Kid Sites Offer Window Into Young Minds

Selling to Kids, April 14, 1999

Sites created by kids can offer fresh insight into what kids really want from an online product. Kids are creating sites for their peers that address topics such as where to go on Saturday night, how to invest in stocks, what's cool, and what's in their minds and hearts.

Last fall, for example middle- and high-school students in Montgomery County, Md, posted an activities site called Things 2 Do (www.things2do.com). The site has logged more than than 19,000 visitors, including more than 2,900 in March, almost triple that of October, its first full month. The site also gained the notice of U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno when students presented it at the National Conference of Juvenile Delinquency Prevention in December.

To choose content, the students brainstormed the question, "what would you want to do on a Saturday night?" says 15-year-old Laura Wingfield, one of the kids who worked on the site. "Basic movie and dinner gets old really fast." Swing dancing, dance clubs and music are "big, big topics. basic things right from the beginning that we knew we wanted to put in."

Among Wingfield's own top Saturday night activities is cosmic bowling (a variation of the familiar sport, which includes lights out, flashing lights, a glowing ball and hip music).The brainstorming also inspired pages on art and photography, sports, outdoor activities, theater, amusements and music.

Visitors - mostly teens and teachers from 33 countries including Australia and India - will also find community-spirited pages called "making a difference" and "hotlines." Topics like those were inspired by Soozie Brendler, a Rockville, Md., prevention specialist who came up with the Web site idea at a conference on substance-abuse. Brendler recruited and supervises the kids and found sponsors for the site.

Kids Compete Across Cultures

Since 1990, kids ages 12 to 19 have teamed to create hundreds of sites for the ThinkQuest competition (www. thinkquest.org). The contest was created "so kids could teach other kids using current information," says Al Weis, ThinkQuest founder and Advanced Network & Services CEO.

In conceiving the competition, he responded to findings that "kids think differently than adults. They were brought up on computer games and they think in multi-dimensions, but books are twodimensional" and quickly out-of-date.

Weis developed his philosophy from focus groups and time spent with his 4-year-old nephew who "I can't beat in Nintendo. Now he insults me further by watching the cartoon window while he beats me." The goal of the contest was to motivate kids, teachers and schools. Two or three students from different schools, preferably from different countries, create the entries. ThinkQuest's library, which gets 2 million to 3 million direct hits a day," keeps the entries online for up to 10 years, as long as they're being used, says Weis.

Students and teachers use the library. The two most popular sites explore investing, led by InvestSmart, which attracts 500 to 700 daily users. "You Are What You Eat," "Volcanoes Online," "DaVinci: A Man of Both Worlds, "A Guide to C Language," and "Motion Picture Industry" are also popular. (You can find these kids' sites and more in the ThinkQuest's library.)

This year, ThinkQuest spent $5 million on the contest, including $2 million in awards in five categories: Arts & Literature, Science & Math, Social Sciences, Sports & Health and Interdisciplinary. Sponsors and participants in the contest include Microsoft, Netscape, IBM, Adobe and Real Audio.

Read Kids' Minds

Other sites give you the equivalent of a one-on-one interview with a kid. "Prime" (www.jps.net/nonnnbg/homepage)is the work of Scott Nonnenberg, a 17-year-old at Rocklin High in Rocklin, Calif.

Visit the site and you'll get a vivid picture of what's going on in his mind, from favorite musicians to pastimes to a series of essays on his various philosophies. The guestbooks of kids' sites like this one show comments by kids from all over the country and the world.

Another section of Prime offers the short thoughts from Scott. A visit will put you right into this teen boy's thinking. For example, he asks "Do you ever feel like nobody really knows you?" And he includes this ultimate challenge to marketers: "I hate shopping."

The site also contains movie and CD reviews, his daily journal and links to other kids' online journals: Jocelyn (www.ultranet.com/~jocelyn), Meredi (www.execulink.com/~gnoble) and Rebecca (home.att.net/~skim), which provide additional peeks into the tastes and psyches of kids. (Soozie Brendler 301/ 984-8609; Al Weis, ThinkQuest, 914/765-1100)