I’m not really sure how I feel about kids going to school entirely online, young ones in particular. The numbers discussed below surprised me – I did not realize this was happening at such a rate.

“When I was in high school” will soon refer to different memories and memes than what it currently does.

In a radical rethinking of what it means to go to school, states and districts nationwide are launching online public schools that let students from kindergarten to 12th grade take some—or all—of their classes from their bedrooms, living rooms and kitchens. Other states and districts are bringing students into brick-and-mortar schools for instruction that is largely computer-based and self-directed.

In just the past few months, Virginia has authorized 13 new online schools. Florida began requiring all public-high-school students to take at least one class online, partly to prepare them for college cybercourses. Idaho soon will require two. In Georgia, a new app lets high-school students take full course loads on their iPhones and BlackBerrys. Thirty states now let students take all of their courses online.

Nationwide, an estimated 250,000 students are enrolled in full-time virtual schools, up 40% in the last three years, according to Evergreen Education Group, a consulting firm that works with online schools. More than two million pupils take at least one class online, according to the International Association for K-12 Online Learning, a trade group.

* people with jobs

After reading in the latest Pew Report how kids today don’t really use email (“that’s what Facebook is for”), I have been keeping my ears and eyes open for further evidence. In my highly unscientific survey of every kid and teen I’ve encountered since then – Pew is right.

I also saw this on Ypulse. The people doing the survey were asking specifically about email marketing, so we know they have a vested interest in justifying their continued receipt of paychecks, but I don’t find it hard to believe that kids recognize their eventual need of a cyber dropbox. Will we get to a place where an email will no longer be required to “sign-up” for something? Another electronic breadcrumb we can leave behind in its stead?

44% of students surveyed believe email has its place and will stick around, 41% are more inclined to think social media will overtake email and 15% just aren’t sure yet.

Students that believe email will stay say it’s because email is good for business and formal communication. Many also pointed out that an email address is required for many sites, and that social media and email pair well together to cover informal and formal communications.

Those that said email will be replaced believe it’s because email is not fast enough, some even going as far as calling it digital snail mail. This indicates that while many students use mobile devices to update their social media sites, they aren’t aware they can log in to their email account as well.

Many of the students only took their current use of email into account when responding, which may be why they’re inclined to believe email will die or they’re uncertain about its future.

I hate to read “those kids today” rants – this is more of a “those poor kids today” version of that.

I think having a job when one is young is important, really important. And I don’t mean having a fancy internship, I mean a job where you make money for college, or for whatever thing you think you HAVE to have that your parents are unwilling or unable to fund.
It’s important not only to earn your own scratch, but to be bored out of your mind, to have to contemplate “OMG is this ALL there is???” and to think “here are the 10,000 other things I’d rather put my super powers to use in favor of.” My summer job at the pool definitely inspired endless fantasies of what my grown-up life would be like. Being unstimulated by my surroundings and/or terrified of being stuck where I was at that point in time was a HUGE motivator to me.

It makes me sad to think that fewer kids get the chance to go through that intellectual exercise at a relatively lower risk point in their lives. I think it’s a crucial component of being able to say “you know what, I’d rather do XXX, maybe make less money but do things I believe are good, with people I want to work with” later in life.

Fewer than 30% of teens ages 16 to 19 are likely to find paying jobs this summer, down from 52% in 2000 and about the same as the summer 2010 rate of 29.6%, the lowest since the government began keeping records in the 1940s, says Andrew Sum, director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University, Boston. Beyond general job-market weakness, tighter legal restrictions on youth labor and adult competition for jobs are crowding teens out.

With summer approaching, an increasing number of high-schoolers around the country are preparing to launch their own start-ups—and not just lemonade stands. With lawn-mowing businesses, hand-painting of tennis shoes or Bosnian-language computer repairs, teens are bucking long odds in the dismal job market and earning their own mall money or cash for college.

How many of kids with their own little businesses will be inspired to dream up bigger businesses?

About 3.7% of high-school seniors are interested in becoming business owners or entrepreneurs, based on a survey of 1.9 million students by the National Research Center for College & University Admissions, Lee’s Summit, Mo. Interest among younger high-school students is higher, at 4.1% to 4.4%.

Already billed as the next Bieber, Madonna manager Guy Oseary and Lady Gaga manager Troy Carter are also on board with the effort. Ellen indicated that other artists will be added to the eleveneleven imprint, a venture with Telepictures Productions.

Found this blog post by author and psychologist Helene Guldberg, Ph.D. on the Psychology Today site. As you can guess from the spelling below, she’s British.

