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LIZ: Good afternoon. My name is Liz Moreno (phonetic)
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and I’m an Abstinence Content Specialist for the CBAY PTN
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(phonetic) contract at PalTech with the (???) Bureau. I’ll
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be the moderator today and on behalf of our team, I’d like
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to welcome you to this Webcast. We are glad you could join
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us today and hope that you will find today’s presentation
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of Teen Online Social Networking to be beneficial. Thank
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you for taking the time to gain a better understanding of
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teens and how they communicate online. We appreciate all
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the work you’re doing to help (???) and encourage youth to
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make healthy decisions for a healthy future. Keep up the
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great work. Before I introduce our speaker, I’d like to go
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over a few key points. Currently your telephone lines are
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in listen-only mode to avoid any background noise. After
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the presentation, you’ll have the opportunity to ask Dr.
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Rosen (phonetic) questions and I’ll give you instructions
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on how to un-mute your lines if you’re interested in doing
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so. You will receive an email shortly after the Webcast
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with an evaluation form attached. We would greatly
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appreciate it if you take a few minutes to complete and
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return the evaluation form. We value your feedback as we
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are always looking for ways to improve how we serve you. It
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is my pleasure today to introduce Dr. Larry Rosen. Dr. Rose
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is past chair and professor of psychology at California
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State University, Dominguez Hills. He is a research
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psychologist, computer educator and is recognized as an
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international expert in the psychology of technology. Over
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the past 25 years, Dr. Rosen and his colleagues have
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examined reactions to technology among over 20,000
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children, teens, college students, parents, business
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managers, secretaries, school teachers and university
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administrators in the United States and in 23 other
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countries. He has written three books, many articles to
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professional journals, over a dozen monographs, has given
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national and international presentations and writes a
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column for the bimonthly newspaper “The National
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Psychologist.” His newest book include “Me, MySpace and I:
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Parenting the Next Generation” and “Me, My E-Life and I:
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Teaching and Raising the Next Generation.” Both published
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by Palgrave MacMillan (phonetic). Dr Rosen’s current
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research includes an examination of the impact of MySpace
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on parents and adolescents, five studies of online dating,
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an examination of multitasking and English literacy in
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children and adults, an assessment of preferences for peer
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versus expert opinions on the Internet and a series of
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studies of the impact of video game playing by children,
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teenagers and young adults. Dr Rosen received his BA in
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mathematics from UCLA and earned his Ph.D. in psychology
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from the University of California at San Diego. And now I’d
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like to hand it over to Dr. Rosen.
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DR. ROSEN. Thank you very much, Liz and – good – let’s
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see it’s – it’s “Good morning” for me since I’m on the
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Pacific Coast time and it’s “Good afternoon” for many of
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you and maybe even “Good evening” for all I know. Anyway,
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what I’m going to do today talk about how you can keep your
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wired kids safe online. And I understand you all have
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copies of PowerPoint which will be very helpful. And I’m
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going to talk today about who these kids are. What are the
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kids like today? What is this new generation of children
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like? What exactly are they doing online? What are they
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spending all this time doing? What about the dangers out
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there? Do we have problems with cyber-bullying? Do we have
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problems with predators? And then how is their generation
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different from yours and from your parent’s generation? And
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finally we’re going to spend some time talking about what
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parents and educators can do to keep these kids safe.
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(PAUSE) First of all, what are the kids doing? Well, all of
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our research shows that they are spending an – a huge
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amount of time online and I’ll show you some statistics in
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a moment that I hope will shock you. But primarily what
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they’re doing is two areas of things. One they are playing
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or communicating and that would mean they’re talking on
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their cell phone; they’re text messaging – which by the way
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they actually do more text messaging on their cell phones
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than talking on their cell phones these days which I think
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is very telling about what this generation is all about.
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They are often playing video games, watching television and
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of course, they’re continually plugged into their iPods no
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matter what they’re doing. I teach at a university and one
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of the things I’ve noticed more with my students these days
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is that they’ll come into class with their iPod ear buds
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firmly implanted in their ears and they will stay there for
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the entire class. Whether they’re listening or not to me is
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an open question although every time I seem to ask them,
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they say, “Of course I’m listening to you and I’m listening
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to my music and I can keep track of everything that I’m
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doing and I’ll be glad to repeat back everything you just
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said” which they can do pretty effectively actually.
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Surprisingly. (PAUSE) What I’m also going to talk about is
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their online activities. I’m going to spend a lot of time
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talking about what exactly is it that they do? What do they
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do on MySpace? (CLEARS THROAT) Excuse me. What do they do
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on Facebook? What kind of chatting do they do online and
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what are all these new kinds of Web sites that are around
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do they take advantage of? Do they YouTube? Do they
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Twitter? Do they SecondLife? By the way, notice that all of
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those now have become verbs like “Googling” somebody. It’s
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now a verb. (PAUSE) I’m having a little bit of trouble with
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the slides going a little slowly so if I pause a little bit
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it’s only because I’m waiting for my version of the slide
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to show up. On the next slide where you see the – the big
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chart – what I want to point out to you is that this is
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some study of about 2500 kids between the ages of 11 and
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17. So we’re looking at quite a bit of research over quite
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a few years and on the left hand side you will see the
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various technological activities that the kids might be
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doing. And on the right hand side you will see how many
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hours a day they are spending. Now if you’ll notice, at the
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bottom, actually it says that they are using over 20-and-a-
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half hours of technology a day. And if you notice the
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numbers, they’re pretty much split. They’re almost always
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listening to music – about three-and-a-half hours. They are
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watching television a couple of hours a day. They’re online
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a couple hours a day. They’re on their computer doing other
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things a couple hours a day. And how do they do it all?
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Don’t they sleep? Well, of course they sleep, although they
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don’t sleep enough. We know that. But what they’re doing is
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exactly what this child is doing is they are multitasking
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and these are some pictures of kids – real kids –
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multitasking is what they do. The one in the bottom right
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is actually doing her homework. You can’t home (phonetic)
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into that screen far enough to notice that but she’s also
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videoconferencing with someone on her screen on the left
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and she’s listening to music and she’s doing her homework
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and she’s talking on the telephone that’s connected to a
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fax machine. This is not unusual. What we have found is
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that kids of this generation multitask like crazy. And if
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you look at the slide that’s on the screen now, this is a
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result of again, several studies of more than 2,000 of
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these kids. And we asked them in our research three
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different kinds of questions. One, we say, “Suppose that
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you have free time and you could do anything you wanted to.
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Which of the following activities would you do?” The second
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one is, “Suppose that you’re studying for a very important
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final exam and you have the exam the next day – which of
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the following things would you also be doing at the same
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time?” And then finally on the right, “Suppose that you’re
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writing an important school report that’s due the next day
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– which of the following things would you be doing at the
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same time?” First of all notice that when kids have free
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time they’re doing basically between six and six-and-a-half
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things at the same time and I’ll show you what they’re
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doing in a second. Even when they’re studying for a final
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exam, they’re still doing three other things at the same
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time and when then they’re writing a school report, they’re
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doing almost three other things at the same time. That’s
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one of the hallmarks of this generation is that they
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multitask completely and all the time no matter what
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they’re doing. Even studying for a final exam they are
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multitasking and what is it that they’re doing? Well, on
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the slide that you see now, you will see it’s split up into
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three columns. The left hand column is what they do during
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free time. The middle column is when they’re studying for a
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final and the right hand column, they’re writing a report.
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And I have listed on – under each column the most common
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activities that they do. Each column has the five most
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common activities that they do. Notice first of all, in
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purple, that the most common activities these kids do as
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you probably well know – the music is always on. It’s on
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pretty much 24/7 – as I said, they’re connected to their
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ear buds at all times. But if you also notice there are
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activities that were unique that go on during various
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times. For example, during free time – while they’re
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certainly going online. They’re eating. But they’re also
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doing a lot of communicating both through text messaging
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and email while they have this free time. When they’re
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studying for a final – notice that of course, like all
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teenagers, they’re eating – that’s not a surprise, but
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they’re also text messaging quite a bit even though they’re
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supposed to be studying for a final exam – they keep their
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text – their cell phone next to them and they text message.
