The Unanswered Question of Skyfall: Is James Bond Bisexual?

***SPOILER ALERT***

The latest Bond is loaded with all of the action you would expect it to be, but what you might not expect is an inference that 007 may have had a previous bisexual experience.

What are we supposed to make of that?

The villan of Skyfall uses overwhelming amounts of cyber technology to confuse, manipulate and dismantle the world of MI6. It is a form of sensory overload that seems quite effective at creating disruptive mayhem in the life of the English spy community.

For James Bond though, our perpetrator uses a very different form of sensory overload: homosexual eroticism. 

Chained to a chair, in submission to his captor, it seems that a hyper-heterosexual such as James Bond would come unglued by this type of torture - yet Bond side steps the advance with a simple question: "What makes you think this is my first time?"

This is an interesting social commentary.

The movie seems to suggest that we are easily overwhelmed by cyber technology, running in fear of those who seem intuitively capable of manipulating it for their own ends; in contrast, while homosexuality may still make some feel uncomfortable, we need not be afraid of this form of sensory overload - it has become common place...even in longstanding institutions such as the 50 year old James Bond franchise.

What do you think? Is this part of a systematic agenda to reframe human sexuality or the reflection of a culture that embraces various forms of sexual expression?

When To Make Sure You Say 'Goodbye' Online

© Rhphotos | Dreamstime.comBe

Among social media users, younger teens are the most likely to filter online interactions only from their own perspective of reality. They have little capacity to view life from another's shoes without being prompted to do so. Additionally, they use their new found Internet independence to gather positive interactions with people they know online - they are very in tune with whether interactions would suggest you like them or not. Consequently, more than anyone else in your SM network, younger teens are the most likely to get a sense that they have been ignored online. This seems to be especially true of younger females, but there are plenty examples of young men that are quick to send an IM the moment they see a green icon light up online and looking for affirmation from you.

Teens reaching out to you online is a great thing - it reveals that they value your relationship. Using social media to reinforce relationships with younger teens in your life is good for them - it helps build 'social capital' - an important ingredient on the journey to adulthood. The reason they view the interaction pretty much only from their definition of reality is because they are concrete thinkers. It goes with the territory. So, when the conversation needs to be wrapped up (and it would practically never end without a pop up video of a dancing kitten), it is an important practice to concretely end the conversation with a solid 'good-bye'.

And, for good measure, why not throw in an emoticon? Everyone loves to stick out their tongue when they get the chance...no?!

  

Want to Feel Closer To Your Teen? Text Them

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One supporting area teens need to successfully transition from childhood to adulthood is a sense of closeness to emotionally encouraging adults - like parents for example. Feelings of closeness is about the strengths of bonds between parents and kids. Like all needs, closeness is rated from the perspective of the child, not the parent. To that end, research indicates that almost 2/3 of teens feel closer to their parents when they exchange text messages with them. That in itself is a pretty good reason to start adding text messages to your relational connection repertoire. For parents however, the number who feel closer to their teens when texting them jumps to 90%. That means almost every parent can feel closer to their teen by exchanging texts. Though no technological tool can replace a quality offline relationship, positive affirmation is always a good thing, and good things tend to replicate themselves.

So send a text to your kids today...just wait until they get out of school to do it - their teachers will thank you.

R U An Inadvertent Cyber Bully?

Have you ever left an app with instant message abilities open on a different tab or even different window? Then you might have been a cyber bully perpetrator and didn't even know it!

© Andres Rodriguez | Dreamstime.com

This is common practice for many of us to have multiple tabs open online at the same time. Some of those tabs are open to social media sites like Facebook that have IM features to it. No big deal?

Well, probably not, unless you have any early adolescents as part of your IM contacts.

Cyber bullying is most prevalent among younger teens. More than half of teens who have experienced cyber bullying in the past several months are most likely to report that the form of bullying was by being ignored online.

That's right...being ignored.

