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For example, miniDV cameras are not only among the new tools of self-expression, but the very act of creating personal videos with friends and creating events and key themes to shoot have become key aspects of entertainment in and of itself. To this generation, playing music via your cell phone, and movies and TV shows via your iPod are a given. Emailing is considered too old-school by many, whereas texting is outpacing cell phone calls. These things also go hand-in-hand with changes in online shopping patterns, top website preferences, communication and blogging patterns, and new habits for using social networks—not to mention the tremendous changes in preferred social networks and profile page usage patterns in general. These things are changing the paradigm of how the businesses of entertainment, communication, retail, marketing, advertising, and branding have been done in the past.

Unfortunately, as more companies pour big money into expanding their new media marketing components, as many people have discovered, the Field of Dreams theory (“if we build it, they will come”) certainly doesn’t apply when it comes to reaching savvy youth today. Popping up a site (or social network for that matter) no matter how cool it is means nothing if you can’t reach the market it’s intended for. This Report, therefore, also includes a great deal about how young people find out about new websites, communicate with others, and other forms of grassroots networking.

Overall, the Digital Lifestyle Youth Culture Profile Report 2008 not only reveals traits by target demographics, but also the growing generation gap occurring even within this generation.

Campaigns to educate students about the pitfalls of Facebook — how professors, parents and prospective employers can use the social networking site to uncover information once considered private — have become a staple of freshman orientation sessions and career center clinics. Students are apparently listening.

If I’m holding something I shouldn’t be holding, I’ll untag,” says Robyn Backer, a junior at Virginia Wesleyan College. She recalls how her high school principal saw online photos of partying students and suspended the athletes who were holding beer bottles but not those with red plastic cups. “And if I’m making a particularly ugly face, I’ll untag myself. Anything really embarrassing, I’ll untag.”

They are now developing a Web site to help educate their peers on the same issues and plan to visit elementary and middle school students this year to pass on Internet safety messages. Students also created individual blogs this week. "We're trying to develop youth to be leaders in the city and the state and the nation and the world. With the Internet, it's not just local," said Akua Goodrich, the program's director who helped found the Power Unit for Motivating Youth, an after-school and mentoring program in the city. "We have to prepare them to be safe and help spread the message."

"When you're a kid, you don't want to listen to an adult who doesn't know what you're going through," she said. "You're much more open to listen to your peers talk to you. It's more interesting."

The researchers also discussed opinions, some of them perhaps surprising, on other notable subjects in the online social-networking space. Lawley, who has a 14-year-old son, said she is strongly against some of the restrictive methods used online to segregate adults from children in an attempt to protect kids from predators. On Second Life, for example, she can't interact with her son because he has to be in the teen grid and she has to be in the adult grid.

"So I don't learn from him about how to use technologies, and he doesn't learn from me about how to interact in a social context," she said. Shutting down sites or trying to shut out people won't solve the problem of sexual predators, she said. "We don't talk about shutting down the Catholic Church," she said, referring to the clergy sex-abuse scandal. "Sexual deviancy isn't unique to the online world."

Most agencies manage sensitive citizen data: addresses, Social Security numbers, financial records and medical information. You name it, some state or local office has it, and probably electronically. The problem? Many theorize that the Millennials' penchant for online openness could unintentionally expose private information, leaving it ripe for the picking. Millennials bring innovative ideas about technology's use, but for that same reason, do they also pose new security risks?

Anti-virus vendor Symantec released a study in March 2008 assessing this issue. Symantec commissioned Applied Research-West to execute the study, and 600 participants were surveyed from different verticals, including government. Survey participants included 200 IT decision-makers, 200 Millennial workers and 200 non-Millennial workers born before 1980. The data revealed that Millennials are more likely than workers of other ages to use Web 2.0 applications on company time and equipment. Some interesting figures include: 69 percent of surveyed Millennials will use whatever application, device or technology they want at work, regardless of office IT policies; and only 45 percent of Millennials stick to company-issued devices or software, compared to 70 percent of non-Millennials.

How might young people be workplace assets? Could all that time typing or texting make them speedy typists, able to whip up memos at the drop of a hat? Does familiarity with new and emerging technologies have its benefit? You bet, according to Dustin Lanier, director of the Texas Council on Competitive Government. The council brings state leaders together to shape policy for government departments, including IT. "I think they've built an approach to work that involves a lot of multitasking," Lanier said of the Millennials. "Something will be loading on one screen, you alt-tab to another application and pull up an e-mail, the first process loads, you flip back, start a new process, flip to a forum and pull up a topic. It's frenetic but normal to that group." Lanier doesn't think Millennials present more of an IT threat than their older co-workers. After all, young people don't have a monopoly on being distracted in the office. "I can't tell you how many times I've walked by people's desks of all ages and seen Minesweeper up," he said. He thinks employers should embrace some Web 2.0 applications. Otherwise, Millennials might be discouraged from sticking around. According to Lanier, this younger work force comprises many people who think of themselves as free agents. Government should accommodate some of their habits in order to prevent them from quitting.