On a grey September day, Face headed East to check out the latest event by The Albion Society – Gen Y Activists and Entrepreneurs: The Death of Teen Rebellion.

The role of this event was to host a panel of Gen Y game changers and commentators, showcasing the differences evidenced within this demographic, and the implications of this on wider society. This is an area that Face have been interested in over the past couple of years, and culminated in our study, 9 Lives.

From all the work we’ve been conducting with the teen and young adult demographic, it’s evident that this is a group within society who are increasingly enterprising, risk averse, unafraid of failure, and willing to take non-traditional routes to success. This paints a pretty different picture to that of the apathetic, knife wielding teen that we see with depressing regularity.

These were all points that were reinforced by The Albion Society’s event, which reminded us of many of the amazing things evidenced by this demographic.

Eliza from Lives Not Knives - Inspirational

On the bill were Eliza Robeiro, a pretty amazing 17 year old who set up her own charity, Lives Not Knives in the Croydon area at the age of 14, after after getting kicked out of school and involved with gangs. Having now been canvassing for three years, Eliza is looking at rolling out the charity on a UK-wide basis if it succeeds in Croydon. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who was incredibly inspired by the level of commitment and savviness that Eliza displays.

Alongside, we had the uber-entrepreneur, Emi Gal, who started his first business at the age of 10, and has been turning ideas into reality ever since. Emi exemplified the risk-averse, unafraid to fail attitude that is more evident with many young people.

Emi Gal - Serial Entrepreneur

This presents exciting implications for the future – will we see a wave of young entrepreneurs, carving out their own niche in society within the next few years? From our own work, we wouldn’t be surprised if this were the case.

What both these examples highlight is the ease with which young people can turn interests and ideas into active pursuits is increasing. Digital technology obviously facilitates access to information, but also makes networking, and making your presence known much easier than it has ever been. Alongside this, we are in a situation where young people can absorb a range of cultural reference points, setting up identities that are increasingly fluid, individual, and less defined by absolute cultural entities.

In the face of this increasingly fragmented construction of identify, should we be talking about a “generation” at all?

Focussing on the latest youth news, trends and movements, Face Youth Lab delivers regular content to aid marketers and researchers understand and interact with youth. Here’s whats been going on at FYL recently:

Music & Social Media: Youth Use What They Know Best To Help Haiti

A quick search on Google News reveals that the recent earthquake in Haiti has caused, amongst many other horrific problems, thousands of orphans. As we explored last week, young people are terrifically and passionately motivated to help their fellows when they can, with social media beginning to act as a primary means of directing people to how they can help…[Read More]

OnLive: If It’s Good Enough For Youth, It’s Good Enough For Me

The on-demand console gaming service, OnLive recently released pictures and videos demoing its product and peripheries through Facebook in an attempt to create some hype surrounding its upcoming release into public beta mode. The projected release of this cloud gaming service has brought much attention in the press with headlines such as “Is It Game Over for Consoles?” in The Independent… [Read More]

3DTV: Brands Attempting To Get Top Down On Youth Again?

There has been a lot of hype about 3DTV recently. Yet despite the 3D film Avatar having become the second biggest grossing film in history, 3DTV seems more an extension of High-Definition TV and possibly a step towards returning TV to a more unidirectional focus for young people again where the internet has made it multidirectional and periphery…[Read More]

The Armchair Revolution Begins To Stand Up

Tech Tribe 2009 revealed how young people, despite their relatively meager financial situations, are still heavily attentive to philanthropic activities surrounding their environments. Last year was a big year for youth participation and making their voices heard within their communities. Young people in particular have shown an apparent increase in participation in both off and online political protest…[Read More]

An Interview With My Gaming Mother: Gatekeepers For Young Gamers

Upon hearing the discussions about whether Mums would buy Modern Warfare 2 for their young children, I thought about my Mum’s impact upon my early life as a gamer. Unable to conceive of getting into video games without her financial backing as a child, and baring in mind that the world of gaming had changed significantly since I was a child in the early 1990s, I decided to ask her a few questions about her interactions with games via my obsession with them as a child…[Read More]

The controversial and immensely successful release of the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 video game, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is particularly timely given that we are in the midst of the festive season. Modern Warfare 2, which was released in November of this year, smashed entertainment industry records to become the biggest entertainment release of all time. Within 5 days of it’s release Modern Warfare 2 generated $550 million, over $150 million more than the biggest ever 5 day gross at the box office (Harry Potter & The Half-Blood Prince, $394 million in opening 5 days).

