David Pogue asked his summer interns to come up with a list of the latest internet acronyms and published them in today's New York Times, reg. required. I also listed a bunch of acronyms in Totally Wired, which were reprinted with permission from last summer's CBS News Online series on GenTech. My favorite? JUOC (Jacked Up On Caffeine). I could use a coffee right about now...

* GI -- Google it

* MOP -- Mac or PC?

* FCAO -- five conversations at once

* IIOYT -- is it on YouTube?

* DYFH -- did you Facebook him/her?

* BIOI -- buy it on iTunes

* CMOS -- call me on Skype

* GGNUDP -- gotta go, no unlimited data plan

* WLF -- with the lady friend

* JUOC -- jacked up on caffeine

* 12OF -- twelve-o'clock flasher (refers to someone less than competent with technology, to the extent that every appliance in the house flashes "12:00")

* SML -- send me the link

* RHB -- read his/her blog

* MBLO -- much better-looking online

* KYST -- knew you'd say that

* NBL -- no battery left

* CTTC -- can't talk, teacher's coming

* TWD -- typing while driving

* CMT (CMF, CMM, CMB) -- check my Twitter (Facebook, Myspace, blog)

* CYE (CYF, CYM, CYB)--check your email (Facebook, Myspace, blog)

And a few just for iPhone owners:

* SPLETS -- send pics later; Edge too slow

* CSVUI -- can't send video, using iPhone

* BPWMI -- boss playing with my iPhone

* SIK -- sorry, iPhone keyboard

* OOM -- out of messages (for iPhone users who haven't upgraded their AT&T "200 messages a month" plan)

Pogue also suggested some funny acronyms adults and parents can use when talking to young people, too!

* WIWYA -- when I was your age

* YKT -- you kids today

* CRRE -- conversation required; remove earbuds

* WDO? -- what are you doing online?

* NIWYM -- no idea what you mean

* NCK -- not a chance, kid

* B2W -- back to work

* AYD? -- are you drunk?

* LODH -- log off, do homework

* DYMK? -- does your mother know?

* IGAT -- I've got abbreviations, too

Posted by anastasia at 11:25 PM | Permalink

I asked my friend Courtney Macivinta, the author of Respect: A Girl's Guide to Getting Respect & Dealing When Your Line Is Crossed, and an ambassador for the amazing non-profit Girls for a Change, to take some notes while speaking at Next Generation Tech: Teens Plugged In!. While Silicon Valley teens probably don't represent the average American teen when it comes to technology use, it's still fun to hear what they're saying about the internet, cell phones and cheating with iPods! And, I hate to say it, but I have no clue what a "compiler" is.

From Courtney:

Throughout the day, high school and college students -- many of whom are entrepreneurs in their own right -- spoke to a room full of companies, press, VCs and some youth marketers about the gadgets they're using, the web sites they use, the games they play, and the media or online companies they've started recently. Some, like 19-year-old morning keynote Ben Casnocha, who just wrote a new book, "My Start-Up Life," talked about their business and leadership philosophies and how to fund your ideas.

The high school panel included 9 girls and guys and focused mostly on how technology is integrated into their daily lives. Many in the audience seemed to really want to know: What do teens want? Here's some of the insights the panelists offered:

* They have a bit of blog fatigue and the majority no longer maintained their personal blogs. (This goes to show that being a publisher in any form always presents the same quandary: You have to feed the beast).

* They all Google themselves and find random things like past cross-country running scores to awards they won in 6th grade, or a person with their same name who owns a refrigerator store on the east coast.

* They think the "danger of social networking sites" story is way overblown (as do I). One girl said: "They are enough MySpace articles to sink a thousand ships. We know, we get it!" They also pointed to a trend I've seen over and over: More teens are making their profiles private and really use sites like MySpace to keep in touch with current friends not to meet new ones. To switch to a new social network site seemed like a pain to most. One said, "It would have to be really special and I'd have to know people there." Most of the panelists nodded their head in agreement.

* These panelists, for one, didn't shop online much. They were sticklers about things like shipping costs and most used the Web to research offline purchases.

* Yes, they all have mobile phones (some said they couldn't live without theirs) but some are also on a budget and try to stick it when it comes to text-messaging costs.