This can happen intentionally, but it can also happen accidentally. Early adolescents tend to be concrete thinkers, they take the world at face value - everything is what it appears to be. Mr. Bean is a caricature of this. If they want to IM with you and your online icon is lit up, then subconsciously to an early adolescent you are available.

But if you are not? The lack of response is unnerving to a young person.

However, there is hope!

If you have a habit have using multiple tabs, make sure your message alerts are activated. If you are going to be away from your computer for a while, take the time to log off any IM enabled sites. Finally, teach younger teens and pre-teens to understand that a lit icon does not necessarily mean another person is there. They can understand this, they just need prompting. Also, teach them to be aware of how their icons may appear to their friends. This learned behavior can vastly reduce the number of perceived cyber bullying incidences.

How have you seen misunderstandings happen online because people were not physically sharing the same space?

Is Mr. Bean Really That Funny?

The presence of Mr. Bean was one of a several entertaining highlights in last week's Olympic opening ceremonies. There are those who find him painfully funny and other's who simply dismiss him as British humor. Regardless, Mr. Bean is one of the few characters that is embraced across a wide range of cultures. Why?

Rowan Atkinson has described this character as a 10 year old boy trapped in a grown man's body. 10 year old boys intuitively accept the world at face value. On top of that, this particular 'trapped' boy appears to be fairly introverted and has an aversion to using verbal skills. An adult encountering the world as a 10 year old boy creates a sense of awkwardness that is rather humorous, if not painfully so. This childhood experience is shared across many cultures, even if adulthood has slammed it out of us. This is a life stage experience we tend to forget.

For my friends who either work with pre-teens or find opportunities to engage them online, Mr Bean is worth a second look. There are some adults who expect pre-teens to act like grown ups online and get frustrated when they don't. But the reality is that they can't - they are not adults! If you need a reminder of what the world looks to a 10 year old boy, watch some Mr. Bean sketches - he paints a great caricature of life as a boy in a world that expects more from him!

What's your favorite Mr. Bean moment? Do you see him as a 10 year old?

Using Social Media To Connect Extended Family

© Swaminathan Narayanan | Dreamstime.com

Social media is a great tool to connect extended family with each other, especially considering the distances that often separate grandparents from grandchildren and cousins from each other and their aunts and uncles. The good news is that many teens think social media helps them stay in contact with extended family too. 


For extended families that travel together, one idea is to setup a family event page. Because the anticipation of the trip can be as much fun as the trip itself, a page like this will gain momentum quickly. Encourage those going on the trip to offer lodging, meal and activity ideas. Large groups tend to go back to the same place as they have been previously, so post some old pictures of past trips and links to new experiences. Tap into the cleverness of that crazy uncle who knows all the weird trivia to create games or contests, and then award winners at family gatherings. Use it during the trip as a place to post gathering times, locations and contact information, and encourage teens especially to post videos and pictures capturing family memories. 


Every family has their story, creating a place to gather memories and anticipate new ones will build connections both across and between generations.


How is your family using social media to keep connected with those you don't see regularly?

New California Law Includes Cyber Bully Preparedness with Earthquake Preparedness Plans

Two new cyber bullying laws go into effect this July in California, designed to curtail bullying behavior by expanding the definition to include cyber activities and mandate educator cyber bullying safety preparedness plan.

Highlights of the two new laws:

-they require educators to act and get involved, when safe to do so
-they require a plan of action, with a reasonable timeline
-there is opportunity for appeal
-victims will get priority in changing schools if need be
-training for educators, students and parents in identifying cyber bullying

© Onion | Dreamstime.com

-they equate emotional care of all students with physical care, such as earthquake safety preparedness
-perpetrators can be removed from school if the targeted student: feels they are personally threatened, there is an effect on their emotional/mental health, or if it interferes with their academics.

