I mentioned before that teen (girls especially) try and make themselves grow up way faster than they actually are. They wear older kids brands and make up. They talk on cell phones (all throughout the mall), text and obviously use the internet. (And seriously, maybe it’s just my town, but all I saw in the mall was real coach bags and fake louis vuittons… crazy, because I don’t really remember my girl friends carrying purses that much in middle school.)
One thing I noticed during research is that publications and Web sites aimed at middle school aged girls, most likely aren’t hitting that demographic. They are most likely hitting a younger demographic, especially when thinking back to how my friends acted when we were in middle school. Cheesily aiming toward teens, the way a lot of MTV shows and even Disney sometimes gets away with it (like Lohan movies, High School Musical, or Hilary Duff). Our AIM should be for a little higher than middle school if we actually want to reach that age group.
That said, here is some other research I deemed important:
According the Pew, 32% of teens report having been targets of cyberbullying (which is broadly defined by them as “a range of annoying and potentially menacing online activities”). And I realize that this is a pretty big thing in the schools as well. But no one has really found a way to stop it or make it slow. Examples:
In 10th grade, one of the kids in my group of friends posted a Hate List in his AIM profile. It was literally a list that said “I Hate the Following People:” followed by several members of my class, most of whom thought they were friends and had no idea they were hated. Though I managed to keep myself off this list at first, I’m sure I would have been added after I spoke out (of course online) against this assholes. My buddy list soon got deleted somehow and I also had someone created a fake version of my screen name and invite people over to my house, people I wasn’t in good terms with. Such is life. It never really bothered me that much, but I had a gay friend in high school who had his life literally threatened by another student through e-mails. The other student was actually apprehended and charged eventually. It’s things like this that can make an already difficult time in teen’s lives even more difficult. If we could think of a way to do these teens a service while still giving them the materialistic pleasures they crave, I think something could really take off. I don’t doubt that girls have experienced the same kind of cyberbullying my friends and I did.
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