The New York Times offers a funny, somewhat disturbing story on teenagers' perception at gadgetry, these days.

I remember that in my teenager years, "shoes" were the big thing to pimp around with, and that footwear used to cost ungodly amounts of money for no reason. Somehow, it was awesomely-cool to puncture those $ 200 (that defined "expensive" back then) Air-capsule-like shoes so that they would make "sqllzzrgh"-like sounds when walking through the hallways.

But now, teenagers need... cellphones. They need cameras. Most of all, they need iPods. If possible, they need all iPod Minis, in all available colors - they're even going as far as to claim that "it's part of their uniform". And you know as well as I do that one can't live a proper life without taking a few 6MP pictures of your new iPod, upload them through BlueTooth to your favorite retro-styled Nokia cellphone while simualtenously creating a live podcast at 2000 MegaFonzies (copyright Futurama) an hour.

The whole thing already starts at the age of 12. While I still enjoyed impaling P.E. instructors during javelin-throwing lessons at age 12, the norms have shifted towards spending $ 300 on an iPod everyone already has. Granted, only one in five of these kids actually has a job of some kind, and on average they earn 30 bucks a week... but parents are happy to buy their way out of puberty-hell.


"Kids are very good, and relentless, at getting what they want, from the day they're born," said Susan Beacham, a parent of two girls, 13 and 11, in Lake Bluff, Ill., and a founder of Money Savvy Generation, a group that coaches parents and children in fiscal responsibility.

"The pester power comes with them saying: 'Mom, Madeline has one, so does Mira. Everytime I want to call you, I have to borrow theirs,' " Ms. Beacham said. "It comes in the form of questioning your parenting. 'Why wouldn't you keep us safe?' Then it goes to the iPod. 'I've earned it, I excel in school, in excel in sports, why wouldn't you give it to me?' "

Great fun, those kids. I'd give them a plastic bottle with a hole in the side and a silly straw instead. Way cheaper than an iPod, plus nobody has one yet.

Oh, and my $ 200 shoes fell apart after 3 weeks, after which I was forced to run around on $ 24.95 Bristol-branded "SuperAirMaxiz". Which lasted until September 1994 (about 2 years or so), I believe. Such horror. Good thing I got a SuperNES to compensate for that. Ah, the times - do they ever change at all?

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