It is good that politicians treat this issue very seriously, they want to reduce bullying, and statistically there has been little change in the past few years that would suggest anyone is making an real headway. The solution here is to broaden the term, require educator intercession and expand awareness programs. The problem is that the California Legislature continues to do what they are good at: looking like they are acting when really they are just making it someone else's problem.

Among those who serve youth there is a real desire to help, and many are actively looking for solutions - they do not need to be legally required to do so. Most schools are doing online monitoring fairly well. Computers are set in public spaces, awareness programs are often in place and teachers are fairly aware of changes in a student's behavior that may indicate pain. However, students are very adept at using technology to their own ends, and are not afraid to do so. Consequently, which type of social media is used, and how it is implemented is more driven by the social group. Ultimately though, cyber bullying requires Internet or texting access. Much of the cyber bullying that occurs on school property is done through the use of text and data plan cell phones, decidedly not provided by the schools.  In the end parents equip students with the tools needed to participate in cyber bullying on school property, leaving educators with little resource to either turn the tide of cyber bullying or meet the legislative expectations laid upon them.

Does Facebook Trash Talk Mean The End Of Social Media?

© Sova004 | Dreamstime.com

Just before Facebook's IPO, GM announces they are taking their ball and going home, the game doesn't work and they are not going to play anymore. The next week the wealthiest investors, who don't seem to have any idea of what social media is all about, invest in the most anticipated IPO in recent history on a stock market that ironically has technical difficulties. Instead of doubling their money by day's end, they walk away with less cash...way less. By the next week, everybody is an expert and suggests they predicted the demise of Facebook. Really?! Now, as Facebook's stock continues its downward spiral it seems in vogue to declare that people are abandoning Facebook and that the brief era of social media is going the way of chat rooms and dodo birds.

Problem is, I don't think so. At least not for social media.

People intuitively desire to tell others what they are experiencing, and Facebook has been a great platform for doing that. I concede that Facebook traffic is down, but there is not another common platform just yet that the masses are willing to embrace. People migrated en masse from MySpace to Facebook in large part because Facebook was easier to use, and perhaps more socially acceptable for people who were not 16 year old girls. But it does not mean people have stopped using social media tools to get their experiences out.

Case in point, the other night we went as a family along with my wife's office coworkers and their families to see the Sacramento showing of Wicked. If you have not seen Wicked yet, GO...but I digress.  Perhaps because this group is mostly lawyers, accountants and financial planners, society has us on the balcony. Whatever the reason, it is a great place to observe people during the intermission, and observing others is something I love to do. As the break happens, the lights come on and all across the auditorium people are either making a bee-line for the restrooms, checking their cell phones, or in some cases, doing both! It was pretty impressive to see all of those little blue square screens light up across the crowd. People were tweeting, texting and checking messages. Some may have even been posting on Facebook, but I am not sure...no time to ask. The point is, they were all actively engaging in what is otherwise known as social media.

Whether or not it is appropriate to do this while your friends stand around you with their hands in their pockets will be the subject of another post.

Using technology to share experiences with others who are not physically present is social media. Chat rooms went the way of the dodo bird in part because they were too time bound to be a useful tool, and in part because there were too many people you didn't know inserting themselves into personal conversations. This was not good. However, as long as the population is highly mobile, people will embrace the technology that keeps them connected with the folks they care about the most. That is something I do not see changing any time soon.

Don't Step In the Cow Poo!

My parent's were in town this weekend and re-shared a story of a time when my son was about 3 years old and staying with my parents on their cattle ranch. Walking across the cow pasture, Grandma helped avoid the numerous cow pies with a simple warning to watch out for the cow poo. As they zig-zagged across the field, they came to the winter feeding area, one end of which had a rather large mound of cow manure that the tractors had pushed out of the feeding area to clear the ground. What was a fairly disgusting hill to most adults became a Mt. Everest that needed to be conquered in a child's mind. With surprising speed and determination, grandson tore off to climb manure mountain, leaving grandma in the dust with little to stop the horrifying collision of child and poo but a shouting appeal to STOP, DON'T CLIMB THAT HILL!

