video. The John Lennon Educational Tour Bus, a nonprofit mobile recording studio, travels all around the country 10 months out of the year, providing free hands-on workshops to students of all ages, working with both audio and video projects. [TED Blog]

Tweet O' the Week: RT @henryjenkins: Whatever people are doing in World of Warcraft, it isn't "bowling alone." http://bit.ly/dhrSeI

High School Kid Uses YouTube to Land Prom Date with Maxim Model: In a move sure to inspire hundreds of copycats, 17-year-old Dakota Ridge High School senior Conner Cordova used a series of YouTube videos to get UFC Octagon Girl and Maxim model Arianny Celeste to go to the prom with him. [Asylum]

A Conversation About New Media & Education: It is about a world where students learn with a book in one hand and a mouse in the other, rather than one where they are taught that book culture is so fragile it needs to be protected from the computer. [Danielsaurus.com]

Disney Invites 'Goths' to the Party: Disney, the company that created "the happiest place on earth" and cornered the market on pink, is embracing a darker aesthetic as it reaches out to an unlikely audience for new merchandise: female "goths." [WSJ, Registration Required]

Welcome to Vancouver, the World's Largest Social Media Experiment: Social media was around for the Summer Games in Beijing, but this is the first time it will be deployed in a free and democratic regime.

There's good reason to expect that the Olympic experience will be transformed by the social media presence: it's already changed the Olympic planning process for both the Games organizers and the media that's now descending on the city. Related: Olympics Must Embrace Digital & Social Media Or Risk Losing Youth Audience [Harvard Business Review] [Barking Robot]

Yahoo's #Olympics Website Beats NBC's in Traffic: According to comScore, Yahoo's Olympics site and Yahoo Sports are the top websites for coverage of the first weekend of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics. [The Wrap]

Weekly Wrap: Mobile Donations, Neglecting Gen X, Facebook Marketing, Gen Y Goes GaGa, More Kids Go Mobile, Social TV, Google's China "Problem" & More!

Mobile Donations Make Giving Easier: Text message donations to Haiti are in the millions. Katya Andresen, chief operating officer at Network for Good, talks with American Public Media's Kai Ryssdal about why this type of giving is growing in popularity and how big of a role it will have in helping Haiti. [American Public Media]

10 Musts for Marketing to Women on Facebook: There are over 56 million women using Facebook in the United States, and for marketers this means one very important thing –- if you have a brand, product or company that targets women, Facebook is the place to be. [Mashable]

Why Millennials Are Going Gaga for Lady GaGa: She’s funky. She’s weird. She’s different. She’s who we all are on the inside. Unless you were a cheerleader (a thin one) or a mildly attractive quarterback, chances are you felt out of place in high school.

Whether you were called a freak, a basket case, a fag, or a fat ass to your face or behind your back, secondary education, and everything leading up to it, is a playground for ostracizing as many of your peers as possible. [Next Great Generation] Related: 10 Things Brands Can Learn From Lady GaGa

Spot411: A social TV platform that tells you what and when your friends and family are watching. Hmm. Looks interesting. Anyone tried this? [Spot411]

Google's Social Media Plans for 2010: Google plans to expose and elicit more of the social network built into the tools that many of us already use — Gmail, Google Talk, etc. If you use Google products, the company already knows who your most important contacts are, what your core interests are, and where your default locations are. [GigaOm]

I'll Tumblr for Ya: Do you use Tumblr? Be sure to check out the new Tumblr backup mac desktop app! Speaking of Tumblr, be sure to check out MiniRobot! [Tumblr] 

Couch Potatoes May Have Shorter Life Spans: The researchers suggest this link between TV-time and early death could be partly due to the fact that sitting in front of the tube may take away from time a person might otherwise spend moving about, engaging in light activity, which has been shown to reduce the risk of developing certain biological indicators of cardiovascular disease. [Yahoo! News]

Why No One Cares About Gen X: Financial institutions are falling all over each other trying to attract Gen-Y consumers. But what about Gen X? It doesn’t seem like financial institutions care all that much about Gen X. Why is that? Here’s the explanation. [The Financial Brand]

