Gen Y is taking over. The generation of young adults that?s compromised of the children of Boomers, Generation Jones, and even some Gen X?ers, is the biggest generation since the Baby Boomers and three times the size of Gen X. As the Boomers fade into retirement and Gen Y takes root in the workplace, we?re going to see some big changes ahead, not just at work, but on the web as a whole.
Despite the worries of their parents (and professors), teenagers’ use of language online is surprisingly sophisticated. That’s the conclusion of two researchers from the University of Toronto, who looked at spoken and IM communications of 72 people ages 15 to 20. Instant messaging represented, they said, “an expansive new linguistic renaissance.”
The teachers' guide to this new website explains that it is designed to be a space where young refugees and migrants can improve linguistic and digital literacy. It is also designed to be a space for interaction, conversation and community. Young people from around Australia (and the world) are welcome to use the site to communicate with each other, share stories and practise language in context.
They used the Internet to encourage people to wear pink and bought 75 pink tank tops for male students to wear. They handed out the shirts in the lobby before class last Friday — even the bullied student had one. INTERNET USED TO STOP BULLYING OFFLINE.
So, there I was: old enough to remember Voltron, beer in hand, sitting with my laptop, surrounded by (presumed) preteens. Club Penguin plopped me in the town center. Forty or so birds were milling about. Some were dancing, others throwing snowballs. As I gazed upon this scene, I remembered something that I had once read: If your body could stay the same as it was at 12, you would live for hundreds of years. But what about your mind? What if it stayed locked at 12? Club Penguin offers that deeply trippy experience.
To educate myself—and to find out what the target audience for these sites really thinks of them—I organized a focus group of five sixth-graders, all 11 years old. I set up two laptops and let the kids show me their favorites. At times the project seemed like a demonstration for a gender studies class with the boys at one computer, the girls at another. Anna, a budding sociologist, explained, "Most sites for girls are an online world—it's socializing. For boys, it's gaming."
Now, it's official: a release from MySpace has confirmed that Quarterlife will debut on its MySpaceTV platform on November 11. A project of Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick, who created the TV shows My So-Called Life and Thirtysomething in addition to Blood Diamond, the new Web show will follow the lives of six people in their 20s and "chart the sometimes excruciating, sometimes comic, often emotional experiences that comprise coming of age as a part of the digital generation."
Photo: Emily Shur
He didn't have much choice but to sell. It was summer 2006, a little more than two years after Mark Zuckerberg had created Facebook in his Harvard dorm room as a way for him and his friends to better connect with schoolmates. In the intervening years, he'd raised $37.7 million from venture capitalists and transformed his modest Web site into a certified social phenomenon.
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Gen Y is taking over. The generation of young adults that?s compromised of the children of Boomers, Generation Jones, and even some Gen X?ers, is the biggest generation since the Baby Boomers and three times the size of Gen X. As the Boomers fade into retirement and Gen Y takes root in the workplace, we?re going to see some big changes ahead, not just at work, but on the web as a whole.
Despite the worries of their parents (and professors), teenagers’ use of language online is surprisingly sophisticated. That’s the conclusion of two researchers from the University of Toronto, who looked at spoken and IM communications of 72 people ages 15 to 20. Instant messaging represented, they said, “an expansive new linguistic renaissance.”
The teachers' guide to this new website explains that it is designed to be a space where young refugees and migrants can improve linguistic and digital literacy. It is also designed to be a space for interaction, conversation and community. Young people from around Australia (and the world) are welcome to use the site to communicate with each other, share stories and practise language in context.
Cyberbullying by a neighbor mom causes a tragedy.
They used the Internet to encourage people to wear pink and bought 75 pink tank tops for male students to wear. They handed out the shirts in the lobby before class last Friday — even the bullied student had one. INTERNET USED TO STOP BULLYING OFFLINE.
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