Babys And Video - The Shape Of Things To Come

The rate of generational change is coming faster and faster.

When we started the 'video revolution' some 25 years ago we spent most of our time trying to teach (or convince) traditional television cameramen or reporters that they could make their own videos with small cameras and editing software. That was a long, hard slog.  It was mostly beating your head against the wall.

Pretty soon, however, a new generation of much more video/computer literate young reporters and filmmakers came along, for whom picking up a video camera or editing a piece of video was 'no big deal'.  Now they are filling newsrooms and websites and magazines at a rapid clip, making the old arguments with the old liners pretty much a dead issue.

Now we look ahead to the next generation - one raised entirely in 'screenworld'. 

I have to admit, it is a bit unsettling.  A bit like a Neanderthal looking at the first Homo Sapien baby and thinking 'uh oh'.

Take a look at this baby, mystified by text that does not move:



All of this was driven home to me by an article in the NY Times today (read online)



That is, in a nutshell, kids are basically living in front of screens all the time.

And, as we always say, screens demand video.

Or at least a good percentage of the content be video.

So what is the next generation telling us?

(besides probably that we are too archaic to survive much longer?)

Here, was perhaps the most disturbing paragraph in the piece:

The study found that fully half of children under 8 had access to a mobile device like a smartphone, a video iPod, or an iPad or other tablet. Of course, television is still the elephant in the children’s media room, accounting for the largest share of their screen time: about half of children under 2 watch TV or DVDs on a typical day, according to the study, and those who do spend an average of almost two hours in front of the screen. Among all children under 2, the average is 53 minutes a day of television or DVDs — more than twice the 23 minutes a day the survey found children are read to.

I don't know what kind of world we are creating - but we sure are creating it fast.