Are American Kids Crazy or What?: American teenagers are rebellious thrill-seekers who revel in immediate gratification and relinquish autonomy to peer pressure. But is it just the devil of biology that makes them do it? Or is American culture an accessory to the fact? [Miller McCune]

Why Google Wasn't Winning China Anyway: Google's decision to pull out of China unless the authorities will allow uncensored search results -- an unlikely outcome -- probably does stem from moral outrage over the government's heavy-handed tactics. But it could be a face-saving way to exit a market where Google has made surprisingly little progress. [AdAge]

Hallmark Launches Augmented Reality Cards: Hallmark Cards has announced the release of webcam greetings, new cards that use augmented reality technology to bring the card to life on a computer screen. [Shopping Blog]

Child Mobile Ownership Up: More than one-third of 10-to-11-year-olds in the US owned a mobile phone in 2009, compared with 20% in 2005. Ownership among kids ages 6 to 11 rose from 11.9% to 20% over the same time period. Thanks Graham! [eMarketer]

Meet the NEXT: Get the low-down on this new section that embraces a down-and-dirty style of filmmaking. If a filmmaker wants to create his or her own idiosyncratic vision, it’s often not worth looking around for a big budget, waiting for others to say it’s ok to make it. [Sundance Film Festival 2010]

Weekly Wrap: Twitter Revolution, How TV Can Save the World, Ford's Twitter Cars, Future of Content, Understanding Social Networks, Twitter Spam & More!

The Twitter Revolution: While the use of social media in the Iranian protests quickly garnered the label “Twitter Revolution,” the real revolution was the use of mobile phones, which allowed the original protesters to broadcast their actions to other citizens and to the wider world with remarkable speed and immediacy. This characteristic, of a rapidly assembling and self-documenting public, is more than just a new slogan. Related: Iranian Gen Y on Revolution 2.0 [Prospect Magazine] [Collaborative Creativity]  [Barking Robot]

Understanding Users of Social Networks: People just love to look at pictures. That's the killer app of all online social networks. Seventy percent of all actions are related to viewing pictures or viewing other people's profiles. [Harvard Business School]

Revolution in a Box: It's not Twitter or Facebook that's reinventing the planet. Eighty years after the first commercial broadcast crackled to life, television still rules our world. And let's hear it for the growing legions of couch potatoes: All those soap operas might be the ticket to a better future after all. [Foreign Policy]

Ford Adding Tweets: Ford Motor Co. is adding Twitter messages and Internet radio to its in-car entertainment and communication service, known as Sync, and suggests that the voice-activated system is safer for drivers than trying to manipulate applications on their cell phones. [Yahoo!]

Irish Software Helps Prevent Cyberbullying: The Bully Stop technology allows parents to monitor callers and access abusive text messages before their offspring read them. The Irish-designed product is the first off-the-shelf application to specifically tackle mobile phone bullying and can be downloaded by computer before being transferred to a child's handset. [Breaking News Ireland]

The Rise of the Post Digital World: The world is going increasingly digital but the majority of media and marketing is analog and the majority of people are analog. [India Times]

U.S. Virtual Economy is Booming: When a lot of people think of gamers, they automatically think of mostly male teens who sit around a game console or computer screen all day playing alone. The reality is that the average gamers today are in their 30’s and have a significant disposable income to support the expensive hobby. [InsideTech]

Detecting Spam in a Twitter Network: Spam becomes a problem as soon as an online communication medium becomes popular. Twitter’s behavioral and structural properties make it a fertile breeding ground for spammers to proliferate. [FirstMonday]

The Future of Content Without Walls: From their in-home television and entertainment networks, consumers have grown accustomed to an on-demand culture. The combination of always-on devices and networks is helping extend that culture outside the home.