Banned in Russia, because of a controversial scene in which the player can choose to mow down civilians in a terrorist attack on an airport, the storyline of the game focuses on the large-scale outbreak of war in the modern world, further pushing its timely quality with the recent ramping up of the war in Afghanistan. The controversial subject matter and particularly realistic setting has set the game up one of the most talked about Christmas presents for mother’s to give their children this year. On her blog, one Mother sarcastically asked and answered: “How do we really feel about war, anyhow? After 40,000 years the evidence is in. We like it. Here’s the top toy we will give this year to our children to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ.”

Upon hearing the discussions about whether Mums would buy Modern Warfare 2 for their young children, I thought about my Mum’s impact upon my early life as a gamer. Unable to conceive of getting into video games without her financial backing as a child, and baring in mind that the world of gaming had changed significantly since I was a child in the early 1990s, I decided to ask her a few questions about her interactions with games via my obsession with them as a child.

“I think I started buying you games around 8 or 9 years old. You didn’t get them immediately. You had to ask for a long time, even though your friends had them for a while, but I guess it was a point of reference for you. To have something in common with others was I think the main reason we bought you a console.

“Particularly being an only child I didn’t want you to feel left out, I suppose all mothers have that urge though. I thought it might have a positive impact on your hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills, so when I first started buying them I would more or less choose the games that you got, apart from the ones your uncle bought for you! I remember I bought you Ecco the Dolphin and Art Alive because I thought the covers looked nice and I thought there might be some education value to them!”

I don’t really have any memories of my Mum getting me those game I didn’t really want, although there are lots of stories floating around the internet about Mum’s getting the wrong game for their child, especially with Modern Warfare 2 having a similar release for the Wii that is more an updated version of an older game.

I had totally forgotten about these placid and notoriously difficult games, but it was probably more its difficulty, especially of Ecco the Dolphin, rather than the fact that my Mum had chosen it. It was interesting that she choose the game purely based on the cover though, rather than play-testing it herself, as the internet didn’t exist in our world circa 1992.

I asked her what her concerns were with me playing video games as a child in general.

“Yeah I had concerns generally. I had heard stories of addiction on the radio, alongside those more extreme stories of children getting violent through not being able to differentiate between fantasy and reality and re-enacting the games that you had, but ultimately I didn’t censor you beyond the extremely violent and gore-filled games as I had faith both in my parenting ability by correlation your own ability to distinguish fantasy and reality.

“I was vehemently against buying GTA for you, all I had heard about was the violence in it, even though I knew your friends had it and you had the money to buy it yourself when you were 12 I didn’t let you buy it.”

I remember that my friends had Grand Theft Auto, one of the most controversial games that has since become a best selling series, allowing the player total freedom in a city but encouraging them through storyline to become a career criminal. I suppose the early censorship my Mum had instilled had worked as I don’t really remember having a large desire to get GTA, and it was only when the 3D version came out when I was older at around 15, that I had a desire to buy it, and my education in games in conjunction with my Mum’s early censoring had firmly distinguished gaming from reality.

This ability to distinguish even formed part of my argument when asking my Mum to buy me a game she wasn’t prepared to.

“Well your Uncle Herman would pass you down lots of games he would have, but I asked him to censor them, which he did most of the time! I’d buy you gaming magazines quite regularly; I still think to do that sometimes! And you’d usually get the same games as your friends. When it came to me actually buying games for you, you’d try and charm me!

