Derek E. Baird is a leading kid culture expert, futurist & author who helps brands, educators & parents connect to kids & teens through culture, social media & technology.
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.
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.
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.
Here's my latest piece for Virtual Reality Pop! magazine, this time focused on the new privacy law, California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and how it will impact both publishers and creators of digital experiences for kids, including virtual reality.
The primary challenge for many companies is that to be CCPA compliant, they will now be required to acquire actual knowledge of a users age, and by doing so, it may potentially open them to COPPA liability.
The primary benefit for kids, teens, and families are that the CCPA will give parents and teens more control over what personal data companies can collect from minors.
MediaSmarts has been developing digital and media literacy programs and resources for Canadian homes, schools and communities since 1996.
Through their work, Media Smarts supports parents, educators and youth media professionals with information and tools so they can help children and teens develop the critical thinking skills they need for interacting with the media they love.
Building on the privacy findings from their Young Canadians in a Wired World research, this 2017 qualitative study, To Share or Not to Share, of Gen Z youth ages 13 to 16 examines the reasoning that teens apply when deciding to share photos of themselves or other people electronically.
These interviews explore the ways that reputational privacy and social norms impact teens’ decisions to post photos and investigate whether or not they actively consent to the collection and use of their personal information by the platforms they use for sharing photos. The findings of the Media Smarts study also dovetailed with my own research for my book, The Gen Z Frequency.
Key Highlights
Participants engaged in a number of different strategies to manage their privacy. Though a small number of photos were kept entirely private, most of the participants’ efforts were aimed at controlling who saw particular photos and preventing them from being spread to unintended audiences.
A small number of topics were seen as not appropriate to share because they were seen as “private” (as opposed to not being shared out of fear of a negative.
Photos containing family members were the most commonly cited as not appropriate to share because they were seen as “private”, though some participants included close friends as well.
Snapchat, where photos are temporary by default, creates an expectation of being casual and “fun”, while Instagram’s persistent feed promotes the careful maintenance of a public-facing profile.
When participants actively sought consent before posting photos of friends, the question was generally not “Should I share it?” but “Which one should I share?”, with the emphasis on selecting a photo in which everyone looks good according to the standards of the platform.
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.
Gen Z is the first generation that has had access to on-demand television content for a majority of their lives. Yet, questions still remain around how these digital natives actually consume content, as well as what their attitudes are towards video advertising in comparison to Generation X and Millennials. That is until now.
In a quest to better understand Generation Z, Hulu partnered with Tremor Video to survey over a thousand respondents ages 14-50 on their TV and SVOD consumption habits and digital video advertising preferences.
And, with the help of the Center of Generational Kinetics, the results provide a window into the variance in behaviors and preferences across three generations – Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z.
From binge-watching, to using TV as a social capital, the future of TV is intertwined across a range of Gen Z preferences and behaviors.
70% of Gen Z respondents equate “watching TV” with watching via an online source.
Gen Z is less likely to actively avoid watching advertising and over 50% said they don’t mind or actually enjoy watching TV ads.
60% of Gen Z respondents prefer to “binge” a show, watching multiple episodes at a time – compared to only 40% of Gen X.
Gen Z is driven by a need to be “in the know” about TV in order to be part of the social conversation. 20% have posted about a show… without actually watching it!
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
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.”
In the last few years, there’s been an explosion in the use of GIFS – those little-looped videos that seem to be everywhere. The GIF is often misunderstood as a component of modern communication.
On social platforms, they embrace memes, visual narratives, GIFs and emoji to create fan art and provide their visual interpretations of shared cultural experiences and project their own emotions into their social media feeds. The visual narrative content posted on these platforms can largely be employed, remixed, and re-appropriated across one another and be reused for multiple purposes across multiple moments in time.
This creates a form of unity in social narratives, situating visual materials as both conversational and archival, across the platforms while also positing disunity and the breakdown of platform exclusive vernaculars.
This episode of the Australian podcast, Future Tense, host Antony Funnell talks to digital researchers and linguists about the ways that people are using GIFs, emoji, selfies and other visual communication tools as narratives to express their ideas, emotions or as visual expressions and celebrations of shared cultural moments.
Full disclosure: Josh is a friend, so I know he’s too modest to list off his many accomplishments. But that doesn’t mean I can’t brag on him--here we go!
Josh has spoken at universities such as Harvard, Stanford, MIT & UCLA and to over TWO MILLION students around the country. He is a recognized teen expert for media outlets as MTV, CNN, FOX, The New York Times, 20/20, and Good Morning America. And Oprah. (Yes, that Oprah.)
“When it comes to understanding the minds of teens, there is no greater expert than Josh Shipp. I’ve witnessed firsthand the lives he’s transformed.”
// Ellen Rakieten, Emmy Award-Winning Producer of OPRAH
Josh is the author of the national bestseller “The Teen’s Guide to World Domination“ and he also was featured in the documentary TV series Teen Trouble (A&E) which followed his ground-breaking work with teens.
