Size Of Friends List A Status Symbol For Teens

The Breakfast Club is a lot different these days. A leather jacket, a sports car, the right girlfriend may all still be factors (but I wouldn't know, I'm 30) for weighing teen social status, but so is the number of people on your friends list.

crucial to the marketers of the 21st Century, so we thought it best to pay attention. Samantha Skey, senior vice president of strategic marketing for Alloy Media + Marketing, explains it better. "Today's teens look to their friends above any other influence for guidance and approval," she said. "The extensive accessibility to friends' in the current media environment and the evolving definition of friend' affords peer networks greater import than ever. "The shift extends to brands endeavoring to reach this influential audience as advertisers look to use the power of youth connectivity-and the evolving definition of friend'-to enable online propagation of their messages." Now that that's out of the way, let's look at what it's like to be awkward, pimply, hot-tempered and clueless in the new millennium. Before age 13, kids still very much like their parents, preferring to spend time with them rather than their friends. About 58 percent of tweens would rather hang out with Mom and Dad. After 13, as is known throughout history, parents slip into a temporary retardation, which pushes 56 percent of teenagers to seek more intelligent life forms, usually other teenagers. When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years. - No really, I'm 6'4 with dark wavy hair and 200 pounds of carefully sculpted muscle. I have to keep in shape because people are always trying to steal all the money I've got. I need that money to fund my clinic, where I help sick, injured, and orphaned animals. It keeps me busy when I'm not singing to kids with cancer. Most teens (62%) say that talking to friends online makes them feel that they are always connected; but only a third say it makes them feel cool. That's what listening to emo music is for. Tag: Add to Del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit | Furl Bookmark Murdok: