iParenting.com reporter Kelly Burgess recently interviewed Social Technologies' Andy Hines about the study he conducted for MTV on the future of youth happiness. She wrote:

 When asked what they want for their children's futures, parents often say, "I just want my child to be happy." Noble words, but beyond wanting our children to be happy, what do we do to help them find their way to happiness? Happiness is a difficult concept to define.

A study called Future of Youth Happiness: What Makes 12- to 24-Year-Olds Happy? may help both teens and parents define and set goals. The study was commissioned by MTV and the Associated Press and conducted by the research firm Social Technologies. Surveying a total of 1,200 12- to 24-year-olds from a variety of socioeconomic and racial backgrounds, the goal was to determine if teens are happy, what makes them happy and what they are doing to ensure future happiness.

Andy Hines, director of custom projects for Social Technologies, says they discovered that teens pursue happiness with three goals in mind: the pleasure of the moment, relationships with family and friends and the long-term search for meaning and purpose – in other words, friends, family and faith.

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A superhero Vishnu fighting bad guys on city streets? Monkey god Hanuman reincarnated as a soccer playing, evil-fighting youngster? It’s the latest craze in Indian entertainment: “mytho-cartoons,” cartoons that borrow from Hindu mythology to entertain as well as teach Indian youth about Hinduism.

There is an unusual cultural exchange present in Indian mytho-cartoons: Indian animators are borrowing from Western entertainment to tell centuries old Hindu myths in a new and innovative way. Many popular mytho-cartoons use the concept of the modern comic book superhero to portray Hindu gods to Indian kids. Mytho-cartoons are becoming so popular that production companies, such as Percept Picture Company, which produces the popular “Hanuman” films, have plans to release their films and TV shows in the US and Europe, completing a cyclical cultural exchange of ideas and beliefs.

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By Andy Hines, Director of Custom Projects

Part 5 of a 5-part series on The Future of Happiness

Our study on the Future of Happiness found that 12-to-24 year olds are pursuing four principal pathways to happiness. The final path can be called “Virtual Community” — they are integrating the online and virtual worlds seamlessly into their pursuit of happiness.

It is useful to think of youths' relationship with technology as a native language: unlike most Americans, they have grown up with it. For older folks like me, technology is typically a second language. It can be learned, but the relationship is never as quite as comfortable. In fact, when we suggest to some of our clients that youth are total comfortable being immersed with technology, they almost feel bad for them. “Poor kids, all alone one with their technology,” they muse. Au contraire! Participating in social networking and virtual worlds is quite natural for these youth, and a great source of happiness.

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Part 2 of a 5-part series on The Future of Happiness

According to our research 12-24-year-olds are pursuing four principal pathways to happiness. The first is what we call “transitional traditional.”

In fact, this group appreciates tradition, in the sense that they value the cultural structures they are growing up with. They like the familiarity of cultural activities and rituals, such as Thanksgiving and family reunions, but they aren’t necessarily attached to the specifics of how these traditions are carried out.

So in the future we’ll see them celebrating Thanksgiving – but instead of wearing a new sport coat and serving a 15-poiund turkey, they’ll be donning Birkenstocks and eating the latest vegan tofu recipe. Instead of watching the Dallas Cowboys on a network TV station, the group might gather around and participate in a multiplayer online game.

At first glance, this pathway may look like old news. But on further investigation, we foresee that the reinterpretation of traditional will lead to different approaches to the pursuit of happiness.

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Part 1 in a 5-part series on The Future of Happiness

By Andy Hines, Director of Custom Projects

What do today’s 12 to 24 year olds consider to be happiness? That was a question MTV hired us to look at earlier this year, and the findings were intriguing.

We discovered that, like most people, this group pursues happiness with a combination of three strategies: the pleasure of the moment, relationships with family and friends, and the long-term search for meaning and purpose.

After probing more deeply, though, we found that more than any generation that has come before them, today’s youths recognize that happiness is something that can and should worked toward. In short, we found they have adopted a very practical approach to happiness.

They see an uncertain and rapidly changing world and recognize they can’t do it alone, and thus are highly reliant on friends, and perhaps more than is recognized, on family—and perhaps a bit more surprisingly—on spirituality or faith. Thus, the tools youth use to pursue happiness could be summed up as friends, family, and faith.

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For a while, my 12-year-old son played "Need for Speed," a video game in which he could customize and race various makes and models of cars. I’ve noticed that, although he hasn’t played the game in months, he will see a car or a picture of a car and say something to the effect of “I have one of those. It was great (nor not great) because…” and then launch into a discussion of how he souped up his in-game vehicle.

It is also interesting (and somewhat alarming) that because he was able to afford a Porsche in his virtual world, he has the expectation that he will be able to get a Porsche in the real world when he is old enough. These rising expectations, based on virtual world experiences, mean my wife and I have to work extra hard to keep him grounded in reality when he returns from his adventures in World 0.

This suggests two things:

• World 0 is a powerful marketing environment, as more and more companies are concluding.
• There will be a growing demand for ways to export objects and services from World 0 to the real world -- a topic we are now working on.

Hell hath no fury like a 12-year-old socially networked video gamer who feels he was ripped off!

Not only are these kids savvier consumers, they use their social networks to praise products and companies they like and trash those that displease them.

My 12-year-old son was furious with a company that sold him a used video game at the same price he would have paid for a new copy of the same game elsewhere. When he found out he’d been taken, he decided to take action. 

His solution: tell everyone in his circle of friends at school AND everyone he met online while playing Runescape. For the next several weeks, he made it a point of talking about how this particular company cheated kids, couldn’t be trusted, and didn't deserve people's business. I suspect he reached hundreds of kids his age with his message.

