If You Target Anyone Under 24..

You must read this article. Yes, it's on education (and certainly, since most of us have kids in school, that's one reason why you should care).. but roll the ways 'they' consume media (very differently than YOU do!) around in your mind too as it relates to our youngest listeners...

The book is called "Digital Natives and Immigrants" by Marc Prensky: Today’s learners represent the first generations to grow up with this new technology. The numbers are overwhelming: over 10,000 hours playing videogames, over 10,000 hours talking on digital cell phones; over 20,000 hours watching TV (a high percentage fast speed MTV), over 200,000 emails and instant messages sent and received; over 500,000 commercials seen—all before today’s kids leave college. And, maybe, at the very most, 5,000 hours of book reading.

As a result of this ubiquitous environment and the sheer volume of their interaction with it, today’s students think and process information fundamentally differently from their predecessors. “Different kinds of experiences lead to different brain structures, “ says Dr. Bruce D. Berry of Baylor College of Medicine.

Substitute the word 'teachers' with air personalities over 25, and 'students' with young listeners in the following paragraphs:

Digital Immigrant teachers typically assume that learners are the same as they have always been, and that the same methods that worked for the teachers when they were students will work for their students now. But that assumption is no longer valid. Today’s learners are different.

The people sitting in their classes grew up on the “twitch speed” of video games and MTV. They are used to the instantaneity of hypertext, downloaded music, phones in their pockets, a library on their laptops, beamed messages and instant messaging. They’ve been networked most or all of their lives. They have little patience for lectures, step-by-step logic, and “tell-test” instruction.

If you need to read more before running out to buy this book, click here.