MediaSnackers Podcast On Shaping Youth

Digital media shrinks the world in a nanosecond.

Shaping Youth is doing a podcast with MediaSnackers from the U.K. Monday, and just today they sent me their debut vodcast of media morsels that fit tidily into my jam-packed slate with snack-sized digestibility.

No belly belches here. I wish I’d produced this snappy blitz myself. As a parent, the last two clips sadden and disturb, but youth evokes change in a different tenor.

As they say, the mass media landscape has shifted from linear content to multi-layered tidbits with youth being the “www” generation–snacking whenever, wherever and whatever they like with multi-channeled access.

All the more reason Shaping Youth is hoping we’re moving away from the ‘junk food’ vapid values toward more meaningful fare.

We even use this in our media literacy and counter-marketing, because what goes into kids’ minds is as important as what goes into their bodies.

There’s an amped up interest in how young people consume and create media across the globe, and thought leaders are uniting in all kinds of serendipitous ways.

It’s pretty amazing to think a simple blog ping has opened a dialogue between our two organizations when not long ago we would’ve never known of each other’s existence.

There’s a “six degrees of separation” element that kicks into play as media lines blur between countries and universal concerns and alliances become shared.

A quick click of MediaSnackers vodcast landed me in an exclusive interview with Geoff Goodwin, BBC Project Leader on Project Teens, and also in an impressive youth generated video Directed by Karen Lum.

There’s been an upsurge of these “one minutes” (:60 videos that pack a punch) but this is an offshoot of the youth produced Unicef project circling the globe, known as theoneminutesJr.”

Purist alert: there’s an urban edge here, so Lum’s “Slip Of The Tongue” is not sans swearing, nor is it kid-vid. But it’s poignant, important work.

I’d say it even rivals the Dove spot by posing, “What’s your racial makeup?”

What starts as a ubiquitous ethnic query on a random park bench, turns into a quick cut storyline of media’s massive impact on women.

From ethnic make-up to being made-up, the word choice is pithy, gritty, and stings.

Slip of the Tongue gives a verbal lashing to media moguls, body image, power, corruption and greed in what feels like one rapid-fire machine-gun breath.

Whew. Powerful, compelling stuff.

Talk about coming full circle into my own backyard though…

Credits roll as the Oakland-based Lum thanks San Francisco-based literary arts organization Youth Speaks. It’s ironic (but somehow fitting) that it routed through Europe before it landed on my laptop!

Youth Speaks is “the nation’s leading nonprofit presenter of Spoken Word performance, education, and youth development programs.”

They carry some youth defiance in their clever tagline, “because the next generation can speak for itself.”

I’m conflicted on this, because it’s a catchy descriptor, but my guess is it probably gets misinterpreted as combative. Our tagline has similar issues, as I’ve had youth groups jump down my throat before hearing what “turn down the media volume” means.

Sometimes I find generations collide out of fear and frustration, so dialing down the anger might help ALL of us who are seeking a more positive worldview to align productively.

As Earthseeds says, ‘the world is a sphere, a sphere has no sides, that means we’re all on the same side.’

Six degrees lives on, for I’m forwarding her video to Shaping Youth Board member Lisa Fager, co-founder of Industry Ears and leading youth advocate in the dialogue on music, race, hip-hop and media.

Lisa Fager updates me with positive youth progress on the changemaker front, as well as negative, damaging racial slams and subliminal subtext in media messaging.

She’s a huge champion of bringing back balance to music, media and hip-hop, reversing toxic racial typecasting and achieving positivity on a global scale.

Lisa’s a former record industry executive who’s often on the radio airwaves herself unveiling the machinations and payola involved with media conglomerates mining youth for their wallets.

I wouldn’t be surprised if this loop came full circle and MediaSnackers ended up podcasting Lisa’s razor-sharp smarts in alignment with their own participation in youth training for the 5th World Summit on Media for Children in Johannesburg, South Africa.

This is how digital journalism has ignited the globe…Keep an eye on their reports…

It gives me hope the behemoths churning mindless drek will vanish like dinosaurs too slow to respond, as a healthier world results from a mass media mindshift toward agents of positive change.

Coming up next, we’ll see where we’re headed with online media and youth engagement.

This week I’ll be talking to Noah Kagan, founder of Community Next to hear more about their youth-driven entrepreneurial event next month at Stanford University.

Students get in cheap, so anyone in the Bay area regional environs might want to take a peek to hear speakers like Guy Kawasaki, the Dogster/Catster folks and other web wunderkind.

Parents, stay tuned in so your kids don’t tune out…As with all of this digital media stuff, awareness and an exhale works wonders.

If that fails, remember the Tennessee Williams quote from Orpheus Descending:

“The future is called “perhaps,” which is the only possible thing to call the future. And the only important thing is not to allow that to scare you.”