Photo credit: Jonas B

The middle school crowd is crazy for YouTube. I mean, if you don’t know who Fred is, you haven’t been paying attention! My son has jumped on the bandwagon, and is a frequent video poster and viewer. (The Flip camera he received for Christmas a couple of years ago gathered dust — literally — for more than a year before it became indispensable about six months ago.) His activity is focused on creating videos — mostly “instructional” but sometimes just opinions — about his hobbies (primarily fishing and street hockey). Once he posts a video, he becomes intent on the number of views each day and the number of subscribers to his channel.  A classic carrot-and-stick learner, he gets driven by and motivated by the numbers (which are in the thousands, by the way). He’s learned some classic blogger lessons, among them:

• Word choice in the title is crucial
• Comments can range from great pats on the back, to downright insulting, to “huh?”
• Other users provide extremely helpful tips on how to increase subscriber numbers
• Reciprocality reigns (you subscribe to me, and I’ll subscribe to you)

I’m glad he’s learning social media in an organic way. It’s a mainstream part of any business these days. (If you’re over 40 and have looked for a job lately, you can really appreciate this — as well as the concerted effort it takes to catch up to what youth do so naturally.) I try not to dismiss YouTube as a worthwhile activity, as long as I’m pretty sure he’s safe. Could it be the lemonaid stand of this generation?