PBS Frontline has a new episode called Growing Up Online, about how the internet and connectedness is changing our experience in a radical way. Unfortunately I can’t embed the video here for you to watch, but you can watch the full program online, and it’s well worth the time.

If you want to understand the generation gap between us Gen Y kids and our Baby Boomer parents, you can’t beat this show. You can literally see in the eyes of the parents their fear at how fast their kids are evolving, their frustration at the amount of their kids lives kept private from them but made public on the internet, their media-fueled paranoia about child predators, the pain of realizing their son used the internet to get the know how and the support he needed to take his own life before he was old enough to drive a car. Kids are changing too fast for their parents to possibly keep up, and that’s not a good feeling.

This documentary really hit home for me. The show opens with teens bringing their computers to a friend’s house to have video gaming LAN parties on a Friday night. That was me only few years ago. My best friends in high school were part of one of the top ranked clans in the world for the popular tactical first person shooter game Counter-Strike. One time crammed a few dozen kids and their computers into every nook and cranny of my parents’ house for a whole weekend of gaming and caffeine. We even created a website where we blogged about our mischievous teen exploits, which we thought was secure, until one day I walked into the computer room at lunch and everyone had it up on their screens. We learned our lessons at the very beginning of the adoption curve, before the stakes got too high.

I spend a lot of time working with Gen X folks, I’m almost always the youngest person in any team. At 25, I often feel closer in culture to the teenagers in this documentary than my colleagues who are 30 plus. It’s become clear to me that current education and work structures are not well prepared for us Gen Y folks and our quirks. I’m hoping that will lead us to become a generation of entrepreneurs, of game changers.

Internet society researcher extraordinaire Danah Boyd does an excellent job in the documentary at cutting through the smoke about teens online. Her research papers are a great way to dig deeper into that subject, if you want more information.

As an internet-addicted millennial, I’m well aware that the printed word is dying. Our generation is going to be the death of printed magazines and newspapers. I haven’t read a newspaper in years, but thanks to Google News, Digg, Reddit, NowPublic and others; I’m still as informed as I was when I used to keep scrapbooks full of newspaper clippings.

But what I didn’t know is that books are already toast. Steve Jobs recently told the New York Times his opinion on Amazon’s Kindle electronic book reader.

“It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore,” he said. “Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.”

Ouch.

Truth is, I’ve been thinking about writing a book this year. I was approached by a publisher last year, did the prep work, and they pulled out after they found another author that had already written a book on a similar subject. After that experience I was thinking of self publishing in print or an ebook. Now I’m wondering if I shouldn’t record video and sell DVDs instead.

My experience on commandN has really convinced me that video is the most compelling medium. I’ve often wondered when writing on my blog, why I don’t just turn on the webcam that comes built into my computer, and tell you what I’m thinking instead. I’ve been a writer for over a decade, and a blogger for 9 years. But I’m starting to wonder: if no one is reading books anymore, then how long until we don’t read at all anymore? When does recording and playing video become such a commodity that the printed word becomes a novelty? Good or bad, I think that day is coming soon. My early adopter gene tells me I need to switch my style up to stay ahead of the curve.

“Obviously, we all want to sell, at least some of the equity. But Mark owns the whole thing and he’s a crazy kid. He doesn’t let us in on his ideas, and all he cares about are the users.”

Valleywag – ‘A crazy kid’

If you’re looking for reasons why Facebook is so successful right now, everything else is secondary. Mark is passionate about his users, to the point of having other people call him crazy. You need to fight for your community. He tells his partners to back off, and let him focus on his community. Mark, if you’re out there: you’re my kind of crazy.

Tags: facebook, markzuckerberg

He’s got hustle. He learns how to communicate with anyone. He adapts. This kid is the future.

Tags: language, youth

As someone at the start of the huge Generation Y, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how we can use our power to make the world a better place. Knowing that there are 3 billion of us makes me hope we can learn how to live sustainably, and in peace with each other.

Hat tip to Joey deVilla at Global Nerdy for the video.

Tags: generationy, video, youth