© Serghei Starus | Dreamstime.com

Whether it was the shrill in grandma's voice, fear of the unknown or the action of an obedient child, forturnately for grandma, her grandson stopped short of becoming a brown ball of muck. Of course, bewildered, he turned to grandma to ask why not, to which the instructive reply came that the hill was in fact a really large pile of cow poo. Confused, my son turned back to the hill of manure, studying it for a moment before asking a simple question of childhood wonder:

"Was that a big cow?"

Experience is a great thing. From experience we gain wisdom, we develop an ability for insight, and we use it to frame an intuitive understanding of what we are experiencing in this world. In fact, everything we experience for the first time is filtered through a mental filter of past experiences that help us form an understanding, or perspective really, of our new reality. This tool of interpretation happens instinctively, we are not overtly aware that we utilize it. Consequently, it is easy to expect others to have the same intuitive sense that we have. It is easy to get frustrated with people who don't seem to get it.

Social media as an expression of human community is fraught with intuitive misunderstandings. The reality is that early and middle age teens do not necessarily have the life experience (and at times the cognitive ability) to interpret the social messages they are experiencing or understand the rippling social consequences of their own postings. Even though it may feel that teens want their space, it is important for adults to be very aware of their kid's social footprint, being available to guide young people away from the piles of poo that are often present on social media postings.

The best way to accomplish this is to walk these social fields together, being ever available both online and off to provide an additional perspective of the manure mountains.

Blessings on the journey!

Brad

Why You Don't Want A "Social Media Voice" In Youth Ministry

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Looking through an upcoming conference website I noticed a break out session focusing on social media. Of course, this gets my interest as I pretty much always take the time to read such descriptions. Most of these make me angry and this one was no exception.

The thrust of the breakout is that social media exists because the cry of the human heart is for community and this cry fuels further social technological advances. The description sets up a sort of snapshot take of social media, a mere and incomplete reflection of real relationships. The story is the same as many of these types of sessions: we as a society do not get the community that we crave and so we have set up these complicated computer mediated networks that simultaneously attempt to connect us yet safely keep us at arms length with each other. The answer is to simplify our lives, yet not abandon social media completely because there is a need for a Christian voice in this medium.

Let us not abandon these poor digital souls who do not know any better but to engage in empty relationships. Let us take pity on them and tell them instead there is a better way. Let us be a voice to the lost, let us draw them to our blogs so that we can be encouraged by our stats and the multitudes will know the truth and be informed that what they really want is a non-virtual relationship.

Yes...that paragraph is dripping with sarcasm.

The problem is that we are so conditioned by entertainment we use this as a background to interpret what is happening on social networks. By doing so, we limit the impact of social media to how many followers we have, and measure significance by audience. Consequently we completely miss the ministry point, and conference organizers continue to throw away precious Kingdom resources because we do not understand why our young people's smart phones are an extension of their arms.

Social media does not exist because people deeply desire community, social media exists as an expression of community. It is a place where people tell those they have a relationship with what is going on in their lives.

The primary motivation to joining a specific social networking site is friends. The biggest technological change efforts in the social media landscape is not how to build the largest audience, but how to segment your friends into relational circles, so that you can interact with only the group you intend to. Bringing a voice to this is like yelling in a digital wilderness. Additionally, teens are bombarded with so much data they cannot possibly take it all in. We do not win by merely contributing a voice to that onslaught of data. We win by being a part of a teen's offline network so that our online interactions are an extension and reflection of our existing offline relationship.

We win by listening to what people have to say.

Which leads me to wonder, how do you decide which voices to help navigate the social media wilderness do you listen to and why? How do you evaluate them?

Cyber Bullies Fueled By Sarcastic Abilities

Cyber bullying is a popular topic among adults who work with teens, and rightly so, nobody wants to see kids emotionally destroying one another. Its sad, it tugs at our heart and it motivates adults to step in before someone gets hurt. Cyber bullying is a complex issue with multiple levels of motivation mixed in with developmental limitations and inadvertent offenses. One very intentional ingredient though is sarcasm.

