Takes

ACROSS THE GREAT DIVIDE: Fortunately, They Can Only Be Teenagers for 7 Years Do teenagers and parents share the same values? Depends on who's talking. In a survey commissioned by the YMCA, 62 percent of parents "strongly agreed" that they and their teenage kids embrace the same basic values. But just 46 percent of the teens felt that way. As one learns in looking at this and other recent surveys, such disconnects are a fixture of parent-teen relations. In some cases, they reflect differences of opinion; in others, they reflect gaps in parental knowledge about teen life today. As an instance of the latter sort, a Discovery Channel/Time poll found 51 percent of teens saying they've been verbally insulted or threatened in the past year; 22 percent of parents said their teen kids had been subjected to such behavior. In a Newsweek poll, 66 percent of parents believed "very few or none" of their kids' close friends have had sex; 49 percent of the teens said half or more of their pals have done so. As for differences of opinion, 72 percent of parents in Newsweek's poll worry a lot about "sexual permissiveness in society," while 33 percent of teens do so. This, of course, reflects the fact that teens are often in favor of sexual permissiveness in society. If teens and parents aren't fully conversant with each other's thinking, is it because they don't spend enough time together? On this question, too, it depends who you ask. When the YMCA presented them with a menu of modern worries, a plurality of teens (21 percent) put a lack of time with their parents atop the list. The parents, by contrast, were more worried about things like drugs and alcohol, with just 8 percent citing a lack of family time as the No. 1 problem. In any case, 36 percent of them said their teens "spend more of their free time watching television and using computers than they do interacting with their parents." Twenty-nine percent of teens agreed that this is true. GET LOST, KID: The Quality of Mercy Is Strained in This Instance When an ongoing news story wears out its welcome, it brings out a mean streak in the American public. Consider the chart below, which presents the findings of a Fox News/ Opinion Dynamics poll conducted at the end of last month. The question invited people to be callous in classifying an innocent kid with two of the more notorious adults of recent years. And a significant number of respondents were ready to seize the opportunity. One understands their hostility was provoked by the media, not by the boy himself. Still, when a story has imposed on their attention spans, people aren't careful to draw fine distinctions. This is one of those cases where one wishes respondents had simply told the pollster to get lost. Looking at the numbers in the chart, one will also sympathize with Lewinsky for evoking more disdain than a man judged in court (and in public opinion) to have killed two people. That's the sort of thing that will happen, though, when people believe the news should entertain them--or, at least, that it shouldn't bore them. FADING PASTIME: They Really Don't Care If They Ever Come Back As fans throng to brand-new stadiums to watch home runs fly over the fences, one might suppose baseball retains its status as the "national pastime." Alas, a succession of Gallup polls tells a different story. In its latest survey asking Americans to name their "favorite sport to watch," baseball drew just 13 percent of the vote. Football ranked atop the list, as it has since 1972, garnering 33 percent of the tally this time. Basketball (16 percent) regained second place after having slipped behind baseball in Gallup's 1998 polling. Ice hockey, golf and auto racing each drew 5 percent of the vote, and ice/figure skating pulled four percent. No other sport was named by more than 2 percent of respondents. In keeping with its macho aura, football was more a favorite of men (42 percent) than women (25 percent). Basketball drew more votes from women (19 percent) than from men (13 percent), perhaps reflecting the emergence of women's basketball as a spectator sport. In a breakdown of the data by age group, baseball fell into single digits (at 7 percent) when 18-29-year-olds were asked to name their favorite sport. Only among respondents age 65-plus did baseball outpoint basketball (19 percent to 16 percent), though football was tops even with that group (23 percent). Professional baseball fared better when people were asked whether they're fans of the sport. Forty-five percent said they are, putting the game ahead of pro basketball (38 percent). SATISFACTION: To the Barricades? Not Just Yet, Thanks If your job is to foment social discontent, you're probably suffering a poor level of job satisfaction these days. You brandish data purporting to show the economic boom benefiting the fat cats alone, with everyone else working harder than ever just to keep from falling behind. But the toiling masses incorrigibly insist on feeling contented. A new Zogby America poll finds 42 percent