Last month I shared "The Ultimate 2017 Guide to Marketing to Teens." It offered six pointers for making 2017 a wonderful year. The tips were: tell lies, ignore facts, be offensive, make threats, look backwards and ignore experts. I will confess right now that I must have been under the influence of a powerful psychoactive substance when I wrote this. These tips are exactly NOT how to engage with teens (or anyone else).

Teens today have more entertainment options at their fingertips - literally and figuratively - than any generation of youth before them. It's for exactly this reason that traditional entertainment industries are so worried about how to attract and retain young audiences.

The recently concluded holiday season was a brutal one for brick-and-mortar retailers. Consumer spending didn't materialize the way department-store chains were hoping, and the repercussions have been swift and harsh. Macy's announced it was closing 68 stores and cutting 6,200 jobs, sending its stock down 14% the next day. Kohl's reported disappointing holiday sales and lowered its 2017 outlook, causing its stock to plunge 19%. Sears, meanwhile, announced the closure of 41 Sears stores and 109 Kmarts.

Being digital native impacts everything teens do, from meeting and communicating with friends to learning in and out of school or browsing, shopping and traveling.