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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.

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."

On her blog, 12-year-old Tavi Gevinson posts photos of herself wielding a toilet plunger, posing in a room covered with newsprint and wearing a paint-splattered tutu inspired by Dolce & Gabbana's spring 2008 collection. She's part of a young generation of fashion bloggers who display their outfits for all to see. "Well I am new here," she wrote March 31 in her first post at Style Rookie. "Lately I've been really interested in fashion, and I like to make binders and slideshows of 'high-fashion' modeling and designs."

The Governor signed the bill at a library in St. Charles County, not far from the neighborhood where a 13-year-old girl, Megan Meier, hanged herself in 2006 after receiving taunting messages over the Internet.  The law was passed after the national outcry that followed the suicide of Meier

When the full story came to light, and public demand grew for the mother's prosecution, it turned out that what Ms. Drew had done, while clearly malicious, was not against the law as the Missouri Statutes were then written. So the Missouri Legislature and Governor Blunt decided to correct this problem. The new law adds to unlawful harassment electronic means of communication.

The new law penalizes those who knowingly communicate with another person who is, or who purports to be, seventeen years of age or younger and recklessly frightens, intimidates, or causes emotional distress to such other person.  Also, the new law makes it a crime "to engage, without good cause, in any other act with the purpose to frighten, intimidate, or cause emotional distress to another person, cause such person to be frightened, intimidated, or emotionally distressed, and such person's response to the act is one of a person of average sensibilities considering the person's age."

Dave Crenshaw discussed his latest book, The Myth of Multitasking. Crenshaw makes a strong distinction behind “background tasking”—reading a magazine while waiting in line, for instance, or listening to music while coding—and “switch-tasking.” Most of the time, when we talk about “multi-tasking,” we’re actually talking about the very costly practice of “switch-tasking.” Every time you switch your attention from one place to another—even from one browser window to another—you take a significant hit to your focus

Switch-tasking, he definitively proves, causes you to execute each task more slowly than you would otherwise, with more errors

pecifically, what can parents, teachers, and employers do to help their kids, students, and employees focus their attention more effectively? As a kid, student, and employee myself, I have to say that I believe the solution is emphatically not to limit access—at least not for older teens. Rather, I think the key lies in laying out the facts and discussing strategies. Information overload and the allure of infinite access, after all, are challenges that affect everyone with an internet connection—not just young people. And, though writing a stellar book report might not be a cause compelling enough to warrant total focus, every young person will at some point find a pursuit worth paying attention to. Maybe it’s writing short stories; maybe writing music. Maybe it’s making art. But when that pursuit comes along, they’re going to want to know how to firewall their attention, focus their efforts, and—for once—stop switching.

Mathew Firsht brought the landmark libel action after coming across a Facebook group titled “Has Mathew Firsht lied to you?” as well as a profile containing false claims about his sexuality, religion and political views.

The damages awarded on Thursday by the High Court, as well as the record payout given to Max Mosley, the motorsports chief accused of indulging in a Nazi-themed orgy, will serve as a stark warning to old and new media alike, experts said.

Users who think of the site as a harmless way to catch up with friends still do not appreciate the risks of posting jokes or other potentially embarrassing details about friends and colleagues, experts said

For the past two years Blumenthal and other states' attorneys general have negotiated with both Facebook and MySpace to implement more than 60 new safety measures to protect children from online predators and from gaining access to inappropriate content, like pornography.

Under the agreement with Facebook, its officials have agreed to prominently display safety tips, and to require users under the age of 18 to affirm that they have read the tips. Users over 18 can no longer search for under-18 users, and Facebook officials will automatically be notified when someone under 18 is in danger of providing personal information to an adult user.

Parents will also be provided with tools to remove a child's profile from the site. Inappro­priate images and content will be removed, and ads for age-restricted products, like alcohol and tobacco, will be limited to users old enough to purchase those items. Most significantly, Facebook agreed to diligently search for and remove profiles of registered sex offenders, and it will "in­crease efforts to remove groups for incest, pedophilia, cyber-bullying and other violations of the site's terms of service and expel from the site individual violators of those terms."

But that doesn't mean YouTube or any other media company should get the blame, legally or ethically, for the attack, media experts said Friday.

The teenagers have been arrested on charges that they beat the teen so they could make a video of the attack to post online. One of the girls struck the 16-year-old victim on the head several times and then slammed her head into a wall, knocking her unconscious, according to an arrest report.

From a legal standpoint, YouTube and other online service providers are largely exempt from liability because of a 1996 anti-pornography law. One provision says Internet service providers are not considered publishers simply because they retransmit information provided by their users or other sources.

These photos of these girls were without a doubt being sexualized, and my four-year-old daughter was amongst these images.