Derek E. Baird

Connecting with the 'Missing Middle': For Gen Z, Diversity Matters

I'm pleased to share that I've written a new piece, Widen the Welcome: How Public Media Can Connect with the 'Missing Middle' for the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop.

One of the primary lessons from the latest Cooney Center's landmark research report, The Missing Middle: Reimagining a Future for Tweens, Teens, and Public Media, is that public media can look to the content created by Gen Z, streaming networks, and commercial media as examples of how to connect with the missing middle.

In my Cooney Center piece, I share my thoughts on how public media can widen the welcome to the 'Missing Middle' next-generation public media viewers through cultural alignment, co-creation, and inclusion.

The key to earning the trust of Gen Z audiences is rooted in listening, acknowledging their life experiences, sharing stories that mirror their lived reality, and creating content that widens the welcome to public media through representation and inclusion to viewers of all races, abilities, genders, ethnicities, and orientations.

You can read my full article here. 

 

Introducing Tiny Habits for Kids

I've recently partnered with my colleague and friend, B.J. Fogg, author of the New York Times Bestseller, Tiny Habits, to build a community to help teach parents, teachers, and other trusted adults to use the Tiny Habits methods to improve the lives of children. 

If you're interested in joining Tiny Habits for Kids, please use this priority invitation. In order to keep our Tiny Habits for Kids community robust, useful, and free of trolls, we ask you to verify your identity when you complete your invitation.

"Tiny Habits is a blueprint for redefining our approach to self-improvement. The habits are tiny, but the results are big." -Arianna Huffington, Founder and CEO at Thrive Global

We look forward to building our community and having you learn from our Certified Tiny Habits Coaches, how creating habits-- from getting kids to do their homework, reducing screentime and even eating carrots-- can be fun and easy.

So, come join us--we can't wait to meet you and show you how starting tiny can result in big changes.

Dear Transgender Kids: I Have Your Back

Dear LGBTQ+ Kids,

In the past few weeks, several states have introduced bills singling out LGBT and gender-diverse children. As a result of these bills, children and adolescents may be excluded from participation in school sports, banned from obtaining books and media that reflect their own lived experience, and restrict healthcare delivery for gender-diverse children and adolescents.

As a member of the education technology and children’s media communities, I have centered my professional life and career on children and teens' well-being. I have created media, lesson plans, and other kids' tween and teen content that encourages children to be inclusive, kind, and empathetic.

I Pledge To Fight For You.

• I recognize health care and your right to an education as basic human rights and I oppose any laws and regulations that discriminate against transgender and gender-diverse people, especially children and teens. I will fight for your right to health care.
  
  
• I feel that one of the best ways to show solidarity with transgender and gender-diverse children is to pledge to be an upstander ally and defender of your rights.
   
• I will continue to educate others on the principles of diversity, inclusion, and belonging so that they can imagine an alternative to bigotry and exclusion.
  
  
• I will fight for you to be seen and represented in books, film, and media. 

To transgender, LGBTQ+, and gender-diverse kids: I have your back.

Dear Evan Hansen, Teen Broadway fandoms, and Mental Health on Tumblr and Instagram

Dear Evan Hansen (DEH) is a social media-centric musical that has been widely celebrated by a show-specific online fan community, known as ‘Fansens’, on Instagram and Tumblr, having won the Tony Award for Best Musical in 2017. 

The growth of this fandom, on these platforms, is unique as Fansens have adopted plot points and thematic elements from the musical relating to how social media affects social anxiety, depression, and suicide to create fan art and fanfictions that, in turn, result in a community of care on social media where fans can discuss their own encounters with social anxiety, teen suicide and cyberbullying.

Though most Fansens would not have been able to see the musical performed on Broadway or live in-person, their fanfictions, personal posts, and fan art reflect and refract the difficulties that young people have with mental health, social anxiety, and suicide.

Using both digital methods and post-structuralist textual analysis, written by Derek E. Baird and Jarrod Walczer, analyses numerous fan cultural artifacts collected from DEH-specific hash-tagged posts on Tumblr and Instagram.

In doing so, this article provides a new perspective on the role that fan communities, their artifacts, their use of digital media, and their fan activist and upstanding techniques can play in providing avenues of self-care and modeling positive online support for those dealing with mental health issues.

By examining the emotional resonance between the characters, plot points, and music of DEH, and the fandom that spontaneously grew around it, we maintain that fandom studies scholars can gain a richer understanding of how visual media and fandom can be used to foster unity among young people and combat social issues both on social media and in the corporeal world.

You can read the full article here, or you can read a synopsis of our research over on Medium. You can access the full article on the Journal of Fandom website.

Humanizing User Experience Design Strategies with New Technologies: AR, VR, MR, and AI to Support Student Engagement and Retention in Higher Education

Today, I'm pleased to announce the book chapter I co-authored with Mercedes Fisher, Ph.D. for "International Perspectives on the Role of Technology in Humanizing Higher Education" is now available on both the Emerald Publishing website and Amazon!

Our chapter is focused on using new technologies like AR, VR, Zoom, and AI to support student engagement in higher education.

