Headstream: Accelerating Youth Mental Health Innovation

Dec. 22, 2019 With the world in need of joy juice to focus on visionary solutions over dire planetary predictions, youth particularly are impacted knowing they’ll be around the longest and are feeling the most helpless, so it’s important to “Look for the Helpers” as Mr. Rogers famously said, and give a salute to “positive picks” that are making waves and pushing toward a ‘sea … [Read more...]

Digital Detox, Blog Hiatus, and Fresh New Focus for 2013

Jan. 2013-Shaping Youth has taken a first ever, full month long blog hiatus until Feb. 1, 2013. You can follow our posts on Twitter in the interim while we unplug the blog to repower the system with fresh approaches to timely topics you care about concerning media and marketing's impact on kids. Media management and recapturing focus has been challenging for many of us in … [Read more...]

Visa Spending Survey Invalidated: Stats Are Bogus, Yet No Retraction?

May 30, 2012 Before we ramp up with the next surge of ‘graduation spending’ stats or infographics citing what ‘media’ deem to be ‘credible sources’ without diving deeper into fact checking, I’d like to ask media pundits, where is our collective knowledge gain? We’ve got far more than 22 pages of Google results citing ‘junk science’ as fact from reputable news organizations … [Read more...]

Rachel Simmons Chats About Mythbusting “Mean Girl” Media

Aug. 31 2011 Transitioning back to school is tough, especially when media and marketing blitzes the ‘what could be’ fear dynamics of peer acceptance based on what you wear, how you look, and who you sit with at lunch. (Target's music teacher  ad/video sums in satire well, "if your kids want to sound cool, they need to look cool") Now toss in the social media promises and … [Read more...]