As early adolescents begin to think abstractly, the realization sets in that they have an ability to say one thing that implies something completely different. How cool is that! Its like discovering magic, and of course, practice makes perfect...

Give a kid a hammer and everything begins to look like a nail.

© Blotty | Dreamstime.com

Why sarcasm works is because it is a two sided coin. It tears someone else down while it appears to build someone else up. The majority of intentional cyber bullying activity occurs with a group of friends in front of a computer screen. Everyone wants to matter, but young teen girls constantly have their 'do you like me' radar on and this group of friends provide an unwitting audience to their cyber genius. Where off line bullying may end sooner because somebody sees the pain of the victim and eventually has the courage to step in, among more concrete thinking early adolescents, empathy for the victim will not come without intentional prodding. Someone who can think abstractly needs to connect the dots for a younger person who thinks more in the here and now.

Young teens do not intuitively have empathy for a person across a social network.

Educating young people can help, but it will not typically serve as an inhibitor for those who will choose to use sarcasm to cyber bully. Instead, we need to educate adults, equipping households with mental models that allows for adult awareness of and guiding participation with, adolescent Internet activity. Only adults living life online with their teens will help curb such a destructive behavior among early adolescents.

Questions: How have you seen or experienced the use of sarcasm to bully?

What are some ways that adults can be more aware of what teens are doing online?

Facebook Not Making The Wealthy Wealthier

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As the third day of trading gets underway, Facebook continues to not make the wealthy wealthier. By the end of trading the first day, fingers were being pointed. Close out the second and people are estimating where the bottom will be. Mark Z has said the business is driven by a social agenda and not investor's wealth. So far he is proving his point.

Other than the obvious over-valuation of the IPO, there is a fundamental difference in how Facebook operates compared to other Internet giants like Google. Companies want to be able to advertise in a way that makes sense to them, project a product in a manner that causes people to spend their money on it. Google can do that by target advertisements linked to search engine queries. As GM pointed out last week, Facebook was not effective in doing that, consequently they were pulling the plug on site advertising. From a return on investment evaluation, it was not working.

The adult majority population continues to see the Internet as a tool best utilized for disseminating information. Social networking sites however are not built on that, they are built on relationships. It is not the information a company wants me to know that matters, it is what my circle of 'friends' are experiencing that matters.

Facebook is a giant human web of relationships about 1 billion strong. Advertisers want to envision that as a giant crowd of people all staring at a screen as if they were waiting to buy something. TV did that - everyone watching experienced the same thing at the same time. A digital web of relationships does not operate simultaneously, it operates in waves. What is important is decided by the community, by the network, by the relationships.

Someday, somebody, somewhere will figure out how to make a boatload of money riding the waves of human relationships. Oh wait, somebody did...we call if Facebook.

Let me know, did you the think Facebook IPO would soar or tank? Gut feeling or valuation?

Hyper-Texting As A Barometer Of Teenage Pain

The American Public Health Association defines hyper-texting as sending more than 120 texts on a typical school day and characterizes these individuals as being primarily lower social-economic, minority females with no father residing at home. The APHA study reports that one in five high school students fall into this category and the risk factors for this group include:

• 40% more likely to have tried cigarettes
• 2x more likely to have tried alcohol
• 43% more likely to be binge drinkers
• 41% more likely to have used illicit drugs
• 55% more likely to have been in a physical fight
• nearly 3.5x more likely to have had sex



INDUSTRIAL BAROMETER
© Christian Draghici | Dreamstime.com




• 90% more likely to have had 4 or more sexual partners

The study then identifies hyper-texting as a new health risk factor.

