I came across some interesting videos about web2.0 and social media. One caught my eye relating to how the web was transforming the lives of children and teaching them tools and social skills that will affect their future.

For example it’s often quoted that children cannot read or write to the perceived standard, but as this video points out the average child has probably sent 1000’s of emails by the time they get to senior school, let alone all the video interaction, sms texts and blog entries. The language and grammer used may not be traditional, but maybe this is the way of the future. The web is changing the way all people and business communicate with each other. Everyone now holds against their head the power of a computer, send text messages to each other, upload video from their mobile phones to news agencies, blog about their thoughts and ideas/aspirations and contribute to many other ‘open’ community based systems on a WorldWide basis.

Kids these days really do have a rich collection of tools available to them so that they can interact and contribute to society. If Google hosts over 2.7 billion queries each month pehaps we should ask ourselves what happened to these ‘questions’ before google (BG)? They say that the average child only gets to ask one question every 10 hours at school, now they ask WikiPedia, Google, Ask and Yahoo 1000’s of questions. Children get to form their own opinions as to whether the answer is right or wrong – they can even contribute to the answer (Wiki’s, blog’s, etc.) and help others. All this was unheard of just a few years ago.

Children are now creating their own videos, podcasts and websites. They write code, use mashups and generally interact with the computer and technology on a constant basis. Hence the reason for the huge marketing budgets being put into this market place.