It has been quite a while…

If any readers of this blog have seen my other articles about what I have been doing lately, you may realize why I haven’t been active for quite a while on this blog, especially if any of you own or have ever owned your own business. The saying, “if it were easy, everyone would do it” is as true as true can be!

The purpose of this article will be to speak to why I haven’t been writing for a while and to bring my passion of sharing issues and raising awareness of The Baby Boomer Generation.

The short story from 2008 is that my job of 22+ years was outsourced at the beginnings of our country’s second biggest depression. I was unemployed for two years, while trying to look for a job and also deciding what else I could do. In 2009, I began my journey to create my own business, beginning with a “How to start a small business” course at a local community college, talking to my local SCORE representative and many other business mentors I either knew or just reached out to. I opened my business, David’s Music House, Inc. on October, 10, 2010 (10.10.10) I have now been open for 18 months and it has indeed been a journey of highs and lows! What I have learned is exactly what I was told in the beginning by all my mentors….it would be hard, it would take 3 to 5 years to see success and you can only succeed IF you don’t quit. The key to not quitting is continuing growth and searching for solutions for the dollars to last until success. It is indeed a FACT, that no one can succeed by quitting.

As I continue to search for ways to search for ways to make my business grow, I am also quite aware that I am still moving on the path of extending work years, or delay of retirement. I planned my business to be one that I not only have a passion for but also would be able to continue working beyond what were once considered retirement years. Being a member of the Baby Boomer Generation brings me to think about these actions that I and all of us Boomers are currently going through.

Only time and history will tell the true story of what effect the Baby Boomer Generation has had on our civilization, but there is no doubt that the Boomers effect our country by their sheer numbers. This applies for what this largest segment of the population is going through as we approach the retirement years. Retirement has been re-defined by occurrences of the last decade. Healthcare and new medical advances are continually extending the lifespan. While is definitely a good thing, from the perspective of us Boomers, what we do and go through has a profound effect on the course of all others as well.

Baby Boomers have been caring and dealing with their aging parents while we hit our 4th and 5th decades of life and we well know and wonder how our children will deal with the same issues. Will they even be able to deal with the impact of Boomers aging? One thing is certain and that is that we Boomers should be doing as much as we can to lessen the impact of what our children have to deal with….such as homes not cared for, estates not properly and legally planned, how to make decisions without living wills and legal documents to guide them.

I went into this segway of Boomers aging as that is what I am currently thinking about…..what do I need to do to deal with aging? How can I make it easier for my children to deal with my aging? One thing my wife and I have done is to create all the legal documentation, such as wills, living wills that clearly state and therefore take the decision and issues out of the hands of our children. We are also downsizing our home to one that we can more easily care for, is less of a financial burden for us rather than continue living in a home too large to care for so that they someday have to deal with their homes as well as ours.

It is important for us Boomers to do the same things we have been doing for our children since they were born…and that is everything we can to make them better people, follow the golden rule, try to make the planet better for them by recycling and paying attention to supporting better ways of energy consumption and prepare and clean up our lives so that they don’t have to do it. We are always parents, as long as we are on this planet, even if we don’t have children….all who remain after the Boomer Generation is gone are all of our children and they will benefit or not based on our actions.

A message for Father’s Day

I lost my Dad on December 21, 1989 and I think about, and talk about him more as the years go by. It seems like the early hurt goes away, but the yearning to talk to or see someone you lose, increases as time goes by. My Dad was the life force and humor of our family. I don’t mean to say he was perfect...none of us can say that! He was flawed and I was quick to find those flaws when I was younger. I basically got along with my Dad, but I often thought how I would be a better father than he was. I did do things differently, but that didn’t make me a more perfect father...just a differently flawed father.

As for a legacy of humor, that is what my Dad gave us. He rarely laughed at things he did. In fact, most times you couldn’t tell if he was getting angry that we were all laughing at something he did or not. The stories are endless. I remember a moment when the whole family spent a New Year’s Eve weekend in an area ski resort, Seven Springs, where I played for many years in one of the first bands I was ever in. The whole family was staying in a fantastic chalet and we were all gathered in the living room area, watching the skiers on the mountain come down the hill in the night, and we were all having a great time. This also was where Mom and Dad were going to sleep, on the couch that folded out into a bed. Well, it was time for Dad to go to bed and he couldn’t care less that we were still all lying around and carrying on, making noise. When it time for him to sleep, that was what he was going to do. He got into the bed with his pajamas and his black dress socks, which was funny enough, but as we turned to look at him, already beginning to laugh at the black socks, we went into hysterics when we saw that the bottoms of his socks were completely torn to shreds. There were only a few strings of thread holding together on the bottom of those socks. Well, we howled with laughter to the point of tears. None of this commotion bothered him in any way. He was the consummate straight man and off to sleep-vile he went. These are the little moments of laughter and life that my Dad brought to the family. They are moments that will last all of our lives. I had heard of so many more stories of him from before I was even born, of tales where he would dress up like a ghost and stand in the woods near the neighbor houses, howling like a banshee, until the frightened trick and treaters began throwing stones at him and he had to run for his life! The go on and on.

I know I have some of that within me, but there will never be another “Big Dave”! He was one of a kind and we all remind ourselves of the stories and laugh and enjoy his legacy to us, every day.

I also never hugged or said the words, “I love you” to him. I really regret that! We just never talked openly like that in my family. I make sure I say if often in my family. I even recently started forcing myself to hug my wife’s father. I have only shook his hand for hello and good-bye for the last 15 years. I recently just made my mind up to hug him instead, as I do to the rest of the family. I found, to my surprise, that he seemed to be waiting for it!

So this father’s day, if you are blessed enough to still have your father, make sure you show him and say the things that he wants to hear. Don't wait for someday, when it may be too late. Make yourself do it this Father’s Day. Once you do, it will be easy to continue from that point on. Give him a huge hug! It will be his best gift.

Over the river and through the woods...to Grandmother’s house we go...

Thanksgiving is all about family, colors of fall leaves, approaching holidays and as the warmth of the words in the song sung by the Peanuts gang on the Thanksgiving TV special "A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving Special", Over the river and through the woods, to Grandmother's house we go.... We didn't have to travel over any rivers, but it those words conjure up memories of days gone by when most Baby Boomers can remember only enjoyment of the holidays and being a child. 

As adults, we are the parents and grand parents now, and that's as it should be. We had our turn at childhood, as our parents had before us and our children have now.


This is the video of the Charlie Brown special that originally aired in 1973 and this even includes some of the commercials of the day. It's a annual classic for all ages and a must see before Thanksgiving Day.

We all seem to stop our hectic lives during this time of year, before the rush of shopping for the holidays to travel from wherever we may be to get back home, to be with family and celebrate the love of sharing a single day of thanks with the family.

Thanksgiving also brings us to think of past Thanksgiving holidays, when we were all younger and the core of the family was together with Mom and Dad. This is a great time to get out the pictures of the family and share stories with our surviving moms and dads and youngest family members.

Whatever the situation of your elder family members, whether it be still living with you and in good health, or passed on, or living in a nursing home, take the old pictures out and relive some memories with your aging parents. 

Each day that an older child has their aging parent still with them, even if they are not in good physical or mental health, is a day to reflect on the times ahead, when you will only have the memories.

One of the BIG signs that you’re getting older - Grampa!

I recently found out that I am going to be a grandfather for the first time. I know that I am of the age to be a grandfather, but until certain events happen, you really don’t think of your life in a particular phase. Life’s events are what mark our feelings of age, more so than the actual numbers. Feeling older is really an aspect of the mind but life events are the awakenings that bring the realization of new phases.

Early youth is all about waiting to be old enough to make your own decisions....like running with scissors, or staying up as long as you want to. We have no idea at all at that early stage how incredibly lucky we are!

As we become teenagers, we still want that independence, and we long for it, but we have a decided goal of that twenty-first year. Perhaps it’s the legal drinking age thing, but I think it’s more than that. It’s the time when you think you will be living by most of your own decisions. You will begin to say no to older and wiser people. It is really when we only begin to learn about real life.

While we speed along through our second and third decades, we begin to feel some hints of maturity, especially as we discover our physical bodies begin to react differently to things we used to do without thought. This may be the very first signs to us that we are aging, but we tend to dismiss the aches and pains, unless we push ourselves to far and have some real physical issues.

When we hit the phase of our fourth decade, we begin the age of enlightenment, when we actually start to use our brains, before we act and react without thinking. We begin to think of our mortality and plan for a possible longer life of responsibilities. We start to think about things we could have done differently and wonder how and what we will face in the future. We still don’t take old age very seriously, as we tend to think we still have time to deal with that.