The Gen Z Frequency Translated into Chinese Language Edition

I'm so proud and excited to announce that my book, The Gen Z Frequency, has been translated into a Chinese language edition by Blue Lion Press and Zhejiang University Press.

Just like the original version of the book, the Chinese language edition offers a comprehensive guide for any youth brand or organization trying to reach Gen Z.

"Many books talk about Gen Z, but this is a definitive playbook for modern marketers and business people to authentically engage an emerging generation."

-Stefan Heinrich, Head of Global Marketing, ByteDance (TikTok)

The book covers content creation, connecting with youth culture, online community and content engagement strategies, and tactics such as social media, experiential, emerging technologies (like AR and VR), kids' privacy law, building online communities, embracing youth culture, and much more.

 

 

Case Study: How I Grew A GIPHY Channel from Scratch to 14 Million GIF Views

Like most successful recording artists, the COVID-19 outbreak in March brought everything — live concerts, recording, and fan events — to a screaming halt. After the initial shock of lockdown, Chris Mann got busy creating coronavirus parody videos that unintentionally went internationally mega-viral.

In addition to using Facebook and YouTube to distribute the videos, I also looked at ways to make the video content evergreen, grow his fanbase, allow fans to participate, show his lesser-known comedic personality, and tap into the cultural conversation around the COVID-19 outbreak.

While we had previously used GIPHY, the animated Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) hadn’t been, up to that point, a priority social platform for our digital content, culture, or community strategy.

Fast forward a pandemic and five months later, and we’ve seen the GIPHY channel grow from a couple of thousand GIF views to nearly 14 Million GIF views (as of this post) in just a few months.

Over on Medium, I wrote up a small case study sharing the content, culture, and fandom strategies I’ve learned from growing the GIPHY channel from nearly zero to 14 million GIF views.

Nickelodeon #KidsTogether Guide: Talking With Kids About Coronavirus

 Kristen Bell is hosting a Nickelodeon special with a “kid’s-eye view” of the coronavirus pandemic to address youngsters’ concerns and help families weather the crisis, the channel said Friday.

Bell and her guests practiced social distancing, using video to connect for the hour long program airing 7 p.m. EDT Monday. Dr. Nadine Burke Harris, California’s surgeon general, and Dr. Vivek H. Murthy, former U.S. surgeon general, offer advice on how to be healthy, while kids and parents around the country share how they’re coping with disruption.

“I feel like right now, kids’ questions and worries might be getting overlooked,” the “Frozen” star said in explaining why she participated. “I wanted kids to feel empowered to ask questions, and create a place where they are heard.”

Because of the impact of COVID-19, kids and grown-ups alike may find themselves feeling more anxious or stressed than usual. Nickelodeon offers this guide to give kids, parents, and caregivers advice on ways to support each other in these difficult times.

Check out this guide on how to support each other in these difficult times.

 

The Gen Z Frequency: Book Release Day

Today my book ‘The GenZ Frequency’, co-written with Gregg L. Witt, was officially published in the UK and the rest of the world by Kogan Page! The book will be published in the US on September 28th!

‪If I’ve learned anything during the process of writing this book, it’s that Gen Z is going to change the world.‬ Thank you to all the young people who were willing to talk to me during the writing of this book and helping me to tune into the Gen Z frequency. ‬

'The Gen Z Frequency' offers a comprehensive youth marketing guide for any brand or organization trying to reach this demographic, covering fundamental truths, content creation, connecting with youth culture, engagement strategies and tactics such as social media, experiential, emerging technologies (like AR and VR), kids privacy law, building online communities, edtech and much more.

Available on Amazon, iBooks and KoganPage

Instagram Celebrates Gen Z Change Makers at #KindnessProm

In addition to the anti-bullying comment filter announced yesterday, Instagram co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger announced that they are hosting the first ever #KindnessProm to celebrate young leaders who are inspiring their peers by helping kindness, acceptance and support grow on Instagram and in the world.

The prom is for students and “teen influencers” from around the country. It will be a “totally immersive, Instagrammable experience that focuses on positivity, kindness, giving back and community,” according to the Palm Beach Post.  Instead of choosing a prom king and queen, each guest will get a kindness award. Radio Disney Host and DJ Miss Lela Brown will play the music.

One of the teens invited to attend the Instagram Kindness Prom is Kayla Abramowitz, founder of Kayla Cares 4 Kids, a non-profit which supplies DVDs, video games, books, and craft supplies to children’s hospitals.

The Kindness Prom isn’t the first wellbeing initiative from Instagram to focus on teens, bullying, and social media. Last year Instagram launched the Instagram Together campaign which showcased their continued commitment to developing tools that address bullying, mental health, and other topics impacting tweens, teens and young adults.

 

• Related: Instagram pays it forward by throwing a "Kindness Prom" for teen influencers | ABC NEWS

Blocking Bad: Protecting Teens on Instagram

Yesterday, during the annual Facebook F8 Developer Conference, Instagram announced that they had launched new anti-bullying & comment filtering AI technology that will automatically filter out comments that “harass or upset people in our community.