For the transition to be successful, devices must provide a good user experience, and content delivery needs to be immediate and seamless. [eMarketer] 

Ooh la la! Lady GaGa is Polaroid’s New Brand Ambassador: Yesterday in Vegas, the Lady herself appeared at the Consumer Electronic Show to discuss her new role as creative director for a line of new Polaroid products. Related: 10 Things Brands Can Learn From Lady GaGa [Mediaite] [Barking Robot]

Music Downloads Up as Album Sales Drop: Album sales in the UK fell by 3.5% in 2009 to 128.9 million despite a growth in digital downloads. [BBC]

Global Youth: UK Teens Get Unplugged, Raw & Real

The Teens’ Speech was an open invitation to British teenagers to address the nation. It gave young people the chance to speak out on a range of profoundly important issues and provide the rest of us with an extraordinary opportunity to see the future through their eyes.

 

The Teens' Speech project culminated with this powerful film highlighting the thoughts and opinions of teenagers in the UK. Teenage Britain face many issues and here we see a snapshot of what its like for young people today.

This is a fantastic film that provides a rare glimpse at what teens really think about their lives, school, teen stereotypes, youth culture as well as their relationships with their parents, peers, teachers and government.

A big thanks to Three Billion for sharing this 17 minutes of golden research.

Weekly Wrap: 10 Social Media Commandments, 'Glee' Obsession, Life Without Facebook, Digital Content is the Future, PS3 Social Upgrade, Life After Oprah, Pakistani Youth & More!

Ryan Murphy full of 'Glee': Thanks to his breakout Fox hit "Glee," Ryan Murphy not only has his finger on the pulse of the youth market -- he has it firmly by the throat, so to speak. The exuberant song-and-dance comedy averages 8 million viewers a week (most in the highly desirable 18-49 demo) and has quickly gone from cult obsession to national phenom. [Variety | 2009 Youth Impact Report]

Ten Commandments of Social Media: There are a lot of misconceptions when it comes to social media. People seem to think that every day standards and decency get tossed out the window because of the anonymity of the Internet.

There are Ten Commandments of Social Media that you should always try to follow. They will not only make you a better person but they will make your followers that much more appreciative of what you have to say. [Noupe.com]

Life After Oprah: As the Queen of Talk Prepares to Depart for Cable, Clues as to How She'll Fill 24 Hours of Airtime, and More. Related: Here's What to Expect on Oprah's OWN cable network. (Check out the OWN promo video! Pretty cool, but not optimized for social sharing.) [AdAge] [USA Today]

Comcast-NBC Deal Shows Future is in Digital Content: While Comcast seems to be taking a different approach — marrying entertainment content with the largest cable TV system in the nation — it and Time Warner have arrived at the same conclusion: The future is in content, and the pipes that carry it matter less.

But the larger motivation is that Comcast wants more programming — particularly from NBC Universal's cable channels — to deliver to its subscribers and to sell to other distributors. [Yahoo! News]

Sesame Street Heads to Nigeria: Sesame Workshop is developing a new version of the long-running children's series Sesame Street to bring messages about staying in school, girl’s empowerment and HIV/AIDS to Nigeria. [AWN]

Hearst Plans Digital Service: Publisher Hearst Corp. plans to launch next year a service called Skiff to sell digital versions of newspapers and magazines on electronic readers and other devices, in a system it believes will be more visually appealing to readers and more lucrative for media companies. [WSJ]

NYU Student Goes A Week Without Facebook, Becomes Bored: Kelly had initially set out to go Amish and abandon all forms of technology, but pressure from her teacher to not create the suggestion that she had possibly died combined with an unawareness of just how many things constitute as technology prevented her from doing so. [NYU Local]

Designing Websites for Kids: Websites designed for children have been largely overlooked in web design articles and design roundups, but there are many beautiful and interesting design elements and layouts presented on children’s websites that are worthy of discussion and analysis.

There are also a number of best practices that are exclusive to web design for children’s sites — practices that should usually not be attempted on a typical website. [Smashing Magazine]

PS3 to Enhance Online Social Experience: The next firmware update will enable PlayStation 3 system gamers to share their gaming experiences with friends on Facebook, Including Trophies Won In-Game, PlayStation Network Game Purchases, and Game Events. [Sony]

Most Young Pakistanis See Nation Going in Wrong Direction: Despair among the young generation is rooted in the condition of their lives, the report found. Only a fifth of those interviewed had permanent full-time jobs. Half said they did not have sufficient skills to enter the workplace.

