Showing Milennials What's in It For Them

I thought this was a pretty interesting article on getting Millennials to interact with your brand and bring customer loyalty to a new level:

Canadian Millennial Generation Redefining Customer Loyalty - Millennials willing to engage with marketers but want to know what's in it for them

• 83% of Millennials participate in loyalty programs, compared to 89% of older Canadians 
• 63% of Millennials say the top reason to join a rewards program is that it's free, compared to only 37% of non-Millennials 
• 48% of Millennials surveyed agree that they're more likely to share personal details with a brand that offers loyalty and reward incentives 

 
How could we apply this to libraries?

Cyndi Lauper, Homeless Teens, and Libraries

I've been meaning to share this interesting article with you that School Library Journal featured:  Cyndi Lauper's Youth Homelessness Awareness Project Reaches Out to Librarians.

Cyndi Lauper has started a new organization to help educate folks about the very serious problem about LGBTQ homeless teens.  Why this group?  Because "while LGBT kids make up an estimated three to five percent of the general population, they account for as much as 40 percent of the homeless youth population. The reason? Because families often abuse, neglect, and reject gay and transgender teens due to their sexual orientation or gender identity."

School and public librarians are not only in the perfect position to educate and get the word out about this problem—but they also offer LGBT teens a safe haven, says Greg Lewis, executive director of the True Colors Fund, which seeks to advance LGBT equality and was cofounded by Lauper. "There is much that the public and those who work directly with kids can do, especially librarians," he says. "For many young people who find themselves homeless, the local library is the only place where they can search the Internet for information and resources. For this very reason, libraries and librarians can play a major role in dispersing effective, sometimes life-saving information for homeless or at risk gay and transgender youth looking for help." Lewis says he encourages all librarians to familiarize themselves with the information and resources available on the Forty to None Project website, and to "urge any homeless or at risk gay and transgender youth who may visit their local or school library to seek help."

I encourage you to read through this site and be prepared for when you encounter this challenge in your community.  Odds are, some of your teens may already be in this situation.

Is It Better to Be a Geek in High School?

I came across this article a while ago and have been meaning to share it:

Why it’s good to be a high school loser 
Screw being popular -- an expert explains why geeks grow up to be more successful adults
By Adele Melander-Dayton

Risky Teen Behavior: Inappropriate Texting

A great article from YPulse:

Texting While Driving: How Millennials Weigh Risky Behavior

 We all do it: shift our attention from working, talking, or walking to our cell phone when it buzzes, beeps, or otherwise alerts us of an incoming communication. But depending on where we are and what we’re doing, the costs of such a shift can have serious consequences — many of which we experience time and time again. Walking and texting? You might bump shoulders with a pedestrian coming towards you. Talking and texting? You might experience the psychological phenomenon known as “insertion,” accidentally typing the word you’re saying or saying aloud the sentence you’re typing. We multitask constantly with technology. How does it benefit — and how does it impair — the lives of teens to be continuously shifting attentional focus to a technological interruption?

Great stuff to think about, and talk with teens about.  Do you ever catch yourself texting at bad times?

How The Hunger Games Was Marketed

YPulse has been reporting on talks at the Millennial Mega Mashup, and while some of it seems eyerolling obvious (guys 18-34 like humor?) some bits are pretty interesting.  David Levithan VP Editorial Director for Scholastic (and awesome author) did a presentation on how Scholastic marketed The Hunger Games.

The success of “The Hunger Games” would have happened without “Harry Potter” and “Twilight” going before it. The notion of fandom was key — the fans of those series wanted something new to latch on to. Within weeks of the book coming out, teens were acting out scenes from the film and talking non-stop about “The Hunger Games.”
Fandom is the backbone around which everything can be made.

How can we help bring fans together more in our libraries?   We've done our Hunger Games programs...what is next?  What are your teens getting ravenous about now?

Geek Stars Bring Board Games to TV

Do you like games? I don't know about you, but I really enjoy playing board games with my friends. If somebody knows how it works, and is willing to teach everyone, and can promise me it will be a great time. As much as I like board/card/video games in theory, I find I have little patience for figuring them out for myself. So how am I supposed to discover new games to share with my teens and build inter-generational gaming communities in my libraries?

