MediaNet: U.S. Teens are Squares

I find the recent revelation that American teens are more conservative than the rest of the world to be suspect at best.

As a frequent watcher of MTV and various other teen-themed media outlets, i was under the impression that today's youth did little more than sport lowrider jeans con thongs, pick up old men in online chat rooms and play sex games at co-ed slumber parties.

Like Jerry Orbach in Dirty Dancing, when i'm wrong, i say i'm wrong. In this case, while MediaNet brings up some interesting figures, there is no way American kids are a bunch of Puritans compared to other nation's teens. I mean, have you seen Laguna Beach?

According to the GenWorld Teen study from Energy BBDO, not all teens fit this pattern. In fact,an interesting "Blue Teen/Red Teen" phenomenon seems to be occurring: About half of U.S. teens qualify as Red Teens with strong conservative views, while the remaining half, Blue Teens, emphasize individuality and tend to reject tradition.

What this means is; non-traditional teens (Blue) tend to gravitate towards innovators such as Sony, Amazon, Apple, Ebay, Yahoo and AOL, while Red Teens stick to more wholesome, tried-and-true brands such as Gap, Kellogs, Kraft, Nestle, Disney, and Doublemint.

If this study is "spot on" (and i strongly suspect it isn't) this could lead to a backlash of sorts against the scantily-clad youngsters adorning our TV and computer screens. That would truly be a national tragedy