The World Health Organization (WHO) 2001 report entitled Mental Health: New Understanding, New Hope claims that between 10 per cent and 20 per cent of young people suffer from mental health or behavioural disorders. Hans Troedsson, WHO director for child and adolescent health, later warned: ‘The international health community is concerned about the mental health status of our young. It is a time-bomb that is ticking and without the right action now millions of our children growing up will feel the effects’.

These are frightening figures. But, looking beyond the press releases to life as it is lived by young people, I wonder how we can possibly be in the grip of an epidemic of misery and self-abuse on the scale implied by today’s reports and campaigns. It is far from obvious to me that today’s youth are any more miserable or badly behaved than my generation were; and when studies set out to quantify the depths of this misery and the extent to which it has grown we should hardly be surprised if they find what they are looking for.

What is true is that many more children and young people are on anti-depressants and other forms of medication today, particularly in the US but also in Britain and other parts of Europe.

But the evidence for an actual increase in emotional and behaviour disorders is questionable. As I argue in Reclaiming Childhood:freedom and play in an age of fear higher reported figures can be explained by doctors stretching the label of depression to cover an ever wider range of unhappiness. In addition, parents are today less willing to tolerate variations in how their children behave, often overreacting to peculiar behaviours and mood swings.

Sami Timimi, consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist said: ‘[M]ore childhood behaviours previously considered normal are now seen as problematic, and problematic behaviours are more likely to be medicalised … The increase in rates of childhood depression in Western society may reflect a lowering of the threshold for the diagnosis’.

Regular use of certain cosmetics is rising sharply among tween girls, according to a new report from the NPD Group, a consumer research company. From 2007 to 2009, the percentage of girls ages 8 to 12 who regularly use mascara and eyeliner nearly doubled — to 18 percent from 10 percent for mascara, and to 15 percent from 9 percent for eyeliner. The percentage of them using lipstick also rose, to 15 percent from 10 percent.

Meanwhile, women of all other age groups, including teenagers, report using less makeup, according to NPD. The economy seems to be playing a role, said Karen Grant, the senior beauty industry analyst with NPD, with women cutting back on beauty products to save money and unemployed women feeling less compelled to do their face every morning.

So how is the elementary-school set getting away with it? Easy: Mom is the one buying it. When asked to name their primary influence for acquiring and applying makeup, 66 percent of the 365 tween girls polled by NPD pointed to a family member or adult family friend.

Between 1977 and 2002, the percent of the American population eating three or more snacks a day increased to 42% from 11%. Further, researchers found, the percent of children surveyed who said they had eaten three meals on the previous day went down, while those who had had a snack went up more than 40%.

I really enjoyed this article in the Wall Street Journal about how kids learn to tell what is real and what is imaginary, despite “evidence” for both potential outcomes.

For years, imagination was thought of as a way for children to escape from reality, and once they reached a certain age, it was believed they would push fantasy aside and deal with the real world. But, increasingly, child-development experts are recognizing the importance of imagination and the role it plays in understanding reality. Imagination is necessary for learning about people and events we don’t directly experience, such as history or events on the other side of the world. For young kids, it allows them to ponder the future, such as what they want to do when they grow up.

Fantasy play is correlated with other positive attributes. In preschool children, for example, those who have imaginary friends are more creative, have greater social understanding and are better at taking the perspective of others, according to Marjorie Taylor, a psychology professor at the University of Oregon and author of the book “Imaginary Companions and the Children Who Create Them.”

An excerpt from the book NurtureShock was published in Newsweek last month. (Link to the book here.) One of the many topics the authors studied in the book is how and when we humans become aware of race and how societies’ efforts to be colorblind have many unintended consequences.

A quick summary on how scientists think about race and children has changed:

Then: We assumed children didn’t notice race until we pointed it out to them.

Now: Evidence shows children identify racial differences much like they see the differences between pink and baby blue—two colors often used to distinguish girls from boys.

Then: Like me, many parents figured children would get the “diversity” point after we exposed them to different races and cultures.

Now: Researchers have found the more diverse the environment, the more likely children are to self-segregate.

Then: Children often told about discrimination were less likely to see the relationship between working hard and achieving goals.

Now: Black children who repeatedly hear messages of black pride are more interested in school and more likely to connect their success to their hard work and persistence.

In 1969, 41 percent of children either walked or biked to school; by 2001, only 13 percent still did, according to data from the National Household Travel Survey.

In many low-income neighborhoods, children have no choice but to walk. During the same period, children either being driven or driving themselves to school rose to 55 percent from 20 percent.

Experts say the transition has not only contributed to the rise in pollution, traffic congestion and childhood obesity, but has also hampered children’s ability to navigate the world.

In a study of San Francisco Bay Area parents who drove children ages 10 to 14 to school, published this summer in the Journal of the American Planning Association, half would not allow them to walk without supervision, and 30 percent said fear of strangers governed their decision.