Happily, uber-geek celebrities Felicity Day and Will Wheaton have come together to create a new YouTube show called Tabletop on her new premium YouTube channel, Geek and Sundry, where they will play a different game each week with their friends. While it should be good silly entertainment, it is also an awesome opportunity for us to learn about how games are played and why they should be fun.

Here is a preview:



Which board games would you want to see played?

Do you speak Millennial?

MTV has released a study called "What Millennials Are Just Sayin'", where according to this article "advises that if marketers take the time to understand the everyday language of their target audience, they can speak to them more effectively."  In the vernacular of my youth: DUH.  Still, there is some stuff of interest here:

OMG: Want to Reach Millennials? You Have to, Like, Speak Their Language

 The study says marketers should draw on what millennial lingo reveals about them, namely:

1. The desire to be seen as smart and funny; and appreciation for clever and quick wit
2. Originality and authenticity
3. A heightened sense of drama about their own lives
4. Optimism over rebellion

How can this apply to libraries?

Young Adult Unemployment at 64 Year High

Terry forwarded me this info, from the latest Pew Research Center report Young, Underemployed and Optimistic Coming of Age, Slowly, in a Tough Economy:

"Young adults hit hard by the recession. A plurality of the public (41%) believes young adults, rather than middle-aged or older adults, are having the toughest time in today’s economy. An analysis of government economic data suggests that this perception is correct. The recent indicators on the nation’s labor market show a decline in the unemployment rate. Nonetheless, since 2010, the share of young adults ages 18 to 24 currently employed (54%) has been its lowest since the government began collecting these data in 1948. And the gap in employment between the young and all working-age adults—roughly 15 percentage points—is the widest in recorded history. In addition, young adults employed full time have experienced a greater drop in weekly earnings (down 6%) than any other age group over the past five years." 

We've definitely been seeing this in our libraries.  What can we do to help this group?  Job training programs and resume classes don't cut it when jobs simply do not exist.  What can libraries do?

GLBTQ Film Festival - This Weekend

This Sunday, January 29, 2012 the SnoGLOBE Equality Alliance is presenting their 2012 Winter Film Festival: An Afternoon of Inspiring LGBTQ Stories at the Everett PUD Theatre.  It looks to be a wonderful afternoon.

The first film they are showing at 2pm is Inlaws & Outlaws (which you can also check out from Sno-Isle Libraries) which will include a special introduction and Q&A with the filmmaker Drew Emery.

Marriage from the inside-- and out. This film weaves together the true stories of couples and singles, both gay and straight, into a collective narrative that is, at once, hilarious, heartbreaking and inspiring.   

At 4:45pm they will be showing Out in America, a documentary that recently premiered on PBS (and is not yet in our libraries).  You can see a trailer here:



If you have any teens who are Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgendered or Questioning, or have family members who are GLBTQ, I highly recommend encouraging them to attend this event.  Doors open at 1pm for a social and concession sales.  Tickets are $10.  For more info click on the image of the flyer below.

Plan to Geek Out @ the Library - All Year Long

Teen Tech Week is coming up, or Teen Tech Month as we celebrate it here at Sno-Isle.  The theme this year is Geek Out @ Your Library.  What do you think?  Will this alienate teens, or appeal to their nerd pride?

Looking for program ideas?   Check out the Teen Tech Week blog YALSA has put up. They have a nice starter list of event and activity ideas.

Also, don't limit yourself to March for planning geeky programs.  Teens (and the rest of us) geek out on something because we feel absurdly passionate about it.  Here is an awesome calendar of upcoming geek events for 2012 from CNN's Geek Out blog.

What do you personally geek out about?  How could we make that into a teen program?

Librarian Role in Kids' Searching Skills

There has been quite a bit of buzz this month about Clive Thompson's November 1, 2011 Wired article Why Kids Can’t Search.  Mostly it seems to be a great argument for school librarians:

Consider the efforts of Frances Harris, librarian at the magnet University Laboratory High School in Urbana, Illinois. (Librarians are our national leaders in this fight; they’re the main ones trying to teach search skills to kids today.) Harris educates eighth and ninth graders in how to format nuanced queries using Boolean logic and advanced settings. She steers them away from raw Google searches and has them use academic and news databases, too.

