Over the weekend, I finally finished "Totally Wired: What Teens and Tweens are Really Doing Online," by Anastasia Goodstein. Goodstein (a fellow Medill alum) runs the blog Ypulse: Media for the Next Generation, which focuses on news and commentary for media and marketing professionals interested in reaching teens and twenty-somethings.

The book itself is geared primarily toward parents of teenagers who want to understand what their kids are doing online and with other technology (cell phones, iPods, etc.). However, there's plenty of interesting information for media and marketing professionals.

Like some conferences I've attended in the past year, parts of the book focused on real teens giving examples of what they do online. But unlike teen panels at conferences, Goodstein does well putting the teens' comments into a larger context with information on trends, statistics, comparisons to the 1960s, 70s and 80s and more.

Goodstein even has a section on "early moral panics," including "dancing to jazz music will lead to sex" from the 1920s and "the threat of the swiveling hips" from the 1950s and 60s. She also includes a timeline of technology and media advances that led to the totally wired teen, from the invention of the microchip to YouTube. She also explains some teen slang (some of which reminds me of the current Cingular commercial where a mother is taking away her daughter's cell phone for excessive text message charges -- the entire commercial has the daughter talking in text-message code).

The book is quick-read at less than 200 pages with the glossary. It's worth a read.

(And, if you want even more on teens, media and ways to grow your audience, check out NAA's Growing Audience seminar, June 5 and 6 in New Orleans.)