I remember one time when we had been at the theatre seeing Richard II and you said to me ‘Can we have a look in the games shop?’ phrasing it in such an innocent way that you just wanted to have a look at what was there, but we both knew full well that you knew exactly what game you wanted!”

I too remember never once thinking ‘ah I’ll just have a look’ and always attempting to get my Mum into the games shop so that I’d have a shot at getting the specific game I had in mind.

“Once we got inside you’d keep the charm going but on this particular occasion after the theatre, with a large bout of pestering too! On the whole though you knew which games I would get you and which I wouldn’t, and once I had told you that it wasn’t suitable for you, you’d try with another game you had in mind.”

I do remember my journeys to the game shop as mostly being successful with my Mum, but I don’t think she ever bought me a game that was way out there and unsuitable.

“I would largely look at the cover then decide whether it was suitable for you, because you’d be with me most of the time I didn’t really have the opportunity to test it at home for myself, but we did end up playing one of the more controversial ones together and I got really into it.”

This brought me to one of my clearest memories as a young gamer. My Mum sat down and actively took part in scrolling beat-em up games with me. None of my other friends Mum’s did that! So it was really fun that she actively took part in them and we able to complete or get to the final round of, the two games we played the most together; Streets of Rage 2 and Golden Axe 2.

“I think your Uncle Herman gave you Golden Axe, which I really really enjoyed but although we got to the final round we never completed it! And Streets of Rage, I was iffy about the violence on the cover but I let you convince me slightly and I wanted to experience it myself to see whether it was bad or not, and in the end I ended up really enjoying it! The girl character became a fantasy me! I really loved that we got to go on a quest together, especially with the fantasy setting of Golden Axe, I trusted your ability to differentiate between the game and reality. I liked the stories too and felt a thrill at accomplishing them!

I think I ended up playing it through wanting to experience how violent it was for myself and also you asking me to play with you when you didn’t have friends round. Unless you experience it for yourself, you don’t really know what it’s about and it also gave me validity if I needed to censor it while we were playing. I guess the lack of blood and gore, despite the violence was a key factor in letting those two particular games slide, they really weren’t as bad as some of the others, and especially Golden Axe which was set in a more fantastical realm”

At this point I begin to contrast my Mum’s attitude with 16-bit graphical violence with the graphics of the modern day behemoth of gaming, and in particular the controversial level in which the player takes the role of a soldier who goes undercover as a terrorist and is encouraged to gun-down innocent civilians in an airport. The fact that this level can be skipped is in many ways an emotional plot device to get the player to dislike the bad guys of the game. Even if the player does decide to take on the level they do not have to largely partake in the shooting of civilians.

After the brief story monologue, and the in-action graphics of the game appeared, my Mum looked at me shocked at how realistically the graphics had progressed since we were playing together more than 10 years ago.

“I’m shocked at the realness of it! I’m not sure I would’ve bought you the beat-em up games if they’d been this real!”

When the shooting of civilians started happening she looked visibly disgusted.

“I don’t like how the gun was coming from my perspective, that makes it too real. It didn’t used to be like that point of view. There’s a crossover with reality here also.”

She stopped the video ¾ of the way in though, as she was unsure if she could continue. “

I’ll finish it but it’s caused me a degree of anxiety definitely, but then again I suppose I am able to suspend my disbelief as the characters walk through the bodies in a cartoony way rather than stepping over them in a more realistic way, but the wanton destruction of this game disgusts me. It made me shudder and dragged my emotions into it despite it being a game. If you were younger, I wouldn’t be buying that for you if you!”

I ask about the upcoming proposal for the Digital Economy Bill, which will make it illegal for the first time to sell 12+ rated games to children under the age of 12 and she answers with full confidence in the passing of that law.

“Yep very sensible, the media has a part to play in this because you only hear about the games that cause controversy, or I do anyway because you were my link to that world, but I suppose if you were younger now I’d use the internet more to check up on what games you wanted and maybe look for more realistic takes on reviews or multiple ones anyway.