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I don’t know if you’ve seen any of the newest research that
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has been coming out, but they’re finding that a large
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percentage of these kids actually sleep with their cell
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phones next to them. And they wake up in the middle of the
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night whenever they get a text message and respond to the
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text message and then go back to sleep. That’s one of the
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things that I think is very important to note that these
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kids are basically using technology 24 hours a day, or at
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least they’re available to use technology 24 hours a day.
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So also notice on the right hand column when they’re
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writing a report – text messaging is still something that’s
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very important they do quite often. So no matter what’s
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happening to these kids, no matter what they’re doing, they
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are text messaging. They are communicating all the time and
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that’s one – another one of the hallmarks of this
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generation. So you might ask, “Why do they multitask so
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much?” And I want to show you a pretty interesting view of
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how technology has changed. You should see on your screen a
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series of yellow bars and running from the top left to the
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bottom are various technologies that we use and have been
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using for quite a few years. The bars tell you how many
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years it took to reach what consumer researchers say is
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“saturation.” Meaning how many years to reach 50 million
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users. And you’ll notice that radio which came in during my
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parent’s generation – I’m a Baby Boomer, by the way and
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you’ll see some of the slides later on Baby Boomers and
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what we’re like although many of you may be Baby Boomers
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also. But you’ll notice that radio took about 38 years to
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penetrate, to get into society. Telephone took about 20.
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Television took 13. Cell phones 12. As you work your way
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down there, you’ll notice that things are coming faster and
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faster and faster. And in fact as you work your way down
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you’ll see that iPods only took four years to reach the 50
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million users. Blogs took only three years. MySpace two-
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and-a-half years and YouTube finally only one year. In one
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year it reached 50 million users. What’s next? What’s
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coming next? And we know that this generation – this young
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generation – the “Net Generation” (phonetic) is the one
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who’s going to be using it what – whatever it is that’s
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coming next. And so you won’t know what’s next until you
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see all of your kids using those things – or using those
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technologies and then you’ll know what’s important at that
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point. As I said earlier, the kids spend more minutes per
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day texting than talking on the phone and one of the things
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that they’re excellent at is texting from their pocket. One
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of the observations that I’ve made in classrooms – I
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visited some high school and middle school classrooms – and
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if you watch the children and I shudder to call them that
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because they’re exceptionally grown up by that point – but
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if you watch the children in classrooms, a lot of them have
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their hands in their pockets and in their purses and they
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are text messaging from one side of the room to the other.
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And I asked my children who range from 18 up to 33 if they
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can do that and the answer is yes, they all can do that
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quite easily. And another thing that people find is that
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they’re also taking advantage of the camera and taking
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pictures of exams and sending them to people in classes
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later so that they know what the exam looks like and they
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can have a – a heads up on what questions are on the exam.
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They also, of course, love to communicate and they do it
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through instant messaging and chatting but most
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importantly, they spend hours and hours on MySpace and
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Facebook. That’s the big thing that they’re doing right
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now. They’re spending time online. What are they doing
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there? What are they doing online? Well, first of all 80
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percent – 80 percent of our teenagers and preteens use
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MySpace or Facebook and in fact they use them both now
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weekly and half of them go on MySpace every single day. And
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this is from very reputable studies which you can see from
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the bottom of the screen from very reputable organizations.
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What exactly are they doing? What has made MySpace and
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Facebook so – so – so popular? Well, first of all, MySpace
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was the fastest growing Web site in history. When it came
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on it was basically there to support musicians who wanted
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to get their music out. And in fact what happened is, very
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quickly kids started discovering it and what they
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discovered was that, “Gee, this was a great place to get on
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and have all your friends get on and meet all your friends
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and talk” and what they did is they turned this Web site
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into one of the fastest growing Web sites in history. It
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outpaced the pace for Google and every other Web site you
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can imagine and in fact if you total up the number of
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visitors it has every month, you will find that it is the
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fifth largest country in the world. Yes, that’s right. It
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qualifies as being the fifth largest country in the world
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and Facebook is catching up very quickly if you look at the
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statistics at the bottom. MySpace gets about 60 million
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unique visitors a month and Facebook gets a little more
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than half of that and catching up actually very quickly
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because what they’re finding is that – that the kids in
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this generation are finding that Facebook is as important
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to be on as MySpace and they are doing both. So the
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question remains, “What do they do there” and “Is it good
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or is it bad? And I have to warn you, I come from a
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position of having studied these kids and knowing what
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they’re doing and knowing from a psychological point of
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view what
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they’re doing. Okay? And so what I’ve done is I’ve
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given you some ideas here of what exactly do they use this
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for? You can see here – for SuperBestMan (phonetic) who is
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a random – um, MySpace page that I picked out that she is
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talking about who she is. She’s expressing and exploring
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her identity. She’s 17 years old and lives somewhere in
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South Georgia. And if you look at a sample Facebook page
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from a person you will see that they get to express what
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they like to do, what their favorite TV shows are, what
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their favorite books, quotes, etc. And it can change from
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minute to minute which is of course a really good way for
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kids to explore who they are, what they’re doing, because
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after all, we know at that age, a lot of who you are and
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what you’re doing is based on what kind of shows you watch,
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what kind of music you like, who you listen to, who you
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talk to. And we’ll talk a little bit later about friends
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and how that is important. The other kind of things they do
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is they take online quizzes and you can see an example on
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your screen that’s called an “advanced global personality
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test.” And it’s a very straightforward psychological test.
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I’m not so sure how valid it is, but nonetheless, this
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person took this test and presented it to give you an idea
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of what kind of personality she has. So if you look at it,
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you can get the idea that she is both an intellectual and
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an extrovert for example. And maybe a little bit of
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narcissist but very adventurous and very physical and
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physically fit. So it gives you an idea of what this person
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is like. Now what you also have to do on all of these – um,
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MySpace pages and Facebook pages is you can collect friends
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and you list on, particularly on MySpace page, you list
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either your top eight, your top 15, your top 24 or however
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many you want to list and there is some sort of competition
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that the kids do in order to figure out can they collect as
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many friends as they want. And they collect and collect and
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collect and see SuperBestMan, when I cut-and-paste this has
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165 friends. My guess is SuperBestMan has probably 200
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friends now and you’ll notice in the bottom left corner
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that Jorge (phonetic) says “Online now” which means that –
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she – that SuperBestMan can go and click on Jorge’s
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picture, go to Jorge’s Web site and talk to Jorge online.
