‘Tween Tween Gigs
Radio silence on the B-Log usually means we’re skillfully juggling life and work commitments, and throwing in another ball would spoil the act. Now with a slight breather, it’s nice to pitch out a post or two and see where they land. Watch your head! Or better yet, take your head on a trip back to the future…
Not long ago, we helped the Center for Culinary Development help one of their clients get inside the head of tweenies, those amazing young’uns moving out of kidhood into adolescence. This past week we finished a planning project for Discovery Girls, another company whose product targets the tween age. Add to that our own efforts running a community of young (and not so young) girls and you’ll get a hefty sum of insight into what’s ticking in their developing brains and how that’s influenced and shaped by their exposure to media.
And boy are they exposed to media. In-your-face, in-your-hand, user-created, on-demand, personalized, social, commoditized, multisensory multimedia.
It’s hard enough for adults to digest the bits and bytes. So imagine you’re back in that time of brain development Piaget calls the Concrete Operational Stage where imagination climbs into the back seat and logic takes over the wheel. Although your thinking is still mostly literal, understanding of abstract concepts is just around the corner. The world used to revolve around you, but now you recognize you’re part of a system of relationships. You’re no longer learning to read — you’re reading to learn. You’re also developing socially while establishing your personal boundaries and values. Not to mention the onset of puberty…
Phew! How did you survive?
Let’s assume your brain was back in that transitional time of tween age during the late sixties / early seventies. Instead of spending time playing video games, e-mailing friends or cruising the Internet, you were playing backyard sports (NOT the computer games), writing letters to your pen pal and cruising the hood on things with two or more wheels. Of course this is a generalization, but you get the drift. Today’s tweens are in a different (sometimes virtual) world.
