“Innovation needs to come from how we plan to use and apply these new technologies,” said panelist Corvida Raven at the Media Future Now presentation of What the Kids Are Doing, hosted at the AT&T Innovation Studio in Washington, DC.  Moderated by the always enthusiastic Shireen Mitchell, the discussion covered the ways in which young adults are using social media technology to propel themselves forward socially and economically, and was quite interesting as you may imagine. The panelists were Founder and Editor of SheGeeks.net, Corvida Raven, at 23 years of age, and Founder/ CEO of Teens in Tech Labs, Daniel Brusilovsky, who is still in his teens.  Following are a few points that struck me the most from the conversation.

    •    Daniel described his personal experiences as having the absence of tech integration in the grade school classroom.

    •    There has been a scarcity of real, true innovation in the American tech market because of this missing emphasis on tech in the classroom during grade school (middle and high school) years.

    •    Teenagers are an underutilized, under-supported group who may have the answers and ideas to solve these tech troubles.

    •    The techies of today are teenagers, and a lot of the true innovation taking place is coming from them, and not necessarily engineers.

    •    Both panelists cited the new Face Time feature, which is essentially mobile Skype video chat on your cell phone, as the future of quick communications. Not sure how well this would work in 5th period Algebra, haha.

In a separate conversation with Corvida following the discussion, she brought up an awesome point to me regarding the significance of texting as well as digital media in general. She pointed out that, “Nothing will ever replace written word/ text, and the digital world is just an extension, or digital replica, of what’s real and it simply allows us to save time. The digital space is essential to cataloging the history that we’re making right now because it provides limitless space.” This pretty much summed up the sentiment of the whole discussion. We have limitless space in this digital age. Virtual reality is the true final frontier, and it will never be fully discovered because the youth will constantly be innovaTEEN.