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They comment on his page and you’ll see these are the kind
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of comments that can be made. The comments are written on
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the side of the MySpace page and you’ll notice that
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SuperBestMan has 307 comments and I’m displaying 50 of them
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here and actually really I’m only displaying four or five
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(CLEARS THROAT) excuse me – but you can see that some of
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the comments are just random comments and some of the
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comments actually are important comments and this is how
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kids – one of the ways that they communicate. And it’s very
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important to collect friends and it’s very, very important
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that they have lots of friends. So what else do they do on
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MySpace, Facebook and everywhere else? They blog. They
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share their music. They put videos – they “pimp” their
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MySpace page which in their language means that they change
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it pretty much every day. They spend about an hour a day
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working on it. They put on new backgrounds, new music. They
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change things about themselves. They post pictures. They
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comment on people’s pictures and this goes on basically all
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day long and they’re doing it with all the other activities
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that they’re doing at the same time. And in essence for
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this age group, MySpace and Facebook – the two most popular
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social networks – really do equal their social life. They
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are their social life. In my generation, my Baby Boomer
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generation, when I got home from school I went outside on
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the street and I played. I got on my bicycle and I rode
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down to the hobby shop or the bowling alley. When my older
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kids who are in their 30’s now were younger, when they were
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teenagers, they went the mall a lot and hung out at the
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mall. Uh, they (CLEARS THROAT) hung out in the middle of
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the street, played games. You can’t do that anymore. None
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of that is safe (phonetic) anymore and so what the kids do
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is they come home and they get right onto MySpace where
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they have their complete social life, all of their friends
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who are also at home, doing the same thing at the same
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time. (CLEARS THROAT) So the question always becomes, “Is
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MySpace safe?” And the media has actually done a very good
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job, I think, at – of painting MySpace particularly and
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they haven’t really quite hit Facebook yet but painting
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MySpace as a den of sexual predators, cyber-bullying,
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pornography, teens meeting up with strangers. And in fact
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is that really true? Does the data bear that out? I can
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tell you something that I just – we just looked at
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yesterday – is I have some of my research students looking
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into the media. And what they did is they took the top 20
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newspapers, top 20 magazines and top 20 television stations
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and for each year from 2003 (CLEARS THROAT) – excuse me,
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sorry, frog in my throat today – each year from 2003 until
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2008, up until today, they looked to see how many negative
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references there were to MySpace, the Internet, predators,
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bullying, pornography and what we found very exciting, I
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think, and very sad – that up until about 2006, the media
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pretty much didn’t talk about any of this. And all of a
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sudden in 2006 you start to see a big spurt in articles
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about this. In 2007 you start to see it fly off into the
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distance and so far in the nine months of 2008, we’re
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already surpassing the amount of negative articles about
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MySpace particularly on the Internet and how it is
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affecting kids. What do the scientific studies say? Well,
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first of all, these studies are done in a lot of different
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ways and they’re done by a lot of different groups, a lot
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of different respectable groups across the country and so
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I’m going to try to summarize what they find. First of all
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when you ask parents if there are a lot of sexual predators
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out there, they say, “Yes, there are.” If you ask the
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teens, they say, “Nope. There are not.” If you ask the
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parents, “Are you concerned about the sexual predators?”
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they say, “Oh, we are very concerned.” If you ask the teens
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about the sexual predators, they say they’re not concerned
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at all. Now we of course, can take that with a grain of
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salt because the teens will always say they’re not
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concerned about anything. But what does the data say, what
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does the data say about actual experiences with people
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online? And what research projects have found – and this
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has been validated by studies supported by the Department
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of Justice as well as other groups, they have found that
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about 1 in 8 of people on MySpace are approached
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inappropriately. What that means is they’re approached with
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some sort of sexual comment, some sort of sexual innuendo,
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something like that. But when you dig deeper into the data,
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what you find is most of this comes from their peers not
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sexual predators. And you will hear that now over and over
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again in the news because there’s starting to be a ground
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swell that says, “Look. The data are consistently showing
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over time that it is not sexual predators. We’re not out to
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catch a predator there. We’re really out – are concerned
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about the peers and the kinds of comments that they’re
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making to the kids online. And I should point out that in
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all the studies, they found that 9 in 10 kids handled this
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totally appropriately meaning that they either told an
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adult; they ignored the person. They blocked them from the
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MySpace of Facebook page. They handled it totally
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appropriately and when asked in all the studies if they
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were upset, they nearly always say, “Nope. I’m not upset.”
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Same thing happened with cyber-bullying. Okay? Same exact
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thing. Most of the parents are concerned. Most of the kids
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are not concerned. Why are they not concerned? Because
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again it only happens to about one out of 10, 11, 12 kids
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and what’s more, they all handle it totally appropriately.
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They make the exact right response which is usually
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ignoring the situation or telling an adult or as many of
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them say, they tell Tom – Tom Anderson is one of the
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creators of MySpace and there’s a way you can report any
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kind of problem on MySpace to Tom and he’ll take care of it
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for you, although obviously he has a staff that does that.
13
But I think it’s kind of cute that kids often talk about
14
how, “Oh, somebody was bugging me online and I told Tom.”
15
And again, they are not upset by the experience in general
16
and that’s a good thing. Pornography is a different issue.
17
They – there is research and the research varies
18
considerably showing that between about 14 percent and 34
19
percent – and I’m going to be very explicit here – have had
20
a quote – unwanted exposure to online porn. How does that
21
happen? Well, they click on a link. They are sent a link by
22
a friend and think it’s something like a game and it turns
23
out to be porn. But this is an issue. There is a lot of
24
online pornography and these kids can be exposed to the
25
pornography. But once again, 90 percent plus in all the
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studies handle it appropriately. They usually just click
2
right back off of it in a couple of seconds or they talk to
3
their parents about it or they report it or they block the
4
site if it’s somebody trying to get onto their MySpace
5
page. And again, very few of them are actually upset by the
6
experience which I think is also a very important point.
7
These kids are very savvy. They really know what they’re
8
doing. They are not necessarily meeting strangers – that
9
they’ve met online. Many of their friends – probably half
10
or more of their friends on MySpace are actually people
11
they’ve never met but they meet some of them online but in
12
nearly all the cases they tell us and all the other
13
researchers that the bring somebody with them. So they’ve
14
really learned over the years how to be safe and how to
15
stay safe and that you don’t necessarily go out and meet a
16
stranger without telling somebody where you are or what
17
you’re going to be doing. And in fact I’m pretty impressed
18
by what we’ve found in our interviews with about 2500 of
19
these kids. That they are quite honestly doing very well.
20
That MySpace and Facebook are having very positive effect
21
on them. That they are able to use the place to put up
22
information about themselves which helps them get through
23
that teen angst – to explore their identity, figure out who
24
their friends are, communicate with friends because
25
obviously they’re – they’re at home now and communicating
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with friends has to be through some sort of electronic
2
modality and yes, there are problems with this. But I think
3
the problems are much less severe that we’re led to believe
4
by the media and I think that’s one thing to keep in mind
5
that the media tend to be a little bit overblown and like I
6
said, they – they tend to have started this in 2006 and are
7
escalating rapidly. And I’m sure that many of you have seen
8
the television – the “Dateline” television show to catch a
9
predator. And if you watch that show, you get the sense
10
that everybody out there is a sexual predator trying to
11
sneak and snare a teenager and in fact, those are very rare
12
cases as the data show and I think it’s important to
13
recognize that yes, they’re rare and the kids know how to
14
handle it. But they are happening and so we are going to
15
have to deal with situations where these kinds of issues of
16
sexual predators, cyber- bullying and pornography do occur
17
in kids’ lives and I’m going to talk a little bit later
18
about some strategies for helping the kids deal with it.
19
Before I do, what I want to do is talk a little bit about
20
how this young generation, the Net Generation, is so very
21
different than their parents and teachers and why that gets
22
in the way of us really understanding what they’re doing.
23
I’m going to go through this fairly rapidly because I would
24
really rather talk to you more about some of the
25
ramifications of this and what you can do. But we are in
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the middle of three different generations – I don’t know
2
how many of you out there are in each generation. I am
3
definitely a Baby Boomer, born in 1950 – you do the math.
4
Um, Gen Xers are born between ’65 and ’79 and the Net
5
Generation’s born after 1979 and we’re actually starting to
6
see that the new generation – those kids born after the
7
Millennium are actually going to be quite different and
8
we’re starting to call them the “i generation” – a little i
9
as in iPod, iPhone and i-everything that they use that
10
Apple produces. In terms of the generational differences,
11
they differ everywhere. They differ on how they use
12
technology and they differ on how they multitask and they
13
really differ in everything they do. The Net Generation are
14
totally and utterly unique. These are kids that were born
15
into a world where they knew nothing other than technology.
16
Oftentimes there were technological toys put into their
17
crib. They had baby monitors and they are a multitasking,
18
genius group. They use technology everywhere. It’s a
19
central part of their life. It’s the way they connect. It’s
20
the way they keep in touch with the world. It is really
21
their life and these are examples of cartoons showing you
22
how they really feel. And these – on the one hand,
23
hopefully you’ll chuckle and think they’re funny, but in
24
fact, no, these are real issues and they really do not
25
understand that they don’t come from a computer, that they
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were born into a real life. Particularly the young ones. So
2
we live in a world that is rapidly changing and we now have
3
a group of preteens and teens who are exceedingly different
4
in how they view the world. Baby Boomers like myself – um,
5
are different. We held a single lifetime job. I’ve only
6
been a professor for 30 years. That’s all I’ve done. I’ve
7
never had another job and in fact if you look at a
8
generation before – my parent’s generation, every single
9
person in my parent’s generation only had one job in their
10
life. For my generation, Baby Boomers as well as the
11
generation before, work is what’s important. Work is
12
fulfilling and this generation is one that believes in what
13
I would call “process.” They want to talk about things.
