✘ Kids' behaviours in our current digital age

And: Web3 changing fan power; Metaverse reshaping our lives; How to make our music economy richer?; Google testing AR experiences; UK music venues turning to community ownership

I think I can speak for all of us when I say that we often worry about the effect of particular apps, or the amount of screen time, or how we remember things nowadays, etc. in relation to the youngest generations - Z and Alpha. There’s many things parents can do to track the online activity of their kids and one of those solution providers - Qustodio - has released research based on their own date in relation to how kids behave online. I’ll highlight some of the most relevant information here, but I encourage you to go through the whole report as well.

“As a reflection of our increasingly connected world, most households now make use of multiple devices. In our survey, which investigated how technology forms a part of children’s daily lives in the US, UK, and Spain, along with their parents’ viewpoints on tech usage, we found that 47% of children are regularly using 3 or more devices, and 75% use at least 2 different digital devices on a daily basis. Parents report that their children spend most time connected to their cell phones, with 62% of kids aged between 5 and 15 having their own phone. 58% of children regularly use a tablet, closely followed by gaming consoles, with 56% of parents responding that their children used one on a daily basis.”

The question then becomes whether this a good thing or a bad thing. Qustodio, through extensive interviews, found that most parents see that it’s a bit of both.

Here, we immediately see one of the most striking cultural differences that comes out throughout the report: in Spain people have vastly differing mental attitudes to technology than people in the anglophone world. The concerns on the parent side focus on the behaviour of the child - more angry outbursts or more time spent alone. Kids, on the other hand, are more concerned with the dark side of the internet - the predators, the harmful content, the bullies. On the upside, there’s better modes of communication, increased access to knowledge, and it’s easier than ever to develop new skills.

Moving away from the more general behavioural elements, the report also has some interesting data on which apps are most popular. TikTok, for example, is now much more popular than YouTube among these youngest generations. Similarly, Snapchat continues to attract the younger kids and of those in this research sample they spent, on average, 71 minutes per day on the app. Overall, however, time spent on video streaming went down - while time spent on learning apps and gaming environments like Roblox rose.

---

LINKS

🦚 Music Revolution: How Web3 is Utterly Changing Fan Power (Bruno Guez)

“Web3 creates a new position for fans, one that shifts the power in the industry. This new world is available via peer-to-peer technology and driven by the community. But that doesn’t mean that you should completely get rid of all the big players.”

🧑‍🚀 The Metaverse Will Reshape Our Lives. Let's Make Sure It's for the Better (Matthew Ball)

“The metaverse, a 30-year-old term but nearly century-old idea, is forming around us. Every few decades, a platform shift occurs—such as that from mainframes to PCs and the internet, or the subsequent evolution to mobile and cloud computing. Once a new era has taken shape, it’s incredibly difficult to alter who leads it and how. But between eras, those very things usually do change. If we hope to build a better future, then we must be as aggressive about shaping it as are those who are investing to build it.”

👟 How Do We Make Our Music Economy Richer? Treat Music Like Sports (Shain Shapiro)

“In contrast to sport, music is bolted on, rather than built into communities. Homes are often built acoustically without recognition of the neighbours, and in many cases, as with higher density apartments in town centres, the neighbour can be a music venue or bar and such close proximity leads to noise, annoyance and conflict. Engaging in live music, be it as a performer or fan, often requires travel. We centralise music and other forms of culture into districts in one particular part of town rather than spread it across the wider urban development. Music in schools is often restricted to what instrument is available or the genres being taught, or the ability to pay for private lessons. Like sport, very few that engage with music will ever succeed professionally. But unlike access to sport where great success is also unlikely, this reality is often presented as a reason to not invest in music [emphasis mine], as if every one who picks up an instrument must pursue it professionally and provide a ‘return on investment’.”

👓 Building and testing helpful AR experiences (Juston Payne)

Stay aware of your surroundings!

“We’ll begin small-scale testing in public settings with AR prototypes worn by a few dozen Googlers and select trusted testers. These prototypes will include in-lens displays, microphones and cameras — but they’ll have strict limitations on what they can do. For example, our AR prototypes don’t support photography and videography, though image data will be used to enable experiences like translating the menu in front of you or showing you directions to a nearby coffee shop.”

🪢 ‘We don’t want money going to private landlords’: UK music venues turn to community ownership (Daniel Dylan Wray)

“Venue operators feel little incentive to invest in a rented building when all that will do is increase its value and make it a more appealing selling prospect for landlords. Community business models, though, open venues up to funding and grants they wouldn’t have access to as a limited company, and because they must use their assets for the benefit of the community it can actually accelerate improvements to infrastructure.”

---

MUSIC

I love some good techno, and I especially love it when it’s interspersed with samples of music I recognize and which fuels the euphoria. This recent set by Fire Between Us is a perfect example.