My current phase of life is the last that I can practically give a perspective of, as one of the things I have come to know is what my mother often said to all of us, “You don’t know what it’s like!” We knew what she meant, but as I approach the end of my fifth decade, I am beginning to feel what she meant, and that you REALLY cannot know what any age is, until you reach it and live it.

I used to think when I would be approaching my 60’s, I would actually be old. What I am discovering is, that I don’t know what old is and I won’t know that until I reach it, whenever that may be. I find that I am beginning a phase in my life when I finally have the courage and confidence to do things that I didn’t think I would ever be able to do. Now, I’m not talking about jumping out of planes, but I am realizing that the only thing that ever has held me back from my pursuing dreams, was myself. It wasn’t all of the things I blamed, such as I don’t have time, I don’t have that much money, or I’m only daydreaming.

There are many who find this confidence at earlier ages, or perhaps they are just being foolish due to immaturity, but their passion made them succeed. Who knows? I do know that I have found that the secret to success is not actually becoming wealthy or powerful, but that it is the “knowing” that you can and have a true purpose to follow. You may not know how to make it happen, as that is still something to learn and work at. What you find is that just about anything is possible, if you have the will to keep on going, as long as it involves your best capabilities and your true passions. Success or failure are only challenges to find solutions to or work around.

Now, my oldest daughter is pregnant, after she worked hard to achieve an excellent start to life, by finding her passion as a teacher, working hard to make that happen, without giving up along the way, and is now entering her phase in life as a mother and beginning her family. The aspect of becoming a grandfather, along with the “knowing” of pursuing my dreams, is making this phase of my life, perhaps one of most exciting yet!

So although I am fully aware that my becoming a grandfather is a sign of growing older, what I “know” is that it is only a sign of a new wonderful phase of life that I am blessed to enjoy! I’ll be sure to let you all know when I “know” that I am old...whenever that happens!

Baby Boomer Father's Day idea - watch an old movie musical

Yes, there were the most popular male dancers, Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, but although I still think Fred Astaire was the absolute overall best dancer of all time, because of his overall style and sophistication, Donald O'Conner was likely the best physically capable dancer of all. O'Conner was most likely much under rated due to being a comedic dancer and not taken as seriously in his time, but I sincerely doubt if Fred or Gene, or anyone else could have done the physical things that O'Connor could do.

This video is just one of many amazing dance numbers!



I still love spending an afternoon or evening watching these musical movies from the late 40's and early 50's! I suppose it's just that they remind me of my youth, sitting in the living room with my family, my parents still young and not having really a care in the world. Ah yes...being a kid and living in suburbia U.S. in the 1950's and 60's...we were blessed to have this time. I will never forget to appreciate that! It seems like the world lost it's innocence at the end of the 1960's...unless it was just me, growing up...

Enjoy this video and rent or find an old musical on TV this weekend...sounds like a nice Father's Day!

Baby Boomers Moving In With Adult Children - US News and World Report

(photo from Developeronline.com)


It's a smart thing to do, in these hard economic times and a move toward previous times when families were closer and stayed together to help each other and keep feeling the love and security that only a family can share!

There are some good things coming out of this economic crisis and that is a move toward some better values that may have been lost for a time in our country. People are being forced to be more frugal in spending and are holding off buying the next thing they would "like" to have as opposed to "must have" to survive.

The other thing is that happening is that parents and children are moving into one home to pool their resources together. It is somewhat usual to think of children of Boomers moving back into their parents home, but a bit unusual to hear that Boomers are moving into their children's homes. As so many Boomers are losing their jobs, they are finding that their either have to move out of the home they can no longer afford or purchase a smaller home and even ask their children to move in with them to help pay for the mortgage.

Yes, families can have issues living under one roof, but a sit down of the whole family to discuss rules of the house and put together a plan with everyone's honest input can save a lot of grief later.

In this time of the worst economy since the Great Depression, in most cases, family members are the ones who will stand by and help each other. This is what occurred during the Great Depression and may be what will enable all of us to get through our current crisis.

Boomer parents who find themselves needing their children's help should not feel embarassed or shame in any way. They have been sacrificing and doing everything they could to help their children all of their lives and when families face hard times, there is no greater expression of love than seeing your children doing well and doing what they can to help the whole family survive.

