I just posted about the new study by the National School Boards Association and Grunwald Associates over at Totally Wired. While this report (.pdf) is designed to influence educators and policy makers, it is a continuation of the Grunwald research released in conjunction with Alloy I posted about back in June. I had the opportunity to steal Peter away from his vacation and do a very short Q&A about the report. The section of the report on "non-comformists" is definitely worth reading for media and marketing professionals. It used to be the A-listers or popular kids who wielded the most influence. Now it seems the rule-breakers are actually more influential when it comes to online...

Ypulse: I've seen recent numbers (from Harris Interactive for Symantec) that say seven percent of kids reported meeting someone they met online in person -- this report puts it at .08 percent. It seems like this report is saying there is a gap between perception of stranger danger and cyberbullying and the reality of how big these issues actually are in the day-to-day lives of students and parents. And that this gap is dictating school policies that require blocking or filtering of sites. Would love you to comment on this...

Peter Grunwald: Our data was generated by asking kids about problems they had run into in the last three months, and parents about problems their kids ran into in the last six months. In addition, we didn't define cyber-bullying FOR the kids. So that could help explain some of the difference with other studies. More broadly, we think that parents and kids have are a more balanced view of the benefits and the threats of social networking -- often more balanced than is reflected in the national policy discussion. While schools are certainly justified in blocking access to many SN sites, we also think that educators need to make sure that they are taking advantage of the educational potential of social networking tools.

YP: I was really intrigued by the non-conformists in the report -- the rule breakers. They seem to be especially relevant to marketers. Can you describe this psychographic and offer any insight into the best way for media and marketing professionals to reach them?

PG: These kids exercise a disproportionate amount of influence over their peers. At the same time, they themselves are more open to influence from sources of authority -- parents and schools -- than the stereotype would assume. Self-expression is very important to them. So a) word of mouth b) tools for self expression (multimedia libraries with branded items, interactives, etc) c) parents and d) schools are some of the marketing channels and methods that we discuss in our report/executive briefing.

YP: What are the implications of this research for traditional media and traditional advertising methods - i.e. TV commercials and print advertisements? We see research that says young people still find these ads the most credible, yet they're spending more and more time "social networking" in the broadest sense that you've defined it, creating their own content, etc.

PG: We believe that advertisers need to review their media mix to make sure that they are using the most cost-effective combination of platforms for their objectives....and designing their campaigns to take advantage of multi-tasking. We'll have more detailed findings and some thoughts on them in September...

Posted by anastasia