Lately I’ve been grappling with how to uncork a dialogue about “kids” vs. “youth culture.” We need to fine tune our mindsets when protectionism and policy drivers mistakenly channel all of ‘youth’ onto one frequency, so I figured I’d better attempt to ‘orbit the giant hairball’ and cough up some global … [Read more...]
Here we go again. Shades of those old candy cigarettes from yesteryear that went by the wayside. Kiddie Valentine treats plopped in a can of brewski? Beer cans of ‘love buzz’ in the candy-n-kids section of WalMart have popped open some controversy. No alarmist implications of direct ties to teen substance abuse stats here, just a great big WHY? Why is Cocaine in a … [Read more...]
This Super Bowl Sunday, our favorite Dove Campaign for Real Beauty ad has flown the coop. They’re smart birds to shift to the Academy Awards venue, because even though the genders are supposedly evenly divided for the game, it isn’t their ‘target market,’ and it IS a terrribly pricey media buy at $2.6 million a pop for a :30 second spot. Still, I love the way it jolted … [Read more...]
Headline news touts a huge generational misunderstanding between Cartoon Networks’ kitsch character, “Err” from their late night “Adult Swim” show, “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” and Boston security authorities who believed the nine blinking devices planted on bridges could’ve been bombs. Gee, you’d have to be Osama in a cave … [Read more...]
(2007) Advergaming is shifting from online to mobile, so younger kids and parents need a heads-up to spot the spin. Here’s an updated piece with fresh new links from my last article about kids under eight “gobbling up” interactive marketing. This time we're talking more about tweens, but it's amazing to see how early the K-5 set starts toting cell phones: Is your … [Read more...]
    |
@ShapingYouth.bsky.social
—social media as it should be
 | ShapingYouth is offered under a Creative Commons “Attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives” license. (Details) |