Here is an article on this topic from US News & World Report

Baby Boomers Moving In With Adult Children - US News and World Report

A Great Big Happy Boomer Valentine's Day to ALL!

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY TO ALL AND ESPECIALLY MY FELLOW BABY BOOMERS!

I've been having such a busy weekend, actually celebrating Valentine's Weekend, that I almost forgot to post something on my blog... (OMG!)..

It actually began on Friday, as our 5 year old refrigerator started to make noise and smoke! Thank goodness I was home! I unplugged it and called for service and spent the next hour moving all the food to the 15 year old refrigerator in the basement...(another "thank goodness"!) Then we had to wait for a repairman to come and tell us it needs the compressor replaced for ohhh... about $700...yeah right, we bought it 5 years ago for $700. Oh yeah.. "that will be $65 for that opinion". So Saturday, we went out to stimulate the economy and bought a new refrigerator AND dishwasher (as it has been making a bad noise for a couple of months now) at the Sears Outlet that was having a convenient, half off sale. Then we rushed home, changed clothes and made it 10 minutes late for a 5:00 PM Valentine's Day reservation at the highest point overlooking the city of Pittsburgh, PA... great food and a great view of the 3 rivers and the city. We topped the fantastic romantic dinner off with a great desert and could hardly walk from being full.

The next day....actually Saturday, Valentine's Day, Feb. 14th, we went to see a great romantic movie, "New In Town", which we loved! As a side note, although I love action and sci-fi flicks, I LOVE a good story that not only has a love story where two people find the greatest gift in each other eyes and in spite of the obstacles, they DO NOT let it slip away! This also combined with a town of normal, everyday working people and how their lives intertwine and show the highs and lows of "real" life! Stories that capture those deep emotions and by the way, would be nothing without the music soundtrack, which brings all those emotions to a nth degree! Great stuff!

As we celebrated the dinner the day before, we came home after the movie and ordered a white pizza to be delivered and lit a fire.

It has been a GREAT Valentine's Weekend and I hope and wish ALL of you the same. May you all enjoy or find the gift that my wife and I found 16 years ago as we were married on Valentine's Day.

My Mentors for Parenting...

I am a real TV Baby Boomer nut!!! I can’t begin to list all the advice that I actually got from Dad’s of TV shows. It sounds ridiculous, but I actually can attribute Andy Griffin, Dick Van Dike, Jim Anderson, Ward Cleaver, and up to the TV show, “Home Improvement” dad, Tim, “The Toolman” Taylor to giving me more good advice than any other on being a good father. Of course, my memory is reinforced, thankfully, by repeats of these shows on channels like TV Land. :-)

I was always moved emotionally when any of these Dads used understanding and some wisdom to teach their children some valuable lessons about life and how to treat others. These were fathers who were very into their families and their children. Obviously, there were many 1950’s family characteristics that seemed to show the father as the head of the household, but in almost every case, the mother was really the driving force and many times the light of compassion and understanding for whatever problems “The Beaver” would get into. Later shows such as “Home Improvement” showed a more balanced effort of parenting of both the mother and the father, but obviously for me, I looked to the father’s as my mentors as they cared about how their children learned right from wrong.

Actually, I am still learning from these dads, even though my youngest daughter is almost 20 and in college. I have always been driven to insure that I did whatever I could to make my children try their hardest at whatever they do, respect others and always accept people for who they are on the inside and not let other friends influence them to treat people disrespectfully. At the same time, I find it hard to deal with my children going into those more self centered years of adolescence, when they don’t necessarily look to you as the best example of all things in life, like they did when they were little. Such an example occurred between the dad from “Home Improvement” and one of his sons. The best advice that the kindly and ever wise next door neighbor, Wilson, gave to Tim (the dad) Taylor was “how can a child become a man (or woman/adult) unless they stop looking at the parent as a God and start questioning their parent to learn how to become an adult themselves?” This was an excellent point and hit me as I wonder many times right now why my 20 year old daughter doesn’t necessarily call us or come home to visit us as much as we think she should be doing....or why she doesn’t think to email me or gives us only as much information as we ask for and doesn’t sit down and ask for heart to heart sessions. She is learning to make these decisions herself.