Works great if you get classloads of kids visiting your library regularly, but what can those of us in public libraries do to help kids master “crap detection 101?”

Should Ghosts Own the Night?

Came across this great little article from last month on Wired.com:

Ghosts Are the New Vampires by Mary H. K. Choi  

Think about it: Ghosts are just extra-emo versions of us. They are forlorn and lousy with issues—attention whores, the lot of them, caught up in personal dramas and pining for an audience...Ghosts are the millennials of the monster pantheon. They need to get it together, be more self-sufficient, stop seeming desperate for so much workshopping. They’re constantly trying to outsource their dirty work—make the living talk to their loved ones, avenge their untimely deaths, move out of their house (no matter how underwater the mortgage). Rattle your chains off my lawn...

With next summer's teen reading them being Own the Night, what better focus that GHOSTS! Some much fun non-fiction and great fiction out there. What are your favorite ghost books for teens?

Getting Involved With YALSA

In my years as a librarian, one thing that has really helped me gain experience, community and reinvigorated me is my involvement in YALSA.  As you probably know, YALSA is the Young Adult Library Services Association.  Through YALSA I have participated in exciting committees, met awesome authors, and traveled to cool places for conferences.  More importantly it has helped me become an articulate and confident speaker, and given me ample opportunities to give back to the profession I love.

If you are interested in finding out how to get involved with YALSA, they have a website show you how to get involved, including a free webinar you can check out.

If you have any questions about YALSA involvement, and how to get started, please feel free to let me know!  I've been on Popular Paperbacks, the Margaret A. Edwards Award committee, Great Graphic Novels, and the YALSA Board.  Currently I'm serving on the Nomination Committee.  Even if you aren't ready to go to conferences, there are many virtual ways to get involved!

Should Libraries Offer Programs on Hacking?

School Library Journal has an interesting article posted this week about organized educational efforts, including conference workshops, to introduce kids to hacking:

License to Hack: Kids are getting into hacking in a whole new way. And that’s a good thing.

Workshops covered picking locks—the school locker variety—Google hacking, and coding in Scratch, a programming language for children. In a session entitled “Meet the Feds,” kids were invited to press the flesh with agents from the Department of Homeland Security and the National Security Agency and chat with them about “intelligence gathering, cyber weapons, war strategy, and more.”

It’s an interesting convergence, with the global exploits of hardcore hacker groups Anonymous and Lulzsec in the background, but hacking—in various forms—is another way in which kids are engaging technology and one that’s evolving.

What do you think? Is this the sort of thing libraries should be dipping our toes in? Is this how we get teens truly interested in new technologies, or is this getting into ethically dodgy ground?

Teen Slang - Know It (But Maybe Avoid Trying to Use It)

Teen.com has a great list of slang taken from MTV's new show Awkward:

Should You Offish Add These New Abbrevs & Slang Words to Your Vocab?

How many of them have you heard used by real live teens? What new slang have you heard recently your peers might want to know about?

I would seriously hesitate before deliberately incorporating any of these in conversations with teens if you are trying to look cool...because that stuff always backfires! But knowing what they are saying is a good advantage to have, both so you can be understanding, and have a bit more of a clue as to what really is going on around you ;)

Other teen slang sources:

• The Source for Youth Ministries has Slang Dictionary that seems pretty street wise.
• About.com has a Teen Slang Dictionary for parents (which is outdated enough that I know everything on it).
• Then for the truly clueless we have the Internet Slang Dictionary & Text Translator.
  

National Geographic Covers Teenage Brains

The October National Geographic magazine's cover story is on Teenage Brains. Online you can read a great article called Beautiful Brains:

A few researchers began to view recent brain and genetic findings in a brighter, more flattering light, one distinctly colored by evolutionary theory. The resulting account of the adolescent brain—call it the adaptive-adolescent story—casts the teen less as a rough draft than as an exquisitely sensitive, highly adaptable creature wired almost perfectly for the job of moving from the safety of home into the complicated world outside.