14
They want to have meetings. They believe that their boss in
15
usually right and they try to avoid making waves because
16
their boss is right. They believe in routine. This was our
17
9-to-5 generation. They communicate via meetings, by
18
telephone and for many of them, they did not learn
19
technology until after they graduated school and often got
20
into the workforce before they had to learn how to use a
21
computer. Gen Xers which is the next generation born after
22
1965 and up to the late 1970s are also very different and
23
even though they are techni-cologically (phonetic) very,
24
very adept, they’re still nowhere near this new generation,
25
the Net Generation. They – they just don’t know how to do
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it even as well as the new kids do. The Generation X are
2
very, very ???. They cannot hold a job. It doesn’t mean
3
that they don’t want to have jobs. It doesn’t mean that
4
they get fired. What it means is they’re exploring the
5
world. They want to find a career and they’re out there
6
looking to have jobs and find a career. I have several
7
nieces and nephews as well as a son and daughter in this
8
generation and they are on their fifth, sixth, seventh jobs
9
in 10 years and it’s not because they keep getting fired or
10
they’re laid off or anything. They just keep – trying to
11
figure out what career they really want to have. And part
12
of that is they want to have a career that allows them set
13
their own time. They do not like working 9-to-5. They do
14
not like being told exactly what they have to do. They
15
simply want you to let them do what they do, do a good job,
16
and then when they’re done doing the good job, they want to
17
move on. Their communications are typically through phone
18
and email. They are good multi-taskers – not as good as the
19
Net Geners, but they’re good multi-taskers and I have to
20
tell you they really hate meetings. Did you ever see a
21
meeting where there are Baby Boomers running the meeting
22
and there are Gen Xers and Net Generation kids? You will
23
almost invariably see that either the Net Geners are either
24
tapping their feet, tapping their pencils, or they’re on
25
their Blackberries or iPhones and they’re emailing and
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they’re texting and they’re doing anything because they
2
hate meetings. They just want to be told, “Give me a job,
3
tell me what to do, and I’ll be glad to do it.” The Net
4
Geners are one step beyond. They don’t – they don’t job hop
5
because they’re looking for a career. They job hop because
6
they’re pretty sure they know what they want to do with
7
life, but they know that they need to gather a bunch of
8
skills. And they’re really a very smart group. They know
9
that in order to get ahead in the world, that they can’t
10
just play like their Gen X older brothers and sisters. But
11
they have to have a balance between work and life and they
12
have to be very goal oriented. But they do not like to be
13
bored. They really like to learn. They’re excited about
14
learning new information and what I was told by one boss
15
that I interviewed for my book, he said, “Look. These kids
16
are great. They work really hard. They’ll do any job you
17
ask them to do, but the problem is as soon as we train
18
them, they suck us dry and they move on to their next job.
19
And so we spend a lot of money training these kids to work
20
and then we lose them. But we don’t know how to keep them
21
and so what we do is we let them train themselves now and
22
that way we don’t need to spend as much money on them.” I
23
think that’s very telling about what this generation is
24
like and why they are so different in the work world. I’m
25
trying – unfortunately right now I’m having a little
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technological problem trying to switch to the next slide
2
and it is not exactly switching – not my fault from my end.
3
It must be technology and as a Baby Boomer seeing it I go,
4
“Hmmm. Technology’s not working for me. Hmmm.” And those of
5
you out there who are Net Geners probably – or Gen Xers
6
probably go, “Oh, yeah. Okay. It’s this, this and this. And
7
it’ll get fixed in a second.” So I’m going to go ahead and
8
will continue talking and hope that we will – uh – catch up
9
quickly. Okay? Um, when we talk about the Net Generation,
10
what we can see is they have very different ways of
11
communicating. They’re very much into instant messaging,
12
chatting, texting, MySpacing – which is a verb – and as a
13
said before, they are multi-taskers to the nth degree.
14
They, um, also need instantaneous feedback and I think that
15
that’s a very important point to recognize that for them,
16
they need instantaneous feedback on what they’re doing and
17
why they’re doing it. They need to be told, “Wow. You’re
18
doing a great, great job. Keep it up. You’re doing a
19
fantastic job. Keep up the good work.” And they want to
20
hear that all the time. All day long. I teach a class on
21
behavior modification and one of the things that I notice
22
with my kids who are younger is they need constant
23
feedback. I actually have little stamps that I use – little
24
“happy faces” sometimes. And to them that’s really great
25
feedback. They love that. This generation wants meaningful
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work. A lot of them don’t even want to go to class. They
2
just want to know what the assignments are and just let me
3
move on. Let me do it from midnight to five. I don’t care.
4
I’ll get it done. Just give me a job. You tell me when you
5
need it done and I will do it. Are we still stuck on the
6
screen? Yes, we are still stuck on the screen, so I’m going
7
to unstick myself and keep going. The next generation –
8
actually, you guys all have the – the uh, the printout so
9
I’m going to be moving ahead to some of the values that are
10
personal values now in these generations. Baby Boomers were
11
– are a very optimistic, self-confident generation. They,
12
um, were the first generation that was exceedingly
13
politically active. They spent money mostly to help their
14
kids, um, and make their kids’ lives better than theirs.
15
The – their kids themselves were often latch-key kids
16
because the parents both needed to work to make money. The
17
Generation X kids were the first ones that really had a – a
18
– a
19
very interested in saving money because they knew that if
20
they wanted to do the fun things that they wanted to do,
21
then they had to save money to do them. The Net Generation
22
kids are quite different. Let me peek back here now and see
23
if we’re back. No. We’re still stuck. Okay. Um I’m going to
24
continue on and partially I think we’re stuck because I’m
25
cut off from the Internet and so it’s my problem, not
political apathetic point of view but they were also
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yours. Um, I’m sorry to tell you that but hopefully, I will
2
be able to keep talking and you’ll be able to keep hearing
3
me and I will try to get myself back on the Internet while
4
I’m doing it. I’m a Baby Boomer. I’m not a particularly
5
great multi-tasker, but I’m doing the best I can. We have
6
these - these Net Generation kids now and they are very
7
different also. First of all, they trust authority. These
8
cute little ones that are actually very interested in, um,
9
now staying home. And they want to move back into the
10
house. They want to stay home as long as they can. They are
11
close – very close to their parents. This is the first
12
generation that’s started to move back and become close to
13
their parents. They are the first generation that has
14
strong political activism and that political activism I
15
think is going to be exceedingly important in their world
16
because in order to be a successful person right now, you
17
have to be aware of policies and you need to be politically
18
active, I think, and so this is a generation that is going
19
to be exceedingly politically active. And they are going to
20
probably be the ones who determine the results of the
21
election, quite honestly. Um, are we back online everybody?
22
No. We are not back online which is going to make it very
23
difficult…
24
25
(PHONE CUTS IN)
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2
3
FRANK: Hi, Larry. This is Frank. I’ll go to ??? splice
(phonetic) from my end…
4
5
DR. ROSEN: Okay. Thank you, Frank. I appreciate that…
6
7
FRANK: That’s fine. I can go ahead and do that.
8
9
DR. ROSEN: Okay. For some reason I am stuck in an
10
infinite loop on my computer so I am working off of my
11
PowerPoint. Is that okay with you if I work off of mine?
12
13
14
FRANK: That’s fine. And if you just notify me when you
switch to the next one and I’ll do that for you online.
15
16
17
DR. ROSEN: Okay. (LAUGHS) I’m going to try to – to –
um, I’m on page uh, let’s see. I’m on slide…47. How’s that?
