Two words. Playground duty.
“Is your butt really Juicy?”
“Ew, she’s got, like, a unibrow! Gross! Wax, already!”
“Do these jeans make me look fat?”
During K-5 weekly volunteering at a public school, the trickle down impact of a media/marketing saturated culture became self-evident…Fast. And that was way back in 2006 as Shaping Youth began! From overt sexualization and dieting 9-year old “tweens” to branding, bullying, lifestyle judgments and cellphones as status symbols, things have only accelerated…
Media is defining kids before they can even define themselves.
In three years of research in this California “living lab” the undue influence on children of all colors and cultures became progressively more noticeable. Media and marketing’s imprint on kids is changing outlooks, responses, behaviors, and worldviews, impacting what kids eat, how they act, what they were wear, even how they smell…
Then…
As a writer/producer by trade (25 years in new product development/branding in print/broadcast & a background in journalism) I decided to create media documentation to lead change in this arena, with an initial film project “Body Blitz: Media, Shaping Youth” validating a widely held view that children’s absorption of pop culture is creating unparalleled health costs and decreased life expectancy for this generation of kids. Due to self-funding constraints, my focus shifted to the blogging platform in 2006, we incorporated as a nonprofit in 2007 via F.I.T. (Fun Innovative Tactics for healthy kids) and began creating hands-on media literacy games using entertainment as a springboard for learning. As of 2010, we began shifting toward exploration of social enterprise models in lieu of the paperwork hassles and bureaucracy of 501c3 governance (definitely not my forte!) and currently remain self-funded and fiscally untethered.
Now…
In this wild west media frontier of digital distribution opportunities, I realize the “influence of not being influenced” (e.g. all volunteer, self-funded, untethered to special interests, unbiased from sponsors, etc.) is maverick. Still, it’s an important aspect as we forge forward in 2014 to find alliances where the op-ed voice is not diminished by conflict of interest… We are currently evaluating best practices for sustainability and scalability, exploring different revenue generating models in the social enterprise realm…If you have ideas about that of your own, ‘tweet them’ to me @ShapingYouth, where I’m often in my social media nest on Twitter. (I’ve found the best way to build a solid house of media research is to build twig by twig for strength, feathered with insights of what’s on people’s minds!) 2014? Long form/in-depth feature articles will now be posting on Fridays as deep dive “weekend reads,” short form 500 word formats for syndication and reach have now emerged as a “media must”…(TLDR “too long, didn’t read” is the order of the day) And I’ll be testing out a “Point/Counterpoint” column and “The Doctor is In” feature to add some new focal points this year.