Growing Up Josh
Once an at-risk foster kid, he was facing down a bleak future that was likely to include prison or homelessness—until he met the grown-up who changed his life. Josh was passed around the foster care system, he was the class clown, a trouble maker.
He was written off, kicked out, and labeled every parents worst nightmare. Enter Rodney, the foster parent who refused to quit on Shipp and finally got him to believe in himself. And in doing so, changed the trajectory of his young life.
The Power of One Caring Adult
In March 2015, Harvard’s Center on the Developing Child released a study saying, “Every child who winds up doing well has had at least one stable and committed relationship with a supportive adult.”
Maybe this child is 9 and in your Boy Scout Troop. Maybe she’s your 13-year-old step-daughter. Maybe he’s 15 and lives in your neighborhood. Whoever it may be, you have the power to make a positive and significant difference in their lives.
Here's how to be that caring adult for the kid in your life.
Step 1: Find out what they’re into.
Step 2: Spend time doing what matters to them because they matter to you.
Step 3: Your investment of time will lead to influential conversations.
If you’re interested in learning more about mentoring or finding a kid who needs a mentor, Josh has pulled together some resources:
As Josh says, “Do for ONE kid — what you wish you could do for ALL kids.”
Grown-Up's Guide to Teenage Humans
On September 19th Josh's brand new book out for parents (teachers, uncles, aunts, youth leaders), “The Grown-Up’s Guide to Teenage Humans”, a practical guide for understanding teens hits bookshelves around the country.
His goal for this book is to help parents and other caring adults be there for the kids in your life, and let them know that you see under the surface of their troubles. You see what they can be—and what they can be is amazing.
Josh challenges adults to be that one caring adult – that person who changes a kid’s life with a simple, caring act. It starts with you, and it starts now.
Stressing the need for mutual respect, trust, and encouragement, Josh identifies three key mindsets crucial to understanding teens.
He breaks down the distinct phases of teenage life, examining the challenges at each phase, and offers revelatory stories that take us deep inside the teen brain.
"Every kid is ONE caring adult away from being a success story." // Josh Shipp
Josh’s message is simple, clear and a refreshing change from the alarmist advice that is so often the default when it comes to discussing Gen Z teens. You can learn more about “Grown-Up’s Guide” and download a free chapter over on his website or order a copy from Amazon.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
Motivate — the leading specialized insights and media partner for reaching Multicultural, Youth and LGBTQ segments — announced today its acquisition ofImmersive Youth, an insights-driven agency that connects brands with tweens, teens, and young adults.
The acquisition supports Motivate’s strategy for aggressive expansion into its targeted growth markets: Multicultural, Youth and LGBTQ.
By adding Immersive Youth’s expertise, and dynamic team and leadership, Motivate reinforces its culturally-focused service to world-class brands and agency partners. Post-acquisition, Immersive Youth will be rebranded as Motivate Youth.
“Gen Z is the most ethnically diverse generation in U.S. history, being 47 percent multicultural,” said Trevor Hansen, CEO of Motivate. “Bringing on Immersive Youth is in response to the demand from brands to reach the largest demographic group today.
Immersive Youth’s approach to connecting brands with Gen Z is rooted in firsthand audience dialogue and analytic decisions that inform not only the strategies, but also the visuals, messaging and activation experience.
The team’s rigorous insights-to-activation process comprises a set of guiding principles that are proven to drive results. We are excited about the possibilities that will arise from this union.”
You know that talking with your kids about sex and growing up is important, but it’s tempting to put it off. The reality is that these conversations can’t wait. AMAZE.org takes the awkward out of sex ed. Real info in fun, animated videos that give you all the answers teens actually want to know about sex, your body and relationships.
Fun, Factual & Less Weird Sex Ed
AMAZE.org is creating fun, factual and age appropriate online sex education videos for young adolescents. AMAZE has collaborated with a group of incredible young animators who are enthusiastic about their mission to create edgy, innovative and compelling videos to help young people learn about reproductive health.
The series of sex ed videos are being produced in conjunction with youth health organizations Advocates for Youth, Answer, and Youth Tech Health and animation studio, The Moving Company, to help break the ice and start these critical conversations so that kids get the accurate information they need.
Accurate & Non Judgmental Sex Education
In a time where "fake news" fills our kids social feeds, AMAZE.or provides provides kids, parents and teachers a happy medium between accessible, engaging sex ed materials that don't deviate from the purpose of sex ed in the first place: To provide accurate, non-judgmental answers to curious questions.
I was fortunate to work with the AMAZE.org team as a youth and social media analyst during the early phases of this project and I was was really impressed with all the different stakeholders and educators involved to bring AMAZE.org to life.
AMAZE is providing a critical resource for parents and teens and these videos will really help make talking about sex ed, sexual orientation and puberty much less weird and help shift these discussions into a more open, healthy and normalized.
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