How Small Trends Impact Our Culture - Part 2

 July 30, 2009

Interview with Mark J. Penn, author of Microtrends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow's Big Changes
___________________

Mike Carruthers:
Small trends in our society called microtrends can have a big impact, for example...

Mark J. Penn:
One in ten marriages now are coming from the Internet and the people that met on the Internet are from much broader social and selection circles. So that it's creating a whole new way that people can be socially mobile through marriage in a way that was being increasingly closed off.

 Mark Penn, author of the book Microtrends, says these smaller trends are usually the result of several different factors all coming together in unusual and unexpected ways.

Take something like cougars - now there are more older women dating younger men for a change. That didn't happen overnight or without relationship to the fact that more single heads of households were women, there were more successful women. And so the role of women changed and then the microtrend developed in unexpected ways.

Another unexpected microtrend is that teenagers are taking up knitting; who would have thought?

People just want to make something. They don't get to do that very often anymore and knitting really satisfies that desire. And plus I think these little knitting clubs that teenagers get into can be both social fun and can produce something made with their hands.

These microtrends are important to watch.

They're really changing society today - they don't have to grow into big trends and really come into play as a result of some other changes that have occurred.

Complete interview not available.