of Americans professing to be "very satisfied" with their jobs and another 23 percent "somewhat" so. At the opposite end of the scale, just 6 percent said they're "completely unhappy" with their jobs. Nearly half of the college graduates polled (47 percent) are in the "very satisfied" class, versus 33 percent of those with a high school education. Amid talk of flat wages, 26 percent are very satisfied with their incomes, and 42 percent are somewhat satisfied. The gender gap here was smaller than one might suppose, with 28 percent of men and 25 percent of women declaring themselves very satisfied. ALL TOGETHER NOW: Attach Eyes (A) to Data (B) On RTA Furniture Sales (C) Forget computers. The piece of technology that's really indispensable to the rise of the home office is the Allen wrench. A new study by The NPD Group shows sales of desks, credenzas, workstations and so on are boosting the ready-to-assemble (RTA) furniture market. In fact, office furniture pulled in 53 percent of RTA dollars last year in the retail channels NPD tracked (office superstores, mass merchants and electronics specialty stores). Furniture related to home entertainment accounted for 23 percent of RTA spending. Home-entertainment centers showed vigorous growth, partly because consumers needed larger surfaces on which to plant the vast TV sets they've been buying. In the bedroom, meanwhile, RTA nightstands drew a 32 percent rise in spending. COME ON DOWN: Using the Internet To Kick the Virtual Tires Which is true: (a) few people are buying cars online or (b) the Internet has taken on a major role in the car-shopping process. Astute test takers will realize the correct answer is (c) both. Greenfield Online polled 2,000 wired consumers who shopped for a car last year and found 68 percent used the Internet to help make their choice. Of these, only 1 percent made the purchase online. Fifty-four percent of the online car shoppers used multiple-brand Web sites; 46 percent visited manufacturer sites. Autobytel.com was the most-visited of the former sort, and ford.com was most popular of the latter. More than nine in 10 of those who moused around for a car said the Internet gave them more information than they'd otherwise have been able to gather. SNACK TIME!: How Else Are We to Spend The Hours Between Meals? As any farm animal can attest, grazing tends to fatten one up. Thus, the national epidemic of obesity can be traced in part to Americans' growing appetite for snacks. Drawing on a Reuters Health report, the WorldOpinion Web site summarized two reports that document the rise of snacking during the past couple of decades. Both studies were conducted by researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Focusing on kids age 2-18, one study found that while the average size of snacks had not increased, the number of daily snacks had risen. That helped drive up caloric intake. Among 2-5-year-olds, daily intake rose from 1,380 in 1977 to nearly 1,500 in 1996. In '77, snacks constituted 19 percent of the kids' calories; in '96, they accounted for 24 percent. The other study found a similar pattern among 19-29-year-olds. The number of "snacking occasions" increased from 1.7 per day in 1998 to nearly 2 per day in 1996. In that same period, the number of "chronic snackers" grew from 76 percent to 84 percent of this cohort. MIXED BLESSINGS: Those Touchy Advertisers, Datums 'R' Us, Etc. Gratifying news for advertisers who dislike the media: Many journalists are wary of rubbing you the wrong way. In a poll of reporters and news executives by The Pew Center for the People & the Press, 23 percent said journalists "sometimes" avoid stories that could cause problems for advertisers. Another 6 percent said such self-censorship is "commonplace." On the other hand, larger numbers of respondents believe journalists often (7 percent) or sometimes (31 percent) steer clear of news stories that might make them look bad in the eyes of their peers. Need a posh neighborhood as the setting for an ad? Manhattan is the place for you, though San Francisco would suffice, too. A feature in Worth magazine ranks the 50 wealthiest neighborhoods in the country, based on the prices of homes. Manhattan accounted for three of the top five and for nine of the top 15, with the Upper East Side in first place. San Francisco had three in the top 15, led by No. 4 Pacific Heights. Boston managed two 'hoods in the ritziest 15. The highest-ranking neighborhood not situated on either coast is Indianapolis' Old Northside (No. 20). It's a singular achievement. At least, it will seem like one to people who chronically waver about whether to treat "data" as a singular or plural noun. An entire campaign for SBC Communications comes down forthrightly on the singular side. Otherwise we'd have a batch of ads with the headline, "We are data." That would have a ring to it, too, but not the semi-human touch the "I" version generates. Rodgers Townsend of St. Louis created the campaign.

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