These are just normal actions of a person becoming an adult! I can remember when I began to think that I knew better ways of doing things than my parents and I looked less to them for constant guidance. Then, as we get older, we begin to realize the importance of our parents and that they won’t live forever and both start to make an effort to let them know we appreciate them as well as acknowledge that we are young and haven’t gone through the amount of life experiences that our parents have, so we can come to them when we are confused and need help making a decision.

Children come back, as my older daughter, who is almost 30 now. She is closer to me now than she has been for many years. She is a teacher and as she interacts with children and their parents, now her mind can relate to things that she may have disagreed with years before.

So here’s to my Heros (and I don’t mean Superman...) when I was growing up and how they helped me be a better Dad! Here’s to Andy, Dick, Ward, Tim and all my other Dad heros who I think did a pretty good job with me as my children are great examples of the kind of people I hoped they would be and actually... that I aspire to be as well

Being a Father and a Parent counts!

I came across this video today and it really sums up my feelings about being the best parent you can be. I thought this would be appropriate for Boomers to think about, whether you’re a Mom or a Dad, even though it’s about being a father. As we get older and often think about some of the dreams we had or things we may have had accomplished, we need to remind ourselves not to think that we sacrificed those dreams in any way by being a good parent. I admit that I often have wondered what I could have done in music if I stayed single and traveled and only ate, slept and played music, but I always reminded myself that nothing has ever really made me feel better than being a parent. All you have to do is think of the smiling faces of your children to remember that feeling. Nothing we ever do is a waste of time. It is what is is. It is what makes us the person we are!

I know that I will leave a mark on this world.... in the two special human beings I helped bring into it. They have and always will make this a better world than it was before they were here.

Enjoy this video, especially the great drawings and song. No, I didn’t write the song... I wish I had!


"Family Man" from Trevor Little on Vimeo.

My Father's Cameras

My father was the photographer. He loved cameras, although he never really had enough money to get a really good one. As many families of the 1950’s, we had the Kodak Brownie camera when I was very young.

I know that is must have been used because I saw the proof of the old pictures in my parent's photo albums.


(My family before me...)

So it was cheap, it worked and thank goodness, it gave us some memories to see what it was like when our parents were very young.

Eventually, someone at the car dealer where my Dad was a salesman, sold him a second hand 35mm camera with extra lenses and buttons and dials... and lord knows what else it could do. We never really understood how to use all of it’s features, but my Dad and I would take long rides in the car just to take pictures of fall leaves. I used to like to go on these day trips, but as the day went on, I just wanted to get back home. Today, these are some of the fondest memories of doing things with my Dad. He would always have the pictures developed into slides and we would show them for hours to the family on special occasions or when we had taken a bunch of new ones. Most often, family members would find themselves head bobbing and nodding off. Who knew they would love the endless slides of Pennsylvania Turnpike Tunnel pictures... all 7 tunnels... both ends. We would pull off the side of the turnpike before each tunnel, take a picture and then pull off on the other side as we came out of the tunnel. We thought they were great when we took them, but even we would become sleepy watching them. For some reason, the pictures in the slide projector carousel were always quite out of order, causing to go from winter scene to summer to someone’s birthday, to the swimming pool. Everyone would complain about this disorder, especially my mother, but if it were not for the humor of this, we may have never actually made it through the entire slide show without falling asleep.


(This is a slide projector very similar to what we had)

I still need to go through all those old slides to see if they are still salvageable to be copied to a digital format....( I hope!!! )

Here is the article I found that inspired me to think and write about my father’s pictures:

http://www.irememberjfk.com/mt/2008/08/the_cameras_my_father_used.php

Post any comments you have about your memories of family pictures!

Remembering Our Fathers....

I recently added some of my compositions of what I call Bed & Breakfast, or doodling music on my MySpace music page. Then I added my first post on the blog on that site about my current journey in music and how I have been lead or pointed back to bringing music into my life. This prompted me to think of the beginnings of playing professionally and how my Dad made that all happen.

My father was a true hero to me and he knew that I loved him but our family didn't really display outward affection, so I, regrettably, never actually said the words, "I love you" to him. Why do we not realize how important that is until it is far too late so often?