Clearly there is a positive correlation between hyper-texting and risky behaviors. However, it seems premature to implicate texting as the culprit and not a symptom. Could it be that hyper-texting is more of a barometer of the ongoing abandonment of our youth?  In this case, a key piece of information seems to be overlooked, namely the lack of fathers in the home. 

To me, texting is a way that teens can bring their friendship cluster along with them despite the limitations of space and time. A cluster is a group of friends protecting each other's back and they exist to help teenagers survive in our culture. Cell phones provide ongoing and immediate connection to this cluster, a phenomon I have labeled Floating Entourage. Have you ever asked a teen to turn their phone off and they protest because their friends might need them? That is an example of a Floating Entourage and disconnecting them from that is a threat to their support structure. Hyper-texters are a great example of this.

What these teens are lacking is paternal (father) experiences in their life. Characteristics of this type of support will include trust, communication and closeness as perceived by the teen. No one can replace a father in the home, but everyone can begin developing webs of relationships with these at risk students, slowly becoming a part of their Floating Entourage of support. As you interact with teens, keep alert of those who may be hyper-texters, they especially need adults in their life willing to have no other agenda but to be there for the student.

To read the study directly, click here
APHA

Keep loving on the students in your life,
Brad

Hunger Games: Teens Killing Teens For The Enjoyment Of Self-indulgent Adults

Putting aside whether this movie is a protest against the 1% or the inevitable outcome of socialism, for those of us that believe the life stage of adolescence exists and is getting longer because youth are left to navigate their journey to adulthood alone, this movie serves as a commentary on adolescent abandonment.

Due to an uprising that was squelched by the high-tech Capital, the 12 remaining districts that make up Panem are forced to offer as tribute their greatest resource - the generation of tomorrow - one male and one female between the ages of 12-18. Along with 22 others, these two teens are forced to fight in a gladiator meets Survivor epic battle to the death. The last living tribute is crowned victor.

Adult masses play two distinct roles in the film. The vast majority are worker drones so beaten by the political system that they are a shadow of humanity, powerless to care for the youth in their lives. Their world is grey, bleak, hopeless. The other adult crowds are the self-indulgent masses, the uncritical consumer feeding an insatiable appetite for entertainment. Though their world is full of color and creativity, it merely serves to mask their pasty existence. In this part of the adult world, there are no teens in the crowds,  adolescents have no space and little interaction with adults except for that which has been set aside to prepare them as entertainers. The crowds stand by, either indifferent or helpless until finally, at one awful moment in the film, the anger and pain become catalyst for a quickly squelched riot. The Games adapt to maintain the balance, and the crowds are quickly distracted.

The leading characters of youth in the film are portrayed as fatherless, left to provide for each other and forced to remind grown-ups to act like adults. Their mentor is a jaded drunk who originally counsels the teens to accept their fate. Their only hope before and during the Game is to depend on themselves and master the art of playing to adults to acquire the necessary resources for survival. In this world, even love becomes suspect as adult manipulation to secure necessary ends. The best any adult who cares for these teens can do is offer advice, provide props that might help win adult favor and offer good luck. "May the odds ever be in your favor".

The books and now this movie are being embraced by teens and it seems doubtful this is due to any social economic message. Somehow it speaks to their experience of abandonment even as it seems like a caricature to adults.  An apocalypse may not serve as the background setting of our culture, but that aside, are we really all that different? Adults in our world are highly stressed, seemingly living either at the edge of exhaustion or the brink of financial disaster. In this world, the home becomes enclaves of escapism and altars of entertainment while physically shared and public interactive space for youth and adults continue to be reduced in gathering spaces like our work, churches and vacations. Consider the Internet, where the vast majority of teens are active apart from any significant adult guidance and interaction, yet we expect 13 year olds to use social media as if they had adult abilities and wonder why 16 year olds post risky online content seemingly oblivious to any social consequence. In this culture, the virtual world becomes a natural place for teens to connect with their friends, allows them ongoing and immediate support, and on occasion can be a tool used to destroy one another.