* One guy admitted to cheating via his iPod or texting, which elicited gasps from the crowd (and a sarcastic comment from his dad who was THERE: "Then why don't you get better grades?") Once he fessed up there was a bit of a confession domino effect and a young woman admitted she'd cheated along the same lines before too.

The college panel shared these additional observations:

* They think the iPhone sounds cool; some had a smart phone; they had arguments for and against the value of browsing the web via their phone (some said sites don't look great, others do nothing but surf the web with their phone.) None had a landline phone. One panelist said he didn't want a smart phone because if he lost it "it would be like losing a girlfriend."

* All used Facebook but mentioned that they already, or would soon, use LinkedIn for more professional contacts.

* They found themselves doing more email than IM these days to keep in touch with contacts (probably that growing list of business contacts).

On both panels, MySpace universally was out of favor (even if the panelists still had a profile up) because it was too "gawdy" or "cluttered."

One thing I really enjoyed was hearing about the companies these young adults had started like:

* Elementeo.com (the 13-year-old founder launched interactive trading card came to teach kids about chemistry)
* Comcate Inc. (This is Ben's company--an e-gov start-up he founded at age 14)
* Composite Labs (they make and sell robot kits)
* CollegeWikis.com (name speaks for itself, but I liked that they allow users to capture email list discussions in their shared Wiki so they can save and search the discussions)
* GumballCapital.org (micro-loans funded by college students)
* Millennial Productions (creating low-cost short videos for clients)
* Palo Alto High School Robotics Team (the team created, among other things, a laser triggering device that enables quadriplegics the ability to push buttons, for example)
* Votsu.com (a Latin American social networking site)

As an ambassador for Girls For A Change, I did an afternoon keynote, "Is It Becoming a Woman's Web?" (My answer: Yes!) I shared how I see women and girls shaping the entire experience, usability and utility of the Web -- even those of us who don't hold Computer Science degrees or work in IT. I also recommended that companies take care to invite girls to the table as leaders, advisors, mentees, product reviewers, and give them the space to explore their visions (it's always a win-win).

My favorite quote of the day from a teen girl for Palo Alto High School: "I couldn't live without my compiler -- I love my compiler!"

Posted by anastasia at 12:15 AM | Permalink

Whenever I give my book talk to parents, I always get asked the same question: Are teenagers going to lose their social skills? My sense is that teens are immersed in totally wired communication using every digital tool at their disposal: IM, MySpace, texting, cell phones...They are having to learn when it's appropriate to communicate digitally and when they should talk to someone face to face and even when it's appropriate to IM or text in shorthand and when a longer correspondence is necessary. For example, most teens get that dumping someone via text message is lame (but of course some "lame" boyfriends and girlfriends still do this).

I've posted here before about the Harris Interactive study in which teens characterized their friendships that involved both online and offline communication as being more meaningful than friendships that were just face to face. Like anything else, it's all about finding the balance. My answer to parents who ask this important question is -- they are figuring it out, and they need your help.

Sherry Turkle, a professor of the social studies of science and technology at MIT, who has written extensively about our relationship to technology, voiced her concerns about this in a recent Forbes article. She wrote:

And what of adolescence as a time of self-reflection? We communicate with instant messages, "check-in" cell calls and emoticons. All of these are meant to quickly communicate a state. They are not intended to open a dialogue about complexity of feeling. (Technological determinism has its place here: Cell calls get poor reception, are easily dropped and are optimized for texting.) The culture that grows up around the cell phone is a communications culture, but it is not necessarily a culture of self-reflection--which depends on having an emotion, experiencing it, sometimes electing to share it with another person, thinking about it differently over time. When interchanges are reduced to the shorthand of emoticon emotions, questions such as "Who am I?" and "Who are you?" are reformatted for the small screen and flattened out in the process.

A huge part of growing up are those marathon conversations you have beginning in late high school and continuing throughout college -- pondering the meaning of life, politics, religion and heartbreak at coffee shops and in dorm rooms. I think if these conversations all happened on discussion threads online, something would be lost. Maybe just looking into the bleary tired eyes of your best friend and realizing that neither of you are making sense any more and it's time to go to bed.