And one in four could not read or write, a legacy of the country’s abysmal public education system, in which less than 40% of children are enrolled in school, far below the South Asian average of 58%. [NYT]

Weekly Wrap: Social Telly, UK Mashup Legalization, Moms on Facebook, Content Curation, Zombies + Gen Y, eBooks on OLPC & More!

How Moms Use Their iPhones: According to a new survey by mobile advertising network Greystripe, mothers with iPhones regularly let their children use their phones, download games specifically for their children and often use their phones at grocery stores to compare prices and check their grocery lists. [ReadWriteWeb]

UK Will Urge Legalization of Mashups: Lord Mandelson’s three-strikes proposal may have gobbled all the headlines. But a parallel package published Wednesday, aimed at liberalising copyright, may prove just as important for some creators. [paidContentUK]

What Do Teens Want? Their Moms Off Facebook: The problem with Facebook? Moms. "My mom uses it to plan dinner" was the sound bite complaint. One #w2s hashtag user remarked that he would pay his mom money to get OFF Facebook. [SF Chronicle]

Social Telly--A Round Up of Social Viewing: Television has always been a social thing. Whether it’s because you’re watching it with family and friends at home, watching football in the pub, chatting at school or work with friends about that programme that you all love the night before, television is about much more than a broadcast. [Roo Reynolds | What's Next?]

Industry panel warns media companies Must Embrace Social Media: As social networking becomes more prevalent among consumers of all ages, media companies will have to learn how to navigate the various social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter to reach out and market to their customers, according to a panel of media executives speaking at a CTAM Summit ’09 panel session Monday. [MultiChannelNews]

Internet Archive Opens 1.6 Million E-Books on OLPC Laptops: The Internet Archive operates 20 scanning centers in five countries, where hundreds of workers are manually scanning books from public and university libraries, mostly public-domain works for which the copyright term has expired. It collects these books at its Open Access Text Archive. [Xconomy]

Curation| The End of Content Aggregation: In an age where anyone can be a publisher, it is now up to the editor to curate the best of the massive amounts of content now available in a way that is easily digestible. The role of the journalist is much like a museum curator whittling down, say, 19th century Neo-Classicism, into a single, walkable hallway. [eMedia]

OMG, Senators Target Texting: The senate, the Department of Transportation and the FCC want you to stop texting while driving, and on Wednesday, they all but declared a war on texting, promising education campaigns and laws to convince you to put your phone down — at least while you are piloting a two-ton SUV going 70 mph. [Wired]

Tweet O' The Week: "Customers are people first and they do not care about your ROI." via @kyleplacy / Kyle Lacy

Mobile Augmented Reality: There’s some momentum building in the mobile-based augmented reality space in Oz. Related: Second Use for Google Wave Discovered: Role Playing Games. [TechNation Australia] [Gizmodo]

Zombie Walk & Gen Y: The political classes are also acutely aware of some realities of demographics, and this has lead them to target Gen Y more heavily. Generation Y are going to inherit the working world, and remain in charge of it for many years to come. [Crazy Epic]

Henry Jenkins on Transmedia, Participatory & Convergence Culture

Henry Jenkins is the director, Comparative Media Studies Program at MIT. In this viral-info-snack he discusses the power of media in a 21 century trans-mediated world. A world where converging technologies and cultures give rise to a new media landscape.

Global Youth: Differences Between American & Canadian Millennials

A recent study conducted by market research firm Ipsos examined the values and lifestyles of North American youth aged 10-34 found both shared cultural similarities and marked differences between Canadian and American youth.

The study, A Check-up on the Habits and Values of North America’s Young Adults, found that health care, education and employment matters were rated as the top three issues in both countries.

Here's a breakdown of some of the key points from both parts of the study on North American youth.