“Games have definitely got more realistically violent since I was buying them for you, but I suppose the world has seemingly got more violent too in the reporting of violence. There’s more a saturation of violence it seems, but having said that I’m intrigued by the Wii, which my friend has a Pilates game for so I’d consider checking that our, and I get the impression that it spans generations rather than hardcore teenage gamers. It seems to have something more appealing. I think the key factor in parental control is actually experiencing the game for myself though.”

While my Mum has been musing about whether to buy herself a Wii since interviewing her, there is definitely a thread that the violence of games past went unnoticed by parents and there are plenty of examples of kids appealing to internet gaming community members to help them persuade their Mum’s to buy them Modern Warfare 2 (examples here, here, here and here). Yet in a lot of cases (well, at least in mine), Mum’s decision was often final and perhaps it needs that firmness to give children a clear sense about how to choose what games they can deal with. There is no doubt that it’s essential to censor young children to games in some form, but my discussion with my own Mum also suggests that it is possible to find a middle road, where both parents and children can enjoy games together, where censoring can become more of a behind-the-scenes issues rather than a confrontational one.

Nathan Miller is an Assistant Community Manager @ Face

The premier of Brett Gaylor’s film RiP: A Remix Manifesto took place last week at London media club Frontline. The director was present at the screening introducing and taking questions about his film, which addresses the tension that has emerged since downloading music and infringing copyright laws has become mainstream, through Napster.

At Face Youth Lab we’ve already explored how this mainstream download culture created a demand for accessible music, and how brands should aim to discourage it by embracing the technological innovation with attractive, legal alternatives, rather than attempts to shut down the technology itself. This is reiterated in the film by Lawrence Lessig, whom Gaylor’s narration calls “the coolest lawyer on the planet”. Lessig states that the technology providing this copyright infringement “will not go away” and cannot be truly destroyed, and that attempts to stamp it out criminalize the youth of today. Cory Doctorow emphasizes the scale that Napster had in 2001 when it was shut down; it had more users than there were voters in the 2000 U.S. presidential election. He further notes that within its short lifetime Napster’s users had created the biggest library ever known to man, all for free.

Here in lies the main tension of the film. The major creative industries claim that making this copyrighted music freely accessible is detrimental and inherently stifles creativity through not providing a living for budding musicians. Yet the film, with its mashup editing style suggests that a healthy public domain only encourages creativity through access to different culture and ideas. The aesthetic centre-piece of the film is mashup musician Girl Talk, he creates wholly new compositions through cutting up famous hip-hop and pop-songs. Girl Talk embodies this young generation’s desire, now that they have the tools through the technology of the internet, to become producers not merely consumers. Brett Gaylor’s narrations states that if Girl Talk had to pay to use the samples he would have to pay over $45million for a 16 song album running under an hour. The frenzied ecstasy of the concert footage (which itself was crowd-sourced for the film over the internet via concert goers) is testament enough that there is demand for this remix culture. Furthermore, Brett Gaylor noted in the Q&A that neither his film, nor Girl Talk’s albums, had been actually sued yet; the potential of bad publicity has been enough of a deterrent to the authorities thus far. Gaylor mentioned that a third of all the content that youth see currently is created by their friends, a huge statistic when considering how top-down old forms of media were decades ago.

The philosophical centre of the film is the aforementioned Lawrence Lessig who has founded a logical alternative to copyright. Creative Commons, allows a participant to use a work of art which is attributed with a Creative Commons license, freely so long as this use is not for commercial gain. This allows the sharing of culture similarly to how folk art was shared before recorded music was created. The primary manifesto that this rests upon is the note that “culture always builds upon the past”. Walt Disney is referred to as one of the first mashup artists as most, if not all, the films made in his lifetime were updated versions of stories in the public domain, and yet they have become Disney’s classics. This philosophical argument suggests that a large public domain encourages creativity, as “nothing is created in a vacuum”. When Walt Disney died the Disney Corporation were the main lobbyists to extend the copyright laws up to 75 years after the death of the intellectual responsible.

