Agency key to participation

Once again — I feel like I’m a broken record here! (although who even understands that metaphor anymore?) — AGENCY, the ability to have control over one’s space, to do something, is key to participation in Web 2.0. Here’s a fascinating summary of a series of presentations from marketers and others who run websites oriented to teens.

"The same scene seemed to play in “repeat” mode all day, as one exec after another begged off knowing just what the teens want, grumbling that they were known as the “teen” around the office but, ahem, they are years removed from actual teendom. So instead of pretending to know what’s hip and cool and how to run their online communities, they actually defer to the teens themselves — on their staff, in the communities — to decide how to run the sites and what content will work there."

So what would it look like, if communities of faith actually took teens seriously? And helped them to create spaces for their own faith engagement? (first thing, we'd probably just need to stop trying to PREVENT them from doing so)