Lifestyle & Values

• In the United States, 39%,of the 18-34 year-old set are married compared to only 25% in Canada;

• The number of domestic partnerships in Canada is significantly higher (18% vs. 7%);

• 45% of Americans were more likely to report "owning" their home compared to those living in Canada (35%);

• 19% of Americans traveled to a vacation destination that was out of country compared to 48% of Canadian respondents;

• 64% of this group in the US versus 62% in Canada reported being employed on a full-time or part-time basis or were self-employed.

Education

• 76% of Canadians between the ages of 18-34 have at least some college or post-secondary education compared to 68% of Americans in the same age range;

• 17% of Canadians in the group reported being full-time students compared to 13% of Americans;

Social Media, TV, Mobile & Technology Usage

• Americans sending and receiving an average of 129.6 text messages per week;

• Canadian average of 78.7 messages per week;

• Americans reported watching an average of 5.9 hours of TV per weekday;

• Canadians watched 4.8 hours of TV per weekday;

• 81% of Canadians are on Facebook compared to only 57% in the U.S.; 

• Americans averaged 28 hours per week on the Internet, compared to 27 hours by Canadians;

• Americans are more into MySpace, 54% having registered compared to 23% in Canada.

Global Youth: Australian Teens On Generational Stereotypes, Video Games, Social Networking & Family Life

Recently a correspondent for the Herald Sun, an Australian newspaper, sat down with four teens and asked them to share what really matters to them?

As you can imagine, the teens had quite a lot to say on a wide variety of topics ranging from generational stereotypes to social networking, video games & family life.

Here are a few of the notable quotes from the article, We're Gen Y and We Care.You can read the entire transcript of the interviews over on the Herald Sun website.

• We are not all a bunch of depressed and lazy kids running the world into the dirt. In fact, most of us care about the world more than anyone, for it will be ours in years to come and we want it to be the best it ever was. (Lana, 16)

• All that the anti-bullying programs and guidance councillors did was drive bullying underground until it was it was almost impossible to pin down and report. Bullying is a topic that is not readily discussed over school lunch. It's something that no one wants to acknowledge - yet everyone knows is happening. (Beatrice, 16)

• What things in my life matter most to me? Schoolwork and how hard I have to study at it is one thing. Another are my friends. They are always there and able to help me if I have a crisis on my hands. My family is also important to me. They can help with just about everything. (Justin, 15)

• Because I am a 16-year-old girl who has grown up with technology and computers around me, I'm going to strip on webcam, take naked photos and cyberbully the shortest girl at my school. The fact is, all of this couldn't be further from the truth. That is not the type of person I am, nor the type any of my friends are. (Lana, 16)

• The primary subject of talk between my friends and I are video games, and I am not ashamed to say it. They provide an escape. I enjoy sitting down to play my Xbox to maybe forget about something bad that had happened at school that day. I know that the older generation will read this and say that they entertained themselves by going outside. It was never going to be like that forever: advancing technology made sure of that. (James, 15)

• Many of my peers won't admit it but having parents come to see you dance/debate/compete in sport is such a big thing. This is most noticeable when parents don't show up - or worse, when they do and sit in the back reading a book throughout your entire presentation. (Beatrice, 16)

• Yes -- dating, Facebook and sex are topics of conversation, but they are not the pillars which we revolve our lives around. Surprisingly, sometimes we talk about things that matter. At my school, the emphasis on helping others is huge. We send students to Cambodia to teach English in schools and orphanages, build houses and assist landmine victims. (Lana, 16)

• I am one of the lucky ones who has never been seriously bullied or forced to do something that I don't want to do, so my life has been pretty simple so far. Certainly, I have seen other kids being bullied or pressured and my sympathy goes out to them, but thankfully I have never been the target. (James, 14)

• I have often been irritated by teenage rampages, but I believe that most young people are good and will grow up to be good citizens. However, the "ferals" amongst them hog the publicity because crime and stupidity make better media stories. There have always been bullies, fools and stupid people [always will be] but the % of them now seems to be much higher than when I was growing up. (Reader Comment)

For more insight into the lives of Australian youth culture, be sure to check out Sydney-based Dan Pankratz's interviews with Australian teens.