Girl Talk - Mash Up Messiah

While there are some clear arguments suggesting that the stringent nature of current copyright law needs to loosen, Gaylor himself could not answer the question of how budding musicians would make a living, although he did suggest some kind of internet licensing fee with the money then being redistributed directly to the artists. Yet Girl Talk has sold his albums on his website for a ‘pay what you want fee’. A further example of stringent intellectual copyright and patent failings was given. Brazil chose to forgo American copyright laws imposed upon them to make their own cheap versions of AIDS drugs, replacing the expensive versions American patents were forcing. Surely intellectual copyright and patent laws shouldn’t prevent cheap medical drugs from being distributed to the poorest countries in the world? While there is a question of whether medial drugs companies will still create product if they don’t make enough money, this salient example emphasizes the question of whether the time is right to rethink how copyright law is enacted.

The open collaboration that the film embodies is fully enacted by the mashup montage aesthetic that the film has. There was a rotoscoped-animated section, which a group of students who downloaded the rushes of the film from http://www.ripremix.com/ then edited and created themselves. The director noted that there were already 3 or 4 versions of the film already and that the version we had seen would be only be viewed then and there. All of this and the encouragement given to us to remix our own versions of the film at http://www.opensourcecinema.org is indicative of the burgeoning 2-way creative, open collaboration that internet technology is instilling in young people today.

Following on from the success of our Web 2.0 Women forum earlier this year we thought it was about time we opened up another hot topic for debate. The next Face Forum will revolve around the key question ‘Do Brands Need Agencies?’ On the 18th of November we will be joined by friends, experts and clients at the Groucho club to discuss the following topics…

Relevance
The real-time social web has changed the way we communicate giving us the tools to get and share information at a pace we have not experienced before. This has made the web the richest insight field we have ever had. How can you harness the power of the world wide wave for research, brand planning and brand engagement? What are real-time research and adaptive brand planning? And how can they help your brand stay relevant?

Crowds
Barely a day goes by without a website, campaign or competition cropping up, promising to harness the collective wisdom of crowds for the benefit of brands. Peperami even ditched Lowe to ask the crowds. But is bottom-up really enough? When did crowdsourcing cease to be a means to an end and become an end in itself? Join us to discuss a hybrid model where crowd-sourcing and co-creation are used as complementary methodologies.

Trends
We asked 3000 19 to 25 years old young adults about their consumption habits, media and tech diet. The Forum will be the place where we present our latest Techtribe report, uncovering youth trends that will soon start migrating to other audiences

We hope you can join us on the 18th November, If you are interested in attending please email daniel@facegroup.co.uk for further info and details.

It’s has been an interesting few months over at Face Youth Lab, as well as releasing our Tech Tribe findings, we have also been jumping straight into the heart of the issues that are defining youth and the world around them. Below are 5 recent blog posts and tweets that have kicked up some interesting conversation in and out of the office. To get your regular fix of youth news and views, head over to Face Youth Lab.

5 From The Blog…

1) Young People Hacking Themselves Down The Stream

There has been lots of recent conversation in the UK about internet disconnection for those who repeatedly downloading content illegally. As we’ve already noted most young people opt not to pay for content online with 77% of 19-25 year-olds never paying to watch film…

2) Youth & The Internet Are Rewriting Literacy

There has been much discussion on the effect that digital is having upon handwriting and literacy as a generation grow up using keyboards and touch-screens instead of pens and pencils. We’ve already touched on the fact that young people are choosing to read online over print by quite a margin…

3) TECH TRIBE – Zesty Attitudes To work

It is fair to say that youth in the UK aren’t exactly having the best of times when it comes to work. However this doesn’t mean they are down and out, oh no no no. Face’s recent Tech Tribe survey has revealed that even though work may not be easy to come by, young people are still up for it and their attitude towards work cannot be questioned…

4) Vice Squeezes The Cool Juice Out Of Dell

In what seems like a blatant appeal to boost its street-cred and cool factor, home computer company Dell has enlisted lifestyle magazine-come-advertising agency Vice, they of Do’s and Don’ts, to create a new news site/user-created blog/cool injection called Motherboard.tv.