I came into this world, I think, as a surprise. My parents already had two children, a girl and a boy, so why another, and 10 years after the last? The odd thing was that in those days of the late 1940's, it would have been odd to name your first born son after your father-in-law, which is what they did. That may have been a clue as to how my father and brother had a troublesome relationship. They were at each other all of the time that I was around. Then all of a sudden, 10 years later, I was born, another son and THIS time, I was named after my father, David. Such was the nature of our relationship. We were very close and did everything together, much of which I did not care for, as I was his helper around the house. Many of my earliest memories of him where of my trying to sneak out of the house early on a Saturday morning before he had the chance to say, "We're going to pull weeds in the yard all day"...ugh.... I hated the hard work I had to do with him! It seemed, at the time, that all my friends were out playing and I was digging, pulling weeds, laying blocks, moving cement, building kitchens, and on and on.... You would have thought that I would have learned all of those trades that he knew, but I was so busy hating the hard work, that I have found throughout my life a sharp dislike for doing work around my own house. Now, I know better! The times we spent together are precious memories to me know that he is gone!

One day, when I was about 12 years old, my parents went into a music store to look at organs and pianos. The salesman, who obviously knew what he was doing, sat me down and placed these cardboard things on the keys and music that I could follow and play songs right away. I lost myself into it. My parents went shopping in a few other stores and came back a couple of hours later and I was still sitting there playing. (In those days, parents could actually leave their child in a store like that and feel that I was safe). My Dad saw my passion for music and bought the organ and signed me up for lessons that evening. He was with me for each lesson, every concert I ever played and every place I every played again from then on. When I began playing in bands at the age of 16, he came to every bar we played, recorded us on his reel to reel tape player and even co-signed for the other guys in the band for them to buy their instruments when their own parents would not. He may have been living his dream, but he was also giving me mine.

No matter how successful, or not, I am with my life, I know that my passion for music will never be a wrong choice for me and I know that my drive and inspiration will always come from my Dad!

Thanks Dad for seeing what I had in me and for pushing me in the right direction. I back on the right path now!

US Teens Compose Constantly Online (from eMarketer.com)

Some of us Boomers still have to deal with teenagers, so I'd thought I post this article from emarketer.com, a marketing research publication that I subscribe to. It shows some major differences of our youth to our kids youth. What would we be like if we all were texting on cell phones all the time??? What would the world be like? Time will tell! I have a 19 year old daughter who is texting on her cell phone all the time. In fact, as she is old enough now to begin learning what it is to become an adult, she has to pay for the extra amount of text messages on her phone. She has unlimited to any of her friends who use Verizon and 1,500 texts per month that she can send to friends who are not Verizon.. and she uses just about all of them!!! It is a different world for sure!

Interestingly enough though, there are a great many Baby Boomers who are more into new technologies than the kids of today. For instance, Blackberries, PDA's, wikis and twittering... many kids will not even know what twittering means... do you???

Comment on your kids....

US Teens Compose Constantly Online

APRIL 25, 2008

Just don't call it writing.

US teens are nearly universal users of the Internet and e-mail, according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project-National Commission on Writing report titled "Writing, Technology and Teens," conducted from September to November 2007.

The study was conducted to determine the relationship between online and "real" writing. While educators hope to turn teens' heavy use of electronic text into solid writing skills, the data should also interest marketers who want to reach teens.

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More than nine out of 10 US teens surveyed said they used the Internet or e-mail.

Responding teens were heavy users of electronic communications overall: 71% had a mobile phone, 59% had a notebook or desktop PC, 58% had a social network profile and 27% had a blog.

Despite all the electronic text in their lives, teens usually do not think of themselves as writing.

"There is a big gap in the minds of teenagers between the 'real' writing they do for school and the texts they compose for their friends," said Amanda Lenhart, senior research specialist at Pew.

Although responding teens did not think their use of computers or text-based communications with friends influenced their formal writing, many said the informal styles that characterize their electronic communications sometimes bled into schoolwork.

A plurality (35%) of US adults surveyed in a January 2008 463 Communications-Zogby International study said that 13 to 15 was the right age for children to start using e-mail.

Girls continue to be heavier users of electronic communications than boys. According to the Pew study, 44% of teen girls send text messages daily, compared with 28% of boys. And girls were twice as likely as boys to send messages daily through social networking sites (31% compared with 16%).

“The role of technology in teen girls’ lives cannot be underestimated,” said eMarketer senior analyst Debra Aho Williamson. “Because they use an array of communications devices on a daily basis, marketers must think about extending their messaging to a variety of platforms to effectively reach them.”

Learn how moms use the Web. Read eMarketer's Moms Online: Browsing, Researching, Buying report.

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