From the perspective of our youth, are we really all that different?

Why Teens Exchanging 60 Texts A Day Feels Low

Lead researcher Amanda Lenhart and the Pew Internet team released new statistics March 19 on teenage texting rates, putting the median texts sent and received by teenagers at 60. The number has caused some people who work with youth to question that. If you are one of those people and are thinking a typical high school student could not possibly be exchanging only 60 texts a day, well you would be right...sort of.

© Francisco Hernández Vega | Dreamstime.com

For those of us who took a mandatory stats class a long time ago, perhaps in what seems like a galaxy far, far away, it is good to be reminded that median does not equal average. Median means the mid-point user of the sample group, and the researchers take the time to try and explain this. In this case, half of the surveyed teens exchanged less than 60 texts, the other half exchanged more. The data group creates a statistical skew however as the surveyed teens include 12 year old boys and 17 year old girls, developmentally two very different beasts.

Only in the last few years have researchers been making an appeal to avoid treating adolescents as one monolithic culture when it comes to Internet use. The Pew Internet research is one of the few that provide us with a snapshot of how early and mid adolescents differ in their texting use. In this regard the difference between the two groups is quite striking, and so is the difference between boys and girls.

The research suggests that half of younger teen boys exchange less than 20 texts per day (the other half would therefore send more). In contrast, half of the 14-17 year old girls exchange less than 100 texts per day (the other would be above that number). For boys in the older age group, the half is split at 50 texts per day - which is half the amount of girls in their own age group, yet more than the younger girls who are split at 35 daily exchanged texts. This fits our often preconceived notion that girls are sending a lot of texts to each other, and in fact they are.

The actual average number of texts exchanged daily between girls aged 14-17 is 187. For boys of the same age group it is 176. For 12-13 year old girls the average is 116, while in a surprise stereotype reversal, for boys in that age group the average lands at 131. Why are the averages so much higher than the median? Because hyper-texters are skewing the results upward.

The American Public Health Association defines hyper-texters as those who send more than 120 texts per day. The APHA study places hyper-texters at 19.5% of high school students and suggests that group is mostly female. In Lenhart's study, once a 12-17 year old breaks the 100  exchanged texts barrier, the majority are exchanging over 200 per day. The number above 200 is 18%, and considering most texts are an exchange, half of that would place the student sending more than 100 texts per day, a number consistent with the APHA's research.

Texting is an ongoing activity and teens can often text without being noticed. However, if we were to allow 7 hours of sleep per night, 6 hours of class time and 2 hours of homework per day, hyper-texting high school students would have to exchange a text every 2 minutes, 15 seconds. With 1 in 5 students texting every other minute, it is little wonder that 60 texts a day feels low.

To look at these numbers more closely, follow these links:
Pew Interent Research Study
APHA

Let me know what you think, does 60 texts per day seem low to you?

What is the Floating Entourage Project?

The Floating Entourage Project is an effort to equip adults to utilize social media as an aspect of developing healthy adult-adolescent webs of relationships. This serves as a part of my final project for the Doctor of Ministry degree at Fuller Theological Seminary. As part of that effort, I am seeking Sacramento area churches that would be willing to host a seminar for parents and those who serve youth who are concerned about teen social media use. The seminar could be done in a single, 2 hour evening event or over two Sunday morning sessions. For the beta groups, there would be a pre and post survey as well as opportunities to share experiences in an online community. Please let me know if you are interested in participating.

For those seeking more ideas to connect with youth online please feel free to check back here often and participate in the discussions around how young people are using various social media tools. It is my hope that these blog postings serve to point you in the right direction and that your participation will help me understand how others view teen use of social media.

If you are interested, would you please take a few moments to fill out a survey before exploring this blog, and again after using it for at least a 4 week period of time? Thanks for you help, you can access the surveys here:

Pre-blog Survey

Thank-you for joining with me in this very important project,

Brad
March 20, 2012