Because they can have it all right now, so why not?

I listened to a webinar put on by YPulse last week – Ypulse is a youth marketing and research organization and their web site flashes ads with things like “Connecting Brands with Youth”. Now, I have to add my disclaimer here that I don’t like the idea of marketing directly to Teens and Tweens. I think their lives are tricky enough, navigating school, friends and developing into good adults and all. Making them feel like they need more stuff and specifically “my cool stuff” gives me the heebie-jeebies.

But companies in the US do market to tweens and teens, because combined they are a $140 Billion dollar industry, and they influence another $370 Billion in spending (read: make their parents buy stuff). Wow, that’s a lot of money.

So I listened to learn what companies know about my kids that I don’t. I took ten pages of notes during this webinar and I’ll probably end up writing a series of posts.

Here at the National Institute on Media and the Family, Dr. Dave Walsh talks about kids living in the media generation of “More, Easy, Fast and Fun” – today I want to talk about the Fast.

At one point in the webinar the speaker said, “Teens want immediacy, instant gratification so online buying is hard for them. It takes too long.” I got a little shivery feeling, when I was a kid, I had to wait, usually until my birthday or Christmas to get anything and my kids can’t even tolerate shipping time?

• 85% of teens have a cell phone and using instant text messages to reach friends,
• anywhere, anytime, a majority of kids watch favorite shows online, whenever they want to watch,
• Internet brings any piece of information and friends to them right now and 99% of teens use social networking sites to interact with friends.

Almost anything is available at the click of their fingers. Is it any wonder that FAST has taken root like creeping Charlie out in your yard?

So why not Fast?

Too much Fast gets in the way of kids learning about patience, waiting, longing, hard work that pays off later – these are critical attributes to living a successful life. Relationships, jobs, even school depend on these things. All this Fast radically changes parenting, if you ask me. So what can we do to counteract it?

• Slow down, even just a little.
• Try to think of one thing that you and your family can set a goal toward and anticipate.  Maybe it’s saving the money for a trip you take a year from now.  Maybe it’s waiting until a birthday to buy that new video game.
• Take the time to really map out a school project with your child, one that isn’t due for awhile, with the steps for getting it done over time.

Ok, one more thing about YPulse. They also do some interesting work about what motivates youth to engage in social causes and that’s important. We’d love to hear some of your ideas for building patience and waiting in our Fast culture. Why don’t you share one?