Posted by anastasia at 4:43 AM | Permalink

Tom McCool is a parent I interviewed for Totally Wired. He also happens to be the executive director of marketing and communications at Ivy Tech Community College in Lafayette, Indiana. Tom emailed to tell me:

I've recently received the results of a media preference survey of our students. Because of dual enrollment agreements with local high schools, a significant number of teens participated in the survey. 97 16-20 year olds participated. (Total respondents 297).

In light of all I've been reading about the rise of mobile marketing and how teens communicate, the responses from the teens validate that they are texting and IMing each other - a lot. However, they don't want the college, and even more specifically, their advisors and professors, to communicate with them via texting or IMing.

68.3% said they IM and 69.8% said they text someone at least weekly. 55.7% said they have over 20 people on their IM list.

But when asked, "How much to you like or dislike these ways of contacting you?" the responses were very surprising.

65% expressed dislike of contact by phone, 54.2% disliked cell phone contact, 59.7% disliked text contact, and 55.6% disliked IM contact. 44.3% expressed a STRONG dislike of text contact, and 55.6% expressed a STRONG dislike of IM contact.

When asked how they prefer to communicate with advisors or professors, only 1% preferred IM with advisors, and 2.1% preferred IM with professors. Face to face communication with advisors was overwhelmingly preferred (79.4%).

When asked how they prefer that the college communicate with them, 70.2% preferred some form of e-mail.

When asked how they prefer to communicate with fellow students, 55.7% preferred face to face meetings. E-mail was the highest scoring online communication at 20.6%, followed by IM (8.2%), chat room (5.2%) and texting (2.1%).

These results tell me that teens want to communicate with their friends via IM and texting, but they don't want the college interfering in what they view as their personal life. This seems to totally counter what I've been reading about mobile marketing, and may cause concern for anyone looking into this form of marketing.

It's funny, Tom's email made me think about the teens I'm working with on the Ypulse podcast. I communicate with them by email -- I know they won't read it right away, but I feel like it's less of an invasion of their "digital space" as an adult. Just as you can contact teens via their MySpace, it feels weird to them to hear from adults that way. I still think parents can text and even IM with their teens without as much weirdness, but for other adults -- teachers, employers, etc. it appears to cross a line. What do you think?

Posted by anastasia at 6:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I first encountered email in college. It was a text based system called PINE. It was so new only a few professors dared to break out of their luddite stereotypes and actually try to use it. Then came the Web and AOL, where "You got mail!" became part of our vernacular and the pop culture (remember the Meg Ryan movie?). For Baby Boomers and Gen Xers (like me), email has become the primary way we communicate at work, keep in touch with friends and family. I still email my grandma up in Maine. Some emails are verbose, going on for paragraphs while others are one line. I remember someone at work telling me the higher up you are in the corporate world the shorter and less coherent your emails get.

For any parents or adults who want to communicate with a teenager using technology, don't use email. Teens don't check it that much. According to Extreme Tech, new research by Parks Associates showed that less than one-fifth of the 13-17 year olds surveyed profess to using email to communicate with friends, compared to 40 percent of adults aged 25-54. In fact, when teens do use email these days, it's usually to communicate with the adults in their lives. What they are using, at least to talk to their friends is instant messaging. They are also using text messaging on cell phones and internal messaging systems on social networks like MySpace or Facebook. They'll pick up email again when they enter the work world, but right now, it's the last thing they'll check.

One parent I interviewed for the book told me she texts her son and loves it -- especially when she needs him to pick up something at the store. I think texting your teen is a great way to keep in touch -- it's less intrusive than calling (which some parents will do while their teen is in class!), and will get you a response wherever they are vs. IM which only works when they're online. If your fingers get tired, you can always try using shorthand, but make sure your teen is using the same acronyms. TTYL.

Posted by anastasia at 10:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Instant messaging is fun. I do it occasionally to catch up with old friends or co-workers. If you're an adult and happen to be busy, it can also be very annoying. Having a window pop up when you're in the middle of something can literally feel like someone jumping into your office and screaming "Boo!" I've also been in a situation with a co-worker who got pretty flirty over IM and crossed the line. I literally stayed logged out for weeks.

Unlike most adults, teens don't mind the interruptive nature of instant messaging, even when (or especially when) they're doing their homework. They are mega multi-taskers who can maintain multiple conversations on IM while also watching TV or listening to music.