5) Straight Edge Resurgence?

This article appeared in the Metro a couple of week ago, heralding the resurgence in the Straight Edge movement amongst the youth of the UK. Originally inspired by the lyrics of 1980s US punks Minor Threat, followers of the Straight Edge lifestyle abstain from drinking alcohol, smoking, taking drugs and promiscuous sex.

5 From Twitter (@faceyouthlab)

1) 42% of 11-16 year old girls dieting – 50% would consider cosmetic surgery – http://bit.ly/3bwjt4

2) RT @DowningStreet – UK Cabinet looking for #youth ideas on #climatechange, crime &careers: http://www.bebo.com/bigthink

3) RT @BBHlabs a multi-layered mashup: City Secrets – Jay-Z x Driving Simulator x Google Maps = What’s Next? http://bit.ly/2bdt9O @michaelhb

4) Google CEO – teenagers are the model of how the web will work in five years – they jump from app to app seamlessly. http://bit.ly/1VxH6N

5) http://www.kickstarter.com – crowdsourcing funding platform for artists, designers, filmmakers, musicians, journalists, inventors, explorers

There has been much discussion on the effect that digital is having upon handwriting and literacy as a generation grow up using keyboards and touch-screens instead of pens and pencils. We’ve already touched on the fact that young people are choosing to read online over print by quite a margin. All of these factors have a seemingly negative impact on literacy right? Especially considering the transient nature of information represented on screens. However, It has been suggested that digital information is allowing young people to write and express themselves more than any generation previously.

With 8.5 million 14-24 year olds Facebook users in the UK there has been some past suggestions that so much informal writing has lead to deterioration in literacy. Teachers have become worried about the appearance of ‘text speak’ in exams. While there is a certain amount of hysteria surrounding this phenomena, there is also contradicting research suggesting that “Children’s use of textisms is not only positively associated with word reading ability, but it may be contributing to reading development”. While these two arguments may not have reach a conclusion in any respect and will not for quite some time, one thing is clear. The generation growing up with digital is writing far more than any other more before it.

A recent study at Stanford University has supported this and it’s organizer, professor Andrea Lunford stated that “we’re in the midst of a literacy revolution the likes of which we haven’t seen since Greek civilization”. Largely because much socializing takes place in the digital sphere, an amazing 38% of the writing done by the students surveyed has nothing to do with school. This percentage is amazing if you think back twenty years to how those who might be writing outside of school would be looking to make their careers out of it through academia or journalism. The social nature of this writing also disposes the writers to be fully aware, more aware than the young people of previous generations, of who their audience is beyond university professors. Previous generations did not even write for an audience, which must surely have an impact on honing their literacy skills. Digital will impact literacy further as its presence is increasingly felt beyond the desktop. A university in Australia is adding a course on how to Twitter, showing the importance now being instilled in what Clive Thompson calls “haiku like concision”. With the e-reader set to ascend in popularity in 2010 and physical libraries set to up their amount of digital reading devices there is clearly a movement towards digital literacy that is not going to slow down, with it’s impact only just being able to be assessed.

LOL cats have a language completely driven by users

While there are those that would shoot down any suggestion that digital is improving literacy, the 1,616 students interviewed at Stanford said “they defined good prose as something that had an effect on the world” suggesting that the role of the audience could be progressing language in some ways, and that the significance of the message is becoming more important than the medium. There is a view that the progression of language is natural. There are many silent letters in English. Will writers of English hundreds of years in the future continue to spell ‘through’ with a ‘g’ if it hasn’t been spelt with one for a very long time? We haven’t pronounced ‘olde’ phonetically in hundreds of years.