Be sure to check out the wonderful photo gallery that goes with the article!

Making Things at the Library Helps Build Skills

Wired has a terrific article about the value of kids making things and getting creative, and how this gives them advantages going into the future. The article focuses on Maker Faire a celebration of creativity and ingenuity that takes place in San Mateo, California.

Want Kids to Win the Future? Turn Them Into Makers — and Sci-Fi Fans
By Angela Watercutter
“If you look at [Steve] Jobs and [Steve] Wozniak, they were makers,” Bushnell said in a phone interview with Wired.com. “The more we can turn the nation into a nation of makers, they will be smarter, they’ll be better problem-solvers, and they’ll be more equipped for the problems of tomorrow.” ... “When I hired engineers and people on the creative side, I never looked at their grades,” he said, referring to the teams he built at Atari and beyond. “I interviewed them strictly on their hobbies, and if they did not have a hobby in technology I wouldn’t hire them….

How can we introduce teens to new interests and hobbies? Alas, there is not such a fair for the Seattle area yet (there is a mini-one in Kitsap County today...with some good ideas to borrow too), but this is something libraries http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifshould definitely be able to provide for kids and teens.

I love the idea of stealing many of their program ideas and doing them in our libraries. Already our kids librarians are doing more with Legos. Should the their be Teen sets too? Would teens come to a program on LED projects beyond throwies? What about musical bots? A modified Xbox360 controller? Or maybe an Extreme Marshmallow Cannon? For more ideas, check out the Makers Faire program guide here.

Line Betweem Dependence and Addiction?

Some interesting and not terribly surprising statistics were revealed in this article, summarizing a recent study:

Digital Dependence of Today's College Students Revealed in New Study from CourseSmart™

Findings show college students feel helpless without technology—checking their devices at least every 10 minutes and foregoing face time for Facebook.

There are so many alarmist reports out about youth's dire need for technology (don't you love the dark image above, found by the image search "facebook addiction"...there are some doozies!). Clearly many youth feel totally dependent on it now. When does that become addiction? Were we saying the same thing about teens and telephones in the 1980s?

I often find myself of two minds. One one hand, I know how good I feel after I'm unplugged for a weekend, as I was a few days ago to go camping. Time slows down. Conversations happen. Exercise occurs naturally. I even read a few books. On the other hand, I believe technology is just how our species is evolving, no good or bad about it, it simply is. That said...it is very easy to see M.T. Anderson's Feed becoming a reality all too soon. What do you think? Are teens ready to be plugged in full time? And what are the risks we face with this step?

More Social Networking Stuff

I find social networking and the ways young people and adults utilize things like Facebook, Twitter, etc. to be extremely interesting and I think services like these provide 'instant windows' into our culture in a real-time manner that hasn't been previously possible. Much like your Fred Meyer card allows the store to collect information useful for marketing and sales much faster than was ever possible in the past, Facebook and its clones allow us to look at our relationships, how people interact with others, and observe how certain societal mores change or develop at nearly the same speed that Freddy's can see that you prefer Tostitos over Santitas. I saw a couple of articles today on CNN.com about dealing with 'online haters' and about Facebook trends that made me remember the article Dawn shared on 'Facebook Depression', so I thought I would share these as well for other people interested in this kind of thing. There is some good advice in the 'haters' articles and some interesting information about how 'Facebooking' has influenced, or at least given us an easier way to observe, how young people interact with each other. The stories aren't necessarily teen-centered, but I think they have a lot of relevant information in them.

Video Engagement, Beyond the Flip

Some of our libraries purchased Flip cameras to create promotions with teens. Use up till now is still limited, but I would love to see programs and projects developed around this idea. However, the Flip is no longer going to be produced, which is too bad, as it is super easy to use. But happily there are plenty of other tech tools waiting in the wings. PC Magazine has a great article covering this topic: Ten Top-Notch Flip Video Camera Alternatives.

So what sorts of things can libraries do with a video camera to promote all things teen? Social Media Examiner has a great article with lots of ideas that we can use: 26 Ways to Engage With Customers Using Video.

How can you see some of these ideas being used with teens at your library?