The nature of communicating via IM demands short form. Teens often speak in acronyms so they can say more in a shorter amount of time -- it's just efficient. Emoticons like smileys or sad faces can accentuate an emotion or soften up what could be biting sarcasm. Teens are very adept at navigating these types of virtual interactions since they have grown up doing it and do it for several hours a day.

It's also a great tool for safe flirting (yes it is natural for teens to flirt with each other) -- there isn't the same pressure as you would have face to face and it's exciting to wait and anticipate what the person you're flirting with over IM will say next.

In the case of Mark Foley, the disgraced Representative from Florida, he used instant messaging to flirt with teenage pages. They knew who he was, and because he was such a powerful person, many of them went along with it (though some of them reported it). I actually think these types of situations -- when the predator is someone in the teen's offline life who they know and who holds power over them -- are the worst case scenario. USA Today recently ran a story about how in the wake of the Foley scandal, employers are working to educate teen workers about harrassment and workplace rights (seems like something they should have been doing a long time ago). I think they should also expand their sexual harrassment training for adults to include digital forms of harrassment.

When it's a complete stranger, teens usually figure it out quickly, even if the predator is posing as another teen. If it's someone they don't know, most teens will be leery and block this person. It's younger kids and tweens that you need to really make aware that there are adults who will do this (sometimes using the name of a popular pop star) and how to spot them and block them.

Some of the parents I interviewed for the book insisted on keeping the computer in a central location and asking teens who was on their buddy lists. Others would not let their younger teens use instant messenger at all, and still others just trusted that their teens knew what they were doing. Every parent is different.

Then there's the technology solution. One new software program called IMSafer that, once installed, monitors IM traffic for text that's likely coming from (or going to) a predator, and sends an email alert to the person who set up the service. It's pretty smart software in that if it's installed at your child's friend's house and catches something under your child's screen name, it still sends YOU the alert. But it's also easy for older teens to disable. You can read more about it in this CNET review.

My take on technology solutions in general is that they are great for younger kids and tweens. But no technology solution replaces your job as a parent to understand how instant messaging technology works, what the risks are and to talk to your kids about how to be safe and ethical when IMing.

Update: I received this email today from a reader named Michelle who wrote:

"Thank you for your commentary and tips. I work with teens and parents and use your site to stay up on trends, etc.

I am forwarding the link for the article on IMing to my parents and teens with an invitation to start a conversation about this issue in their household if they have not already. As a starting point for conversation, I think this article is an excellent resource."

I can't wait to hear how the conversation goes...

Posted by anastasia at 11:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I'm just going to reprint this press release straight up. It's a must-attend press conference in Second Life (which means most of us will probably wait and watch the Webcast....)

MacArthur Foundation Press Conference and Panel Discussion on Digital Media and Learning

Thursday, October 19, 2006
10:00 a.m. - 12:15 p.m. ET
Second Life Venue: NMC Campus Amphitheater (113/97/26)
(NOTE: Please join "NMC Guests" group for access to Amphitheater)

Webcast Link: http://www.visualwebcaster.com/event.asp?id=35992 (beginning at 10:00 a.m. ET)

Topic: Are kids different today because of their exposure to technology? What role do video games, cell phones and social networking websites play in the development of today's children?

On Thursday, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation will make a major announcement that will generate a greater understanding of the impact technology and digital media has on today's youth.

You are invited to join the press briefing LIVE via Second Life or via a special Webcast. You can participate in this panel discussion with some of the greatest minds and most influential voices in the fields of technology, digital media, education and learning.

Panelists and influential audience members will include:

* Dr. Mizuko Ito, Research Scientist, Annenberg Center for Communication, University of Southern California , studying new media

* Henry Jenkins, Director of the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program and author of Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide and Fans, Bloggers and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture.

* Howard Gardner, the John H. and Elisabeth A. Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education

* Dr. Nichole Pinkard, Director of Technology and Research Associate, Center for School Improvement, University of Chicago, working to expand after-school media literacy programs

* Eric Zimmerman, CEO and founder, gameLab, working to develop new games to support media literacy and design skills in young people

Posted by anastasia at 8:25 PM | Permalink