18
19
FRANK: Perfect. I’ll ???
20
21
DR. ROSEN: Okay?
22
23
FRANK: Yep. Thank you.
24
25
DR. ROSEN: Okay. Oh, look. I’m back again. (LAUGHS)
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Okay. Isn’t technology grand? Okay. So you should be seeing
2
slide 47 on there – which I’m going to do manually here.
3
(PAUSE) Okay. Here we go. I hope I’m not upsetting anybody
4
out there by having to look through slides, but this is
5
what technology is like. This is what happens with
6
technology and see, it’s funny. I don’t know how you’re
7
reacting from your site, but I’m a Baby Boomer and I’m
8
pretty technologically sophisticated here, but I also find
9
that this stuff makes me exceedingly nervous. If I were a
10
Gen Xer, it wouldn’t make me nervous at all. So as slides
11
are being changed for you and not for me, just a quick
12
summary on slide 47, nothing surprising there. The
13
generations are clearly different. Um, you can look through
14
the comic strips and, I don’t want to take up all
15
question time so I’m going to skip through all the comic
16
strips and move up to, um, whoever is switching my slide
17
for me to slide 52. okay? And what you should see on slide
18
52 is where it says “Teaching and parenting is more
19
difficult now than in any generation.” First of all what we
20
know is that from all the research in psychology from the
21
1970s on is there are two basic parents – uh parenting
22
dimensions. There’s a controlled strictness supervision
23
dimension and a warmth dimension. And what psychologists
24
have found is that you can move this into, on the next
25
slide, four different types of parenting. Kind of to a
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(phonetic) authoritative that they’re very warm, loving to
2
their children, but they also set rules and they set those
3
rules though with input from their kids, there are
4
authoritarian parents who are the ones that basically I
5
refer to as “My way or the highway.” They’re very high on
6
the strictness scale. They set lots of strong rules and
7
they do not want the rules broken at all. And then on the
8
right hand side of that slide there are both indulgent and
9
neglectful parenting styles, both of them shown by
10
basically setting very few rules. Oh good, I’m back up with
11
you, congratulations to me. Um, on the
12
will see is that –we, we have done a tremendous amount of
13
research and I’m not going to go through the research with
14
you ‘cause I want to give you time to ask questions, but
15
basically parenting style effects everything. And what we
16
have found out is that if you adopt an authoritative
17
parenting style - meaning that you have discussions with
18
your children if you’re a parent – if you have discussions
19
with your children, you let them have their say, and then
20
you set the rules but let them win some of the time and you
21
win some of the time, but you win the big stuff and they
22
win on the little stuff, then everything else is going to
23
be – at least according to all of the research that’s out
24
there - much more successful. They will spend less time on
25
MySpace. They will spend more time with the families. They
next slide what you
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will want more family meals. They will have less
2
depression. They will have higher self-esteem. They will
3
actually collect fewer friends. They will set their MySpace
4
pages to private more often. And so authoritative parenting
5
style is really critical. Now, I’m going to talk briefly
6
about this and I – and I appreciate that you have all these
7
in advance ‘cause then you can go back and look at them and
8
I am going to be putting up some, um, special handouts for
9
educators and for parents so that you can pull down some of
10
these suggestions also. But, I look at parenting as two
11
styles. Either pro-active or reactive. Pro-active means
12
that you take care of it in advance. You say, “Gee, I
13
understand that there are some people out there that
14
sometimes will email you with nasty things and what do you
15
think you will do if that happens?” That’s pro-active
16
parenting. Reactive parenting is, “Gee, my kid just came to
17
me and said somebody emailed them with something nasty. Uh,
18
oh. What do I do?” And then you need to react and you need
19
to be a good parent and be an authoritative parent and
20
discuss with them exactly what to do when those things have
21
already happened.. Parenting is really a combination of
22
both of those. And the model that I work from whenever I
23
teach, whenever I lecture to parents is what I call the
24
“TALK Model.” Trust, Assess, Learn and “K”ommunicate. And
25
of course, the “k” for communicate is cheating, but sorry,
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uh, “TALC” just doesn’t work. It doesn’t make sense, but
2
“TALK” certainly does. In this case trust is very
3
important. Trust means that you develop a bond with your
4
children that says, “I am not going to go around your back
5
if you do something. I’m going to talk to you about
6
everything that I’m going to do. I’m not going to go into
7
your drawer and read your diary” - which by the way, going
8
online and reading their MySpace page is going in their
9
drawer and reading their diary – “I’m not going to install
10
any technological filters on your computer until we discuss
11
why I’m doing it and why I think it’s important and I get
12
your feedback so that I know that you know why this is
13
happening.” And I think most importantly, and this is where
14
authoritative parenting comes in, is it’s too easy for
15
parents to suggest to just get rid of the computer. Unplug
16
it. Walk in, unplug it, ground the kid. “You can’t be on
17
the computer.” Won’t work. The kids’ll go to a friend’s
18
house. The kids’ll figure out how to get on through their
19
phone. They’ll figure it out. They’re smarter than we are.
20
The – the second part of the model, the “assess” part of
21
the model - which is not coming up on my screen so…I’m
22
going to skip ahead. Sorry for the technological um glitch
23
here, um - The “assess” part of the model basically says
24
what you should do is learn about the technology. You
25
should pay attention to what the kids are doing. You should
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do what’s called “co-viewing” which means that you work
2
together with them and if they watch television, you watch
3
television with them. You let them impress you with what
4
they’re doing online, let them show you what they’re doing
5
online so you can learn from their experiences and again,
6
reinforce that they are smart. That this is their area.
7
That they know what to do. You should learn from your
8
children. They are the experts. They can help you if you
9
want to create your own MySpace and Facebook pages. In
10
fact, one of the things that I’m writing in my new book
11
which is going to be written for – primarily for educators
12
on how to integrate this kind of technology, is that it may
13
be very important to set up sort of programs in classrooms
14
that take advantage of social networking. And maybe create
15
a social network for a specific class that you’re teaching.
16
And that can be very important and I can also see that you
17
could set up a social network for the kinds of programs
18
that you are putting on right now and have that available
19
and may find that the kids would be more likely to go there
20
than you would believe possible because part of what they
21
like to do is to be online and they’re willing to go online
22
and do this. And the last part of this model, the “k” for
23
communicate, is simply there has to be a lot of
24
communication and that goes for whether parents, an
25
educator, an uncle, an aunt, it doesn’t matter. You can’t
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just assume they’re doing safe things on line and you also
2
can’t just assume that they’re being dangerous online. What
3
you need to do is talk to the kids and all of the research
4
shows that the more parents and kids talk, the more times
5
they eat dinner together, the more time they play together,
6
the better those kids are. And I can run through the list
7
and tell you but those kids have less depression, do better
8
in school, are less likely to take drugs, less likely to
9
get pregnant, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Communication
10
is the key to the entire model. It’s the way the model
11
works. And (PAUSE) what we do find is – and I’m going to
12
uh, ‘cause – you have these in front of you. I’m going to
13
skip through the parenting issues ‘cause I really do want
14
to give you some time to ask questions so I’m going to skip
15
through the parenting issues and you can take a look at
16
those. They are simply good parenting strategies. However,
17
I do want to point out by the way is that this generation
18
consumes more caffeine than any other generation in
19
history. And you really do as a parent want to make sure
20
that your kids are not drinking Rock Stars (phonetic) or
21
Starbucks coffee and I think that’s really important. I had
22
a student tell me the yesterday that she works for
23
Starbucks and just as a lark she decides to tell parents
24
when they came in and asked um to get coffee for their kids
25
that there was an – an age limit of 13 years old. That they
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couldn’t buy coffee for their children unless they were 13
2
years old – just doing it for fun. She had five parents in
3
a row who wanted to buy coffee for kids that were under 13.
