Young people are a fickle bunch, but on one thing they agree: terrestrial television and commercial radio are about as cool as trendy dads getting down with the kids on MySpace. The “wired generation” of 16- to 24-year-olds is spurning the old media in favour of shinier pastures. Mobile phones, home computers and high-speed internet connections are the key to the virtual universe where the young hang out, entertain themselves and exercise their new-found media clout, 24/7.

NEW-MEDIA PLAYGROUND

Forget Radio 1’s pop charts. The young create their own audiovisual playlists online by reaching for the shows that they want, when they want. They are embracing the future of the web, visiting interactive and media-rich sites. Fancy some hip-hop? Head to the BBC’s slick urban-music offering (www.bbc.co.uk/1xtra) to hear Busta Rhymes on the rap chart, then to Adam and Joe on XFM for comedy (tinyurl.com/mz6wl) before catching Channel 4’s latest episode of Lost at tinyurl.com/ewnlw.

The Yahoo! Music UK site (uk.launch.yahoo.com) explodes with hot music videos, including the new singles from Justin Timberlake and Scissor Sisters. In comparison, the veteran channel MTV looks like an X Factor wannabe. Alongside fast-loading news and an extensive video vault are studio performances by the cockney rebel Lily Allen.

The online radio station Last.fm takes musical choice to an unparalleled level, albeit in audio. Simply enter the name of an artist you want — from Arctic Monkeys to Frank Zappa — and you can hear them within seconds. Alternatively, the ingenious service will scan your music collection and like a personal DJ, tailor a playlist by matching your tastes with those of like-minded members.

MULTITASKING IN THE GENES

Today’s teens and twentysomethings may appear to have the attention spans of ADD-affected gnats, as they flick between blasting evil-doers on their Sony PSP, watching grinning idiots’ pratfalls on YouTube and planning a night out with friends on MSN Messenger. Yet multitasking is hard-wired into their brains and effected through a host of digital devices and dizzying web services. Welcome to the realm of the “connected cocoon”.

More than two-thirds of under-24s now meet at networking sites. At the gargantuan MySpace, you will find every teen tribe imaginable, all posting favourite video clips, listening to music and chattering endlessly. The colourful Bebo (bebo.com), another popular network, appeals to members with its distinctive whiteboard, on which “Beboers” design artwork to send to one another, creating personal pages as bright and as cluttered as their bedroom walls. For fans of indie music, Bandwagon (bandwagon.co.uk) could be the hottest gig in town. Any act, signed or unsigned, can post MP3s and ring tones here, for downloading. The electro-bossa outfit Nouvelle Vague blasting from your mobile beats the Crazy Frog every time. This UK-based rendezvous also encourages members to stalk their favourite bands with mobile-phone cameras and post clips of them falling over backstage or shopping in Tesco. Is this the birth of the digital groupie?

CONSUMERS AS CREATORS

Kids armed with gadgets are creating an online avalanche of so-called “consumer-created content”, from filming themselves lip-synching to pop songs (www.googleidol.com) to podcasting about whatever excites them — you can get instant samples at iTunes (www.apple.com/uk/itunes). Dubbed “Generation C”, they are nearly three times as likely to post material on the web as the average surfer, and almost one in five of them has a website or blog.

Microsoft’s Windows Live Spaces (www.spaces.live.com) is high on their list of web hang-outs. There you can blog, share photos and make friends in a cool blue space full of pictures of smiling people.

Simple to use, even for beginners, Spaces crams three of the web’s best new services into one site, a cutting-edge venture that heralds the dawn of “web 2.0” — that nebulous term for sites that encourage participation through flash interactive widgets.

Similar claims are made for Trouble Homegrown (www.troublehomegrown.co.uk), but the emphasis is more on fun. This online offshoot of a digital satellite TV channel encourages you to post “video, audio, photo, whatever” on chaotic pages covered in splurges of colour that may induce a migraine in anyone over the legal drinking age. I especially liked Phil and Lee’s grainy spoof Parcelforce advert, shot on a mobile phone.

It was inevitable that once camera phones became de rigueur among the young, places to post snaps online would spring up in droves. Radar.net is a photo-sharing website, styled in understated black and grey, with arty pictures of hip young things on the home page — presumably the target audience. It boasts of allowing a “visual conversation between you and your friends”. Pretentious? Perhaps, but posting a picture from your mobile is simplicity itself. Friends view your pics on their handsets, comment and add their own. Who says mobile phones are destroying the art of conversation?

ENTERTAINMENT ON THE MOVE

To the networked young, the mobile phone is a social nexus, identity badge and entertainment device all rolled into one snazzy fuchsia-trimmed case. When they’re not using it for texting or snapping one another, connected youth are bagging a new Diddy ring tone from Jamster. Among this tribe, one of the most popular handsets is the Motorola L6, probably the cheapest mobile with Bluetooth — essential for swapping clips and pics without paying. How very punk.

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