This again raises questions of phonetics in particular from writing, and recalls the perhaps absurd recent story of the London translation company that required a fluent speaker of ‘Glaswegian English’.The recent film ‘Made In Jamaica’ was also wholly subtitled. Languages do diverge and progress over time. Grammar has always been open to subjective opinions. It’s now common not to spell ‘internet’ with a capital ‘I’. The impact digital is having on language could easily be seen as larger step in this progression. Abbreviations like ‘LOL’ are beginning to convey their own particular connotations, meaning and significantly impact on the message of conversations and dialogue. However, like with any generational conflict that the internet and digital is helping to bring to the fore (copyright is another which we will explore next week), it’s not as straight forward as one way or the other. Websites like http://savethewords.org/, a brilliant campaign from the Oxford English Dictionary highlights the beauty and striding connotations in rare underused words, and so like the copyright argument, a balance between progression and the status quo must be struck without each party entirely dismissing the other argument. The new digital literacy and language that young people are driving and creating is not going to disappear, or shrink in any respect, so it must be down to society as a whole to decide which words both convey the meaning of our messages and yet don’t mutate language beyond comprehension.

Stumbled across this on the brilliant Everything is Terrible blog.

Q. What happens when you employ awful 30-something year old actors to dress, act and speak like teenagers whilst simultaneously patronising and confusing their supposed audience with ridiculous jargon?

A. Teen Biz!

Even though Teen Biz is very dated it is still hilarious and a good example of how not to engage youth. Seriously where do these people come from and who commissions this stuff?

GET TO WORK, TEENS! from Everything Is Terrible on Vimeo.

In the first of our P2P research sessions Headboxer Rushda Khan (23) takes a look at the internet and how it effects her and her friends social world. Keeping a close eye on Facebook, Rushda investigates how, if at all, social networks benefit us:

Like many young people, my Facebook friend count has hit three figures. But I am not a popular person: I have exchanged only a few sentences with most of my Facebook friends and I have never spoken to a third of them at all. Yet pick one and I am likely to be able to tell you their interests, where they went last night and how they are feeling. I may even be able to tell you who they are in a relationship with and how well that relationship is going.

Most young people are only too familiar with the absurd situation where we see one such ‘friend’ on the street and think she got drunk at a party last night, and then pass them by without batting an eyelid. This person may know just as much about us and yet for all intents and purposes we are strangers, only on each other’s lists because of the most trivial recognition.

This ‘Facebook friend’ syndrome is a remarkable indication of the way young people now use the Internet. In earlier Internet days, we would log on specifically to email someone or chat to them on MSN. But now we use the Internet to connect to people in a way that could only be described as passive. We browse their photos and read their statuses without necessarily letting them know about it, rather like reading someone’s diary. We end up forming opinions about them without ever having communicated with them at all. Mirroring this is our intense desire to personalise our own space on the Internet – we do not just want to know about others, we want others to know about us.

But knowing about someone is not the same as knowing them. The latter requires an level of interaction which seems to have disappeared in our online habits. According to Virgil (22, Cambridge), social networking sites may not only do nothing to create or boost friendships, they may harm them as well. “I feel like I’ve spent time with someone even when I haven’t.” The irony therefore seems to be that social networking may not really be very social at all.

The passive way in which we ‘socialise’ online is only a symptom of a greater move towards using the Internet passively in general. Because of the number of things we can do at the same time, young people no longer need an aim when they are online and often do not choose to spend their time focussed on a conversation with one person. In the same way as we may connect to someone via social networking for no other reason than that we can connect to them, we are often connected to the Internet ‘for connection’s sake’ and don’t have to do anything in particular. While this lack of specific demands is enjoyable for many, some young people are overwhelmed by it. Sebastian (21, Bath) says he doesn’t even know what to do online much of the time.