4
So, there is an epidemic out there of these kids taking
5
drinks that have caffeine in them and part of it is because
6
they’re not getting enough sleep and this goes back of
7
course to what they’re doing online and how much time
8
they’re spending there and the fact that they wake up in
9
the middle of the night to answer pagers and text. So as
10
educators, what can you do? How can you talk to the
11
students? And I think this is very important. First of all,
12
the students know this already, but they have to set their
13
MySpace or Facebook pages to “private.” That way they get
14
to control who is allowed to see their profile and who can
15
say things on their MySpace page. If they don’t set them to
16
private, that means that anybody can request to be friends.
17
Anybody can come on and take a look and anybody can see
18
what’s going on. Second thing is that when someone asks to
19
be your friend and I have both of a MySpace and Facebook
20
page so I can do research online and I get friend requests
21
every day and some of them are real. Some of them are like
22
students or current students, some of them are friends from
23
– from my past. But I probably would say that at least a
24
third of the requests I get are from people who I think are
25
pretty shady. I think that they may be somebody who has um
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some sort of business interest that they want to do and I
2
always say, “No” to those and I think that’s something
3
that’s important to tell the kids is to be very careful
4
with who they allow to be their friend. This one is
5
absolutely critical and I can’t stress this more is they
6
need to understand that anything that they post on their
7
page or anywhere else – doesn’t matter whether it’s email,
8
instant message, a text message - it can and will be
9
permanent. Lot of kids think that they can delete it and
10
it’s gone and that’s not true. I just read a study the
11
other day that one-third of the colleges are now Googling
12
kids and looking at their MySpace and Facebook pages before
13
admitting them and one out of ten business – human resource
14
um professionals are now also Googling and MySpacing and
15
Facebooking people applying for jobs and using that
16
information just the same as they would use a resume. So
17
the next thing I think you have to tell the kids is, “Look,
18
I understand that people are going to say things that might
19
make you uncomfortable, but here’s what you need to do.”
20
And this is again, this is pro-active parenting, really.
21
“What you need to do is you need to tell an adult. And it
22
doesn’t matter who you tell, you can tell parents. You can
23
tell a teacher. You can tell an administrator. You can even
24
tell Tom, as long as you tell someone” because they find is
25
in research, that if the kids don’t tell someone, that they
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end up keeping it inside and they end up getting more
2
depressed and it ends up lowering their self-esteem and
3
then they end up spiraling out of control. And that’s
4
exactly what we don’t want to happen. Often these kids need
5
to know that, yes, there’s a lot of things they can
6
download out there, but be very careful because there’s
7
viruses and adware and all sorts of things can disrupt
8
their computer and then I think really the bottom line for
9
educators, is to really avoid spreading what I call
10
“techno-panic.” Yes, there are things that are dangerous
11
out there but as soon as you start talking to kids about
12
these, and if you only talk about the “evils of the
13
Internet” and “evils of social network” – their brains are
14
just going to click, shut off, and they’re not going to
15
listen to you anymore. And so one of the things to do is
16
certainly you can talk about what the media talks about but
17
I would talk about it dispassionately and say, “These are
18
things that come up in the media. Um, yes, they may come up
19
and research shows that they do happen, but there’s nothing
20
to panic about. But here are the suggestions to – of what
21
to do when they do happen.” And now since we’re dealing
22
with kids of this generation, I’m going to say and sign off
23
as they would sign of to you which is, “Thank you very much
24
for your time. Are there any questions for me?”
25
(TRANSCRIPTION NOTE - TIME AT 00:53:45)
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2
LIZ: That was great, Dr. Rosen. Thank you so much.
3
4
DR. ROSEN: Thank you. I look forward to…
5
6
LIZ: We are going to now begin the question-and-answer
7
portion of the call. To ask the question you’ll need to
8
press star-7 to un-mute your line and once your question’s
9
been answered, please press star-6 to mute your line. When
10
you ask your question, please identify who you are and
11
where you are from. All right! Who has the first question?
12
(PAUSE)
13
notice somebody wrote a message…wrote a question in our
14
little message box and it says, “With all of this
15
multitasking, are these kids doing well in school or are
16
they very distracted?” What are you thinking on that?
Wow. People are thinking of questions. I did
17
18
DR. ROSEN: I think that is an excellent question and I
19
did see that question asked. And I’m – I’m glad that you
20
brought that one up first because one of the things that
21
the research is finding – and it – it’s very interesting –
22
we as psychologists and researchers tend to think of the
23
brain as being the same brain that has existed since all
24
eternity. In fact, that’s not true. Our brains evolve over
25
time and one of the things that researchers are finding is
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that actually for many of these kids, multitasking is
2
better than uni-tasking, meaning that they may appear to be
3
distracted, but they’re taking in multiple sources of
4
information equally well. And in fact what would happen is
5
if you made them simply pay attention and not be multi-
6
asking, they will pay attention inside their head and not
7
to what you’re saying. And in fact, that’s an interesting
8
study just came out where they looked at three groups of
9
kids. They had one group of kids respond to some instant
10
messages and then read a psychology textbook section and
11
then answer questions. They had a second group who started
12
reading the textbook section and then got an instant
13
message in the middle and had to answer it and then
14
continue to read the textbook section. And then the third
15
group just read the textbook section. And afterwards, they
16
tested all of them on their retention and they all did
17
equally well. So, on that level it’s very important to note
18
that maybe these distractions are distractions that we
19
perceive as teachers, educators and adults that the kids
20
don’t perceive as distractions. They actually perceive as
21
essential to the way they want to function. (PAUSE)
22
23
24
LIZ: That’s very interesting. Thank you. Does anybody
else have a question? (PAUSE)
25
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DR. ROSEN: I’m seeing lots of written questions…
2
3
LIZ: Yeah! I’m seeing lots of written questions, too.
4
If you wouldn’t mind pressing star-7 and asking your
5
question so that we can all hear it and Dr. Rosen can go
6
ahead and answer that.
7
8
9
DR. ROSEN: Actually, I’d be glad to answer some of the
questions that people wrote…
10
11
LIZ: Okay!
12
13
DR. ROSEN: Would that be fine?
14
15
LIZ: All right. That would be fine.
16
17
DR. ROSEN: One of the questions that I wonder if
18
trying to keep the access to technology limited would be
19
more of a distraction and actually that is exactly true.
20
That’s an excellent question and that is exactly true. If
21
you try to limit these kids that what you find is that they
22
– um, are not happy. And it really is more of a distraction
23
to them to not be able to connect than to connect. Okay? So
24
you’re actually causing them more angst (LAUGHS) quote
25
honestly by not getting them to connect. One of the things
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that I teach when I teach my students and parents
2
particularly is that there’s no reason why you can’t have
3
these kids earn the right to be online by doing other tasks
4
so complete your homework first and then you can have time
5
online. My, actually I’m not so sure that’s great strategy.
6
My strategy is do an hour of homework and then you can be
7
online for half hour. My rule of thumb is that an hour of
8
work equals a half-hour of fun and that if you make them
9
for every of hour they work earn a half hour of fun,
10
they’re a whole lot happier. And it works a whole lot
11
better. Hm, let’s see. Are there any other questions that
12
are coming in – there are so many questions coming in. This
13
is great! Um, somebody asks, “I just saw a study that
14
showed that social networking activity online just
15
surpassed porn as the most popular on – online activity.”
16
Isn’t that just fantastic and interesting? Um, the online
17
social networking world is our world right now and
18
interestingly enough the fastest growing group on MySpace
19
and Facebook are not the kids but the Baby Boomers because
20
Baby Boomers are starting to realize that they need to be
21
online and, so social networking is continuing to explode
22
and new social networking sites and new types of social
23
networking are showing up everywhere. And I think that’s
24
really important to note, that everywhere people are
25
spending time on these networks. Let’s see – let’s see if I
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can find another question…are there any other live
2
questions that somebody wants to ask? Or should I just go
3
ahead and – plow through the questions online. (PAUSE)
4
5
LIZ: If you want – you can go ahead and go through the
6
ones online and then we’ll see if anyone else has
7
questions.