As the number one social network for Gen Z teens, Instagram has been increasingly proactive in developing both technology and wellbeing programs that improve the lives of the teens. In addition, the new comment filter is focusing on protecting teen celebrities and influencers who are often the recipients of brutal attacks in the comment section on their social feeds.

We first got a sneak peek at this new filtering technology last summer when Instagram co-founder and CEO Kevin Systrom sat down with CBS News to talk about how the social network is betting that limiting hate speech will encourage more expression on the platform.

"Is it free speech just to be mean to someone?" - Kevin Systrom, CEO Instagram

According to Instagram, "This new filter hides comments containing attacks on a person's appearance or character, as well as threats to a person's well-being or health. The bullying filter is on for our global community and can be disabled in the Comment Controls center in the app.”

As teens  increasingly turning to social media platforms, like Instagram, to talk about their mental health and find resources to help them through their personal struggles, it's more important than ever that social media companies realize that they play an increasingly vital role and responsibility in promoting kindness and supporting the mental health of teens in their online communities. 

 

Related: Instagram #KindnessProm

Meet the Tweens of Gen Z

What sets Gen Z apart is an unrelenting relationship with information and technology, and their early independence, born of impatience and the confidence to act. These are the identifying traits of what will be the largest demographic in history.

And yet, their confidence and knowledge often out pace experience...which causes tension between an advanced intellect, and the reality of their actual age and emotional intelligence.

At the epicenter of this tension we find tweens—a complex subset of Gen Z. They are caught up in the turbulent transition from simply being a kid, to fending off the intricate pressures of teenage existence. They are the pivotal middle-ground of Gen Z.  

Tweens pose an interesting dilemma. Kids (5–8) are still largely influenced by and accessed through their parents.

Teens (14–18) are rapidly forming their own opinions and establishing independence from parents, and there are direct channels to reach them.

Tweens (9–13), on the contrary, are the hardest to reach, even while they are actively seeking cues and learning to form opinions. 

Because they are the least accessible, and arguably the most open to influence, tweens are an important puzzle to solve for companies marketing to Gen Z.

Gen Z is set to influence nearly $600 billion dollars of family spending and will comprise 40% of consumers by 2020. To succeed in marketing to this unique segment, any brand that wants in, has to be willing to play by their rules.

My colleague, Gregg Witt and I have co-authored a new book for Motivate Youth.

In this guide, you will learn key insights, strategies, and tactics your company can deploy to improve tween marketing efforts. You can download a copy of Meet the Tweens of Gen Z over on Scribd.

 

"Instagram Together" Showcases Mental Health

Instagram has launched an initiative called "Instagram Together" to showcase their continued commitment to developing tools that address bullying, mental health, and other topics impacting tweens, teens and young adults.

Teens and young adults are increasingly turning to social media platforms, like Instagram, to talk about their mental health struggles, so this is a much needed and welcome program.

As part of the Instagram Together campaign, several influential members of the community are showcased, sharing stories of how they use the Instagram ecosystem and hashtags (like #ItsOkayToTalk) to share their mental health journey with others to build (or find) a network of support.

Instagram is #HereForYou

As part of Mental Health Awareness month, Instagram announced a hashtag campaign called #HereForYou, which highlights how the social network has helped support its community members struggling with mental health issues.

 

Reporting Self-Harm on Instagram

Members of the community can also anonymously report others who they feel may be in need of mental health support.

The Self Harm Reporting feature allows users to report a mental health concern to Instagram and send the user a message with mental health resources in their country.  

These resources also display when someone visits a hashtag for a sensitive topic, like hashtags associated with self-harm, eating disorders, and suicide. 

This feature is very similar to the Facebook feature that allows people to report expressions of self-harm.

It's great to see Instagram taking active steps towards creating and fostering a safer, kinder experience by addressing the mental health, safety and well-being of their community. 

 

Related: How Texting Can Save Teen Lives

 

• If you want to talk to someone or are experiencing suicidal thoughts, text the Crisis Text Line at 741-741 or call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.

Brad Montague: "Don't Hide Your Magic"

IBrad Montague is the creator of Kid President, the popular web series featured on Rainn Wilson's Soul Pancake YouTube channel that has been viewed more than 16 million times.

With a passion for helping foster creativity and compassion in young people he is constantly creating new and unique ways to make the world a better and more childlike place.

In this podcast, Brad sits down with Branden Harvey, a storyteller, social media pioneer and doer of good deeds!

These are two of my favorite people, so it's great to have them together in the same podcast! Both Branden and Brad are really inspiring and it's such a treat to listen to them both talk about their creative process.

As a bonus, Brad shares the Kid President origin story (Hi, Kid Prez!) and a reminder to not to "Hide Your Magic." So sit back, relax and dream better dreams!

Josh Shipp: The Power of One Caring Adult

Recently, Josh gave a TED talk which serves as a call to action for all adults to intentionally invest time with a kid.

Your kid. Your neighbor. Your nephew.

Take 15 minutes out of your day to watch and listen to Josh share his story. Learn how you can be the caring adult that changes the life of a kid.

  Originally posted on Medium.com/derekeb

  Josh Shipp: The Power of One Caring Adult