Despite the social side leaving a lot to be desired, I still think however there is a certain beauty to the interconnected nature of the Internet. While a book or CD may be enjoyed in its own right, it will not link to other books and CDs in the way the Internet makes them link. While young people think that Wikipedia and other online encyclopedias are not sufficient for school work, crucially most still love the unique way we can explore topics in endless interconnected chains and find out about the world without having to go searching for specific things.

Similarly I think that the way in which young people can have an online experience rather than simply an online activity is exciting as we are constantly learning more and getting more than if we did just one task at a time. Taking music as an example, we have reached the point where we can now access new and diverse music at the click of a button, have it play via iTunes, see song lyrics, and see recommendations via sites such as Lastfm. All this can happen in the background and, like many other online applications, can be absorbed without even realising it.

There is no doubt that passive learning isn’t always the best way to learn something and passive socialising isn’t the best way to have friends. However, there are benefits to both and it is especially refreshing to have a balance between the real world and online world. This isn’t a new revelation: young people have always recognised this. While the Internet can no longer be considered as “geeky” by our peers due to the new trendiness of social networking, using the Internet too much is still considered anti‐social and has always been considered as such. Any young person I have spoken to passionately defends the superiority of face to face contact to online contact, even though they may spend many hours of their day online. It is indeed about the balance: there are some things in real life which cannot be replicated online and vice-versa. We can certainly do more online now and our habits have dramatically changed but that doesn’t mean what we do is replacing anything we value offline.

Young people today – the ‘Facebook generation’ – have set a precedent in way we use the internet. Having been an early user of the Internet, in the days when young people thought the “big thing”was to swarm internet chat rooms, it is astonishing to see the direction in which we have taken our online behaviour a decade on. It is therefore extremely difficult to predict what will happen in future. I only need to think about my little niece Sara to understand the changes that are occurring. She plays children’s games online and uses video chat adeptly, even though she is only four years old.

Who knows how she will be using the Internet when she is a teenager?

Part 2 coming soon, what do Rushda’s friends think of the current state of the internet?

It has been a really busy few weeks over at Face Youth Lab, we have been diving head first in to some really meaty issues in the world of youth. Below are links to our 5 most recent posts but to see the full picture head over to www.faceyouthlab.com

1. P2P Research – Intern Fashion Forecast

Kicking off our peer-to-peer research programme are Coral and Suzy. This week we are lucky to have them interning with us. Coral (16) and Suzy (15) have a passion for fashion, so rather than make them address our tea addiction or go to purgatory (a.k.a. the Post Office) we asked them to become our special guest bloggers and let us know what the hot fashion trends of the moment are. Everyday this week they will be unearthing a new trend, so make sure you check back to get your fashion fix!

2. Digital Cannibalisation – Where Does Music Go From Here?

According to a recent report by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industries, 95% of music downloads in 2008 were illegal. The report claims that more than 40 billion songs were illegally downloaded and popular music website DrownedinSound calculate that this left the music industry with £48 billion shortfall.

3. Headboxers Recession Experience – Part 2

Rather than just get standard quotes from our Headboxers, we also thought we would branch out a little bit and ask them to visualize their feelings about the economy. There is, as you would expect, a lot of doom and gloom, but it does seem to a certain extent, tongue in cheek, it seems like youth can see a lighter side of the recession, a side that all the stats and figures do not show!

4. Graduates Job Hell Continues – AGR: ‘25% fewer jobs available in the UK’

The Association of Graduate Recruiters has released its first results of the year and, unsurprisingly, it makes bleak reading. The AGR reports that…

“Vacancies have plummeted by 24.9% in the latest recruitment round approaching levels not seen since the last recession in 1991 and far exceeding the modest dip of 5.4% predicted by the same recruiters in February.”

Ouch…

5. Headboxers Recession Experience – Part 1

To coincide with the release of our Tech Tribe report we got in touch with some of our Headboxers to give us an insight in to their lives during the recession. The first topic we approached them about was job hunting during the recession, has it been as bad as everyone makes it out to be? Or is it still a fruitful market for the young professional?