8
9
DR. ROSEN: Okay. Um here’s a question that says, “Our
10
program emphasizes the need to observe a person in multiple
11
settings to make sure they’re acting the same in each
12
group. That helps you gauge their character and decide how
13
close a friend you want them to be. We suggest they use
14
MySpace/Facebook to confirm what they’re seeing in person.
15
Could you address how best to address this concept to our
16
techno-teens?” You know, one of the things that’s
17
interesting about this is that in many of our studies –
18
probably 90 percent of our studies – we ask the teenagers
19
are they willing to allow their parents to see their
20
MySpace page and you might be surprised that three out of
21
four teens, regardless of their age, are happy to have
22
their parents see their MySpace page. So one of the things
23
that I recommend and one of the suggestions that I have in
24
– in my book, is that you might say…??? I’d like to see
25
your MySpace page and then they might gulp and if they gulp
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what you can say is, “Look. I’ll give you a day to clean it
2
up and let’s take a look tomorrow.”
3
that you keep tabs on their MySpace page and it’s not
4
necessarily just the page of what they’ve written, but it’s
5
also the pages of the friends they’re connecting to. Every
6
kid on there on MySpace has their top eight friends or
7
more. Click on each of their top eight friends,
8
particularly any that you do not know personally and see
9
what their pages look like. That will tell you if there’s
But it is important
10
any potential problem. Because if they’re connecting
11
regularly to their top eight friends, and some of those
12
friends are not doing the kinds of activities that you
13
approve of, then those people need to be – you need to have
14
a talk – a private talk with your kid. And I think that,
15
that you will find that teens are very, very interest –
16
interested in listening to parents. Remember, this Net
17
Generation really trust their parents a lot more than
18
parents want to believe. And I think that we need to take
19
advantage of that when we work with our kids. Um my
20
daughter just went away to college last night – or last
21
week and – two weeks ago I guess, and she called me last
22
night to say, “Hello” and I said, “Well, what’s up?” ‘cause
23
she usually calls me with a problem and she said, “Well,
24
Daddy, I just needed a chance to say hi and tell you how
25
things were going and everything.” And she’s very um much a
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part of that generation and they want to stay connected
2
strongly with their parents. It’s very, very important that
3
they do that. (PAUSE) And I don’t see any other questions –
4
I do see somebody that says that they’re in Portland,
5
Oregon which is where most of my family is located. That’s
6
very nice. Hello to Francisco who’s in Portland, Oregon.
7
Um, I’m in San Diego, California. Does anybody else have a
8
question to type to me? I think I’ve handled all of the
9
typed questions, I hope. I’m going to scroll back and see
10
if there’s any I missed. (PAUSE) (LAUGHS) Someone did say –
11
I think this is very funny – um, that they are currently
12
eating lunch, listening to the talk, Twittering,
13
Facebooking and typing. That is definitely multitasking and
14
I’d be willing to bet that you were born sometimes after
15
1980…Are there other questions people might have? Oh, was I
16
right? 1982 – thank you, Tammy (phonetic). (LAUGHS) I
17
guessed it exactly. Um…(PAUSE)
18
19
LIZ: Dr Rosen, this is Liz with Pal-Tech, and I was
20
just thinking as we were going through this presentation, I
21
used to work as an Abstinence Educator and we started a
22
Facebook group and it was really neat ‘cause being…I mean,
23
it grew to over um 500 members – and just to see them
24
communicate between one another and share stories about
25
their lives, or post resources or – it’s just different
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things. And so it can be a great resource and way to
2
connect people.
3
4
DR. ROSEN: And you know, if you’re going to connect
5
with a group of kids and they’re spending their lives on
6
social networks, then you best believe that the best way to
7
reach them is a social network. Uh, if you go on MySpace
8
and you check for example any college, there will be
9
hundreds and hundreds of groups of kids with different
10
interests at different colleges. If you check on any high
11
school you will find that there are groups for the high
12
school. So I think it’s an excellent idea to go ahead and
13
try to create some sort of group using the technology that
14
they’re familiar with and that they’re comfortable with.
15
And I think that’s a wonderful idea and I’m not surprised
16
that you got so much interest. Somebody asked, “What is
17
Twittering?” Twittering is – is a new phenomenon of sending
18
– essentially they are exceedingly short, brief text-like
19
messages where instead of saying something long you say
20
something short like “I’m on my way.” Or, “Good today.” Or
21
something like that. You’re limited – very limited to the
22
number of characters but it is catching on amongst the kids
23
because part of their communication is very quick
24
communication. And they’re not interested in long talks
25
with people. That’s why it’s text messaging. Um, it is so
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important to them because they can do 160-character or less
2
short messages and Twittering is just another attempt to
3
find a way that they can communicate really quickly brief
4
thoughts. Oh, another one came up. “The book that you’re
5
writing primarily for educators – when do you expect that
6
to be done?” Well, it’s in process. I can tell you that.
7
Um, I suspect that the wheels of – uh – of the real written
8
publishing world grinds exceedingly slowly so I would
9
expect that you’ll see it some time around Christmas of
10
this year. Sad to say if we could do it with technology, we
11
could probably have it out in a week, but we don’t. We just
12
have to do it on paper. And somebody else said, “Twitter
13
answers the question – what are you doing right now?” And
14
your answer appears on the followers’ pages so everybody
15
will know on the Twitter page what that person is doing
16
right now. It’s a very brief way of saying, “Here’s what
17
I’m doing. Here I am.” And thank you, Tammy, for explaining
18
that.
19
20
(PHONE CONNECTION MADE)
21
22
Hi, this is Patty, from Erie, Pennsylvania. I’m a
23
fellow Baby Boomer so I’m going to talk to you rather than
24
type. Um, I just had a question in regards to the fact that
25
this generation is so technology savvy. They have 800
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relationships but they’re a mile wide and an inch deep. I
2
think it might be creating a lonely generation and I
3
wondered if you agreed that it’s breaking down them having
4
real, deep, meaningful relationships?
5
6
DR. ROSEN: I think that’s an excellent question. And
7
from a Baby Boomer, I appreciate that question to a Baby
8
Boomer. And it – you’re right. It does seem counter
9
intuitive that these kids can have 800 friends on MySpace
10
and how can they possibly keep in contact with them and how
11
can they form deep relationships? Having said that, I will
12
tell you that what our research shows is exactly the
13
opposite. That the more friends they have, the more honest
14
they can feel online, the more shy they feel online and
15
interestingly enough, also the now the more shy they feel
16
offline in real world and they feel that they can create
17
deep friendships through this modality. Now, we as Baby
18
Boomers may disagree because we grew up where deep
19
friendships meant you sat on your bed and you talked to
20
somebody, you know, for all day long and you shared your
21
deepest and darkest secrets and nobody else was around to
22
listen to. And that’s just not this generation. Um, they do
23
create strong friendships. What we’ve found in our studies
24
is that most of the people that they call friends and the
25
ones they spend the most of their time with, are people who
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they do also know in the real world. They do make a
2
separation between “RL friends” – Real Life friends, “SL
3
friends” – Screen Life friends. And in fact, most of their
4
SL friends are also RL friends. Plus there are some that
5
are just simply SL friends and actually what they tell us
6
is they get a lot of benefits from them. And one of the
7
benefits is they feel that they can tell these people
8
things that they might not tell other people that they know
9
in school, but there won’t be any ramifications from
10
talking to this person because this person doesn’t know
11
them. They’re off someplace in another country – in another
12
area of the country – whatever. And they feel that they can
13
on some level spill their guts more safely? Does that make
14
sense – um in psychology we call it “being behind the
15
screen?” It’s somehow with this video screen in front of
16
you – this computer screen, that you feel safe and you feel
17
the ability to be more honest with people. And these – uh –
18
only SL friends serve a really important purpose to allow
19
these kids to explore their identities in a – in a
20
relatively safe way with people that they can try things
21
out on. I know for a Baby Boomer that doesn’t make much
22
sense but that’s what I think is really important that’s
23
happening out there. (PAUSE) Uh, here’s another one –
24
online question…um, from someone who says, “I agree. I find
25
it a lot easier to talk to my friends about what is going
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on in my life by sending emails.” I would guess you’re
2
probably Gen X because um Net Geners don’t send emails
3
anymore. As my daughter would say, “That’s, that’s old
4
stuff. Email doesn’t exist anymore.” And I think you’re
5
absolutely right that you get really good advice from your
6
friends by email and also having that email there allows
7
you to save it, read it again, keep reading it, get some
8
ideas from it, come back to it later, read it again and I
9
think that’s part of what these kids also do online with
10
comments they get on their MySpace and Facebook pages.
