As we’ve blogged about, NGT attended Anastasia Goodstein’s YPulse Mashup in San Francisco last week, which boasted a tremendous roster of speakers. All very informed and eloquent. But one refrain of the conference we found bothersome was “Kids are Not Dumb.” The phrase, or a variation of it, is actually one we hear a lot. It’s quite an undermining and generalizing comment.
Here are some points of context:
1)”Kids are smart” (Mixtapes: The Unsung Music Marketing Tool) They don’t want to pay for music, even though they love it.
2)”Kids today are not stupid” ( Case Study of Secondhand Serenade) They want personal interaction, esp. with bands and celebs.
3)”Teens aren’t as unsavvy as we think they are” (Totally Wired Life) They are withdrawing from the public on social networks; 66% of them are restricting access to their profiles.
First, were kids ever dumb? Did they just used to eat up those Oscar Meyer Weiner ads like Kobayashi. Kids were never so gullible that they took advertisements at face value, did they? Maybe so. But does that mean they were dumb? This implies that marketers have been duping stupid kids all along….is that really what we want to be saying?
Second, do the above three examples mean that kids are any more intelligent than their predecessors?
1) Teens want free stuff… When didn’t they?
2) Teens appreciate one-to-one contact… Who never lined up for an autograph as a kid?
3) Teens are becoming more private… Well, it used to be called slamming the door, locking the diary….
Digital natives aren’t any smarter per se, the Internet is just giving them more choices so they can be pickier. Ever since our culture was commodified in the 60’s, kids have manipulated adults to get what they want. They discovered the magic of “pester power.” This obnoxious tactic still works on parents (they are probably more indulgent today, in fact). Since then, youth have also found other ways of getting what they want. Their native knowledge of the Internet has even given them purchasing power in their families thanks to e-commerce. This is certainly another tactic they can leverage.
Youth today are essentially databases of knowledge, but they are networks, all linked to one another. They care what their friends think–in more ways than one. In the end, they want to buy popular brands and look cool, just like every teenager in every generation.
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