These kids are creative, they know technology, they are networked, and they are becoming increasingly smarter consumers -- look out if they feel they have been wronged.

The situation with my son is just one example of "age blurring," with kids growing up more quickly, and becoming savvier consumers earlier. We examine the trend in an upcoming Global Lifestyles brief.

Unless you have been under a rock, if you live in the US, you probably know by now that two major video game systems have been released in the past week, Sony's Playstation 3 and Nintendo's Wii. I say "probably" because video games have become such a part of pop culture, and their marketing so widespread, that the importance attached to these two new devices has reached the level of a major cultural event, with attendant marketing and news coverage. With some 60 percent of Americans playing video games, according to the Entertainment Software Association, digital play is as mainstream as any other media behavior at this point.

With the video game industry maturing, the time has come for the three major players, Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo, to differentiate or disappear. Microsoft's Xbox, released last year, emphasizes connectivity, while Sony's new Playstation is all about a rich digital entertainment experience. Nintendo, however, has taken what one marketer called a "left turn," opting to change the direction of video game development and address several emerging trends among its users and its larger potential markets.

As I pointed out to my colleagues last year when news of it first broke, the main gamechanging element to Wii is the controller, which is untethered, somewhat like a TV remote. It is motion-sensitive and delivers physical feedback as well, essentially allowing the player to break free from the sit-down play experience and physically get into the game -- swinging the controller like a tennis racket, bowling it like a bowling ball, and acting in other new ways that allow the game to become a stand-up, immersive experience.

This allows Nintendo to enter, or even define, the realm of what is being called "exergaming," a topic on which we are issuing a forthcoming Global Lifestyles brief. Why is it important? Exergaming's emergence points not only to a need to break out of commoditized play and deliver a richer experience, which consumers demand in many other leisure pursuits today in World 1, but it also allows broader demographics -- older, younger, female, family -- to be participate comfortably in digital play. Nintendo hopes to tap consumers who want to get fit at home and become more physically engaged in this mixture of exercise and entertainment.

Drawing in new players will inevitably change the nature of games. Nintendo has taken steps to redefine what a game is, through such innovations as Brain Training, aimed at older players' mental acuity, and Elektroplankton,  a visual musical tool, both part of the company's Touch Generations initiative to expand modes of play generationally as well as in format and mode.

It will be interesting to see which platform has the biggest impact of the three big game consoles. I suspect the Wii has the greatest potential to change the definition of gaming and play for more consumers. Meanwhile, get some sweatproof carpet and move back the furniture a few inches. For many people in World 1, the home will have to adjust to new kinds of play.

Parenthood seems to enhance futurist capabilities. With a one-year-old in tow, I personally have become more astute about marketing schemes. No longer are companies just competing for my dollars, they’re also clamoring for my daughter’s future allowance, and ultimately her grown-up spending dollars. As such, I am more apt to consider how a current purchase will have multiplied impact down the road.

Case in point: the Wall Street Journal recently catalogued a new series of designer bouncy seats. Yep, bouncy seats. On the whole, anecdotal evidence seems to indicate that bouncy seats work for a total of about 3 months, before the infant realizes there’s a fascinating world beyond the plastic toys dangling in front of them. And yet here the marketers are, presenting these options to vulnerable first-time parents or eager Boomer grandparents ready to shell out for the very best.

One look at these streamlined seats, and suddenly, the bouncy seats at the typical baby superstore seem terribly over-stimulating and gaudy, what with their jungle and aquarium themes. It’s not enough that new moms can deliberate for months over whether a Kate Spade diaper bag is worth it, now there are obnoxiously tasteful Kate Spade bouncy seats, and strollers to deliberate over as well! I can have a house entirely designed by Kate Spade, without her ever stepping into my home.

While a generational perspective is still forming regarding today’s infants and toddlers, marketers are certainly not deterred by lack of information. Tentatively termed post-Millennials, the kids born between 2000 and 2017 will number close to 79 million (see Pop 1 here), and might inherit certain buying preferences from their Generation X parents.

In recent years, traditionally Generation X stores have brought out new lines targeted to the kids of Generation X, including Pottery Barn, JCrew, and the Gap. A quick scan of the children’s clothing at a department store will include brand names ranging from Juicy Couture, Ugg, and Adidas, to Burberry. On any given day, Hollywood influence seems to be overtaking common sense. One fellow Social Technologies parent recently noted the “siren call of the Bugaboo”— that a $900+ stroller would even be a passing thought for a confirmed non-celebrity such as myself speaks volumes. Such is today’s consumer climate. No judgment here—I am the first person to have considered such notions as possibilities for myself. A quick scan of my budget quickly brings me back to reality, but I still dawdle at the fancy store windows.

But the question remains. If a sizeable number of today’s kids are accustomed to Baby Uggs, Seven Mankind jeans, Pottery Barn Kids bedroom furniture with matching linens, and Kate Spade strollers from birth, what does this signify for their consumer decisions as they get older? While some Generation X parents shelled out for organic everything, it will be interesting to see if the kids develop the nutritional preferences their parents are trying to cultivate. Conversely, it is easy to imagine these little tikes rebelling against all the “couture” choices, seeking something entirely different. For the Xers out there, we may have dressed like Madonna or Michael Jackson, but today’s kids may find more diverse icons to emulate at the click of a mouse, or iPod, or whatever the techie rage is in 2015.

But it remains to be seen whether the “status bubble” will pop, and if so, when. Let’s hope that it happens before Kate Spade begins to design entire neighborhoods.

(Image: Social Technologies)