11
(PAUSE) Oh, I got your age wrong! You’re a Net Gener. I’m
12
- you’re 1985 – you’re on the cusp – you still count as a
13
Gen Xer. So – those dates by the way are not, you know,
14
hard set.
15
(PHONE CONNECTION MADE)
16
17
18
MARY: Hello. My name is Mary Copell (phonetic) and um
– can you hear me?
19
20
DR. ROSEN: Yes, I can.
21
22
MARY: Um I thought that anything you put on the
23
computer, you have to consider that everybody, you know,
24
like you said, it’s permanent and anybody can access it. So
25
why would we want people to – um , not, it seems like it
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would break down boundaries, healthy boundaries, because
2
uh, you’re letting everybody know your innermost thought
3
and yet that really isn’t real life where it’s safe to let
4
everybody know your most innermost thoughts and every
5
circumstance?
6
7
DR. ROSEN: Okay. I think that’s an excellent question
8
and I have two answers for that. One is yes, I think you’re
9
right. That that is a potential problem. But , two – one of
10
the things that you – that you can and many more kids are
11
doing on MySpace and Facebook particularly is they’re
12
setting their pages to “private” meaning that the only
13
people that can go on and read what’s there are people that
14
they know, people that they accepted into their private
15
world. Having said that, anybody can – that is accepted
16
into their private world - can copy and paste anything they
17
say and put it anyplace else they like. So, yes. It’s a
18
double edged sword. One, you can set it to private and you
19
can only put information that you think is going to your
20
best friends – the people that you want to read that. On
21
the other hand, you don’t know what happens to that
22
information after it leaves there. And that’s one of my –
23
one of the things that was on one of the slides that I
24
think is an important caution to tell kids that even if you
25
think you’re in private, you’re not. So in fact there’s
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some things that may be more important that you say in a
2
public – face to face state - than you do in a private one.
3
Or maybe you move from – “Hey can we talk on the phone
4
together?” Or something like that.
5
6
MARY: I’ve never – I’m a – I’m a Baby Boomer, too, but
7
I remember my dad telling me, you know, “You’ll go through
8
life and you can count on one hand the really true – uh you
9
know there’s different levels of friendship so even though
10
it’s set to private, doesn’t mean they’re all equally
11
levels
- the same level of friendship.
12
13
DR. ROSEN: And you know what? On a – on a – a MySpace
14
page, for example, even if it’s set to private, you might
15
have 200 friends – 120 of them are friends both on the
16
screen and in real life, but they are equal in the sense
17
that they can all see what everybody else types. You’re
18
absolutely right. And you – as a teenager have to filter
19
that and I think that’s something that we can help our
20
teens with is how to filter that information and how to
21
look at whether this is valuable information or not and I
22
think that’s very, very important.
23
24
25
MARY: It’s a lot of acquaintances. I mean, you can’t
have 120 real friends. (LAUGHS) I mean, you know what I
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mean? I don’t – I don’t know. It’s interesting…
2
3
DR. ROSEN: Well, but – you know, the thing that the
4
teens are smart at? I think and I hear this over and over
5
again, is that they know when to take things off line.
6
They’re very aware that there are certain times that you
7
just simply don’t post something on MySpace because you
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know who’s going to read it. And you wait and you do it –
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well, they’ll do it mostly by text message mostly – or
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instant message which is a lot safer. Though I have to say
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I tell teens all the time that instant message even though
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you think it’s safe, because once you finish an instant
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message conversation and you click, you know, the button
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“close” that it’s gone? I just remind them to – to remember
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about what happened to Congressman Foley who thought that
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he had this innocuous – well, not “innocuous” but he had
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this conversation with a page that was rather racy and the
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page copied and pasted with a timestamp for IM conversation
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and the congressman eventually had to resign. So even
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instant message is not “safe.” (PAUSE)
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LIZ: All right. Great. Do we have any other questions?
(PAUSE)
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MARY: Which book –uh, that you wrote would be
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particularly helpful for parents that need to learn
2
(LAUGHS) more about…all these things that you’re teaching?
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4
DR. ROSEN: Well, I absolutely think the – the – the on
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the front page of the Red Book – “Me, MySpace and I” - is
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the one that is absolutely for parents and – and it’s –
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it’s funny. I wrote that book um, coming from a perspective
8
of having had four children but also having done research
9
and taught child development for over 30 years and I – I
10
was really kind of shocked that the book came out December
11
26 of last year and sold all of copies out by January 26th
12
of this year. And since they’ve reprinted copies, they’re
13
almost all sold out, too. And on, on many levels that is so
14
gratifying to me that parents are actually buying the book
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and I’m getting emails all the time from parents because
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they obviously can find me um saying, “Thank you for
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writing the book.” And then asking me questions about
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certain things and I do want to encourage those of you who
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are online? To feel free to – to um, email me if you’d
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like. I’m very good at emailing people back and – it’s very
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easy to find my email. Just go to – go online to “Me,
22
MySpace and I” or just put in “MySpace by Larry Rosen” and
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then Google and you’ll find me. And I’m happy to answer
24
your emails and happy to help you with any issues that you
25
have.
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2
LIZ: Thank you, Dr. Rosen. Could you tell us a little
3
bit about the handouts you said you were going to put
4
together so that we will be able to post with your
5
presentation?
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DR. ROSEN: Yes. What I’m going to be doing – um,
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hopefully today or tomorrow is putting together a couple of
9
handouts. One particularly for educators and I’m going to
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take some of the points that I have on the slides but also
11
enhance and add some more ideas that I’ve been thinking
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about um – and – and that came from our conversations today
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and questions which by the way, I copied and pasted all of
14
your things that you said. So nothing that you said is
15
private, either, and I’m going to use those as a way of –
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of helping educators – just to remind you of the things
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that the kids are doing out there and what you need to
18
know. I’m also going to put one up that I have um for
19
parents – of what parents should do? And how they can keep
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themselves – their kids safe. And also given time, I’m
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going to hopefully put one up for kids, too, with some of
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the issues that talk about how kids need to stay safe –
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also, and the kinds of things that they need to do. And I
24
figure if we get everybody in the same stadium working on
25
the same issue, we get the educators, we get the parents
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and we get the kids all understanding what the issues are
2
out there that they’ll be a lot safer.
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4
LIZ: Great! Thank you. We have one last question or
5
comment before we conclude the Webcast? (PAUSE) All right.
6
If not, this concludes today’s technical assistance
7
Webcast. We’d like to thank Dr. Rosen once again for his
8
presentation and also thank each of you that participated
9
in the call. We’d like to remind you that next Wednesday,
10
October 1st at 3 PM Eastern Time Ann Fitzgerald will be
11
conducting a conference call on the last two TA Pieces of
12
her Sustainability Series. In which she will discuss and
13
answer questions regarding “Raising Funds from
14
Corporations” and “Approaching Foundations for Grants.”
15
These pieces can be addressed – accessed on our website.
16
The following Tuesday, October 7th at 2 PM Eastern Time,
17
Miss Kathy Stevens will conclude her two-part series
18
entitled “Boys and Girls Live – Learn – Differently: The
19
Science of Gender and Learning.” Please visit our website
20
abstinence.Pal-tech.com to register. Lastly, please
21
remember that as technical assistance providers we are
22
available to answer your questions via email at
23
abstinence@Pal-tech.com. Thanks again for joining us for
24
today’s Webcast and have a wonderful day.
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2
AUTOMATED SIGNOFF: Thank you.
3
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