Most thinking people agree that false information and hate speech are bad things that should be avoided and discouraged. This leads me to wonder how people who disagree with this perspective view the issue. How could someone argue that fake news and hate speech are NOT problems? To understand that thought process, let's look at some recent attempts to engage teens to deal with the fake news problem.

One important factor to keep in mind for both: Gen Z and Baby Boomers are children of a recession. For that reason, we get a real sense of just how pragmatic these generations are and how careful they are with their money.

There's no room for error in digital advertising. That's particularly true when engaging Gen Z. This tech-savvy group of youngsters certainly value "all things digital" - except being served digital ads. In fact, 69% of Gen Zers admit to physically avoiding digital ads. That's not good news.

Teens' entertainment diet is eclectic, particularly compared to other generations when they were teens. Teenage Xers didn't have social media vying for their attention; they just wanted their MTV. As teenagers, Millennials were just being introduced to the concept of DVR and media on-demand, and only the youngest portion of that generation experienced any form of social media during their teen years.

It's so 2008 to use words alone to talk to teens. Today, teens are increasingly communicating with emoji (small digital icons used to express an idea or emotion, such as a smiley face expressing happiness) and memes (pronounced "meems," humorous images, videos or pieces of text that are copied and spread rapidly by Internet users).

TissueBox Donations (TBD) has decided to resurrect a very low-tech way to engage with the millions of teenagers, aka Influencers, out there who have not looked up since they got their first smartphone. TBD has a massive number of schools to which it donates tissue boxes that sit in front of millions of teens all day long. They are mini-billboards inside classrooms that can easily be used to reach the un-engageable teen audience.

First the good news: Contrary to a common factoid (can we call it a faketoid?) teenagers - and, in fact, all humans - do not really have attention spans shorter than those of goldfish. In studies with school-aged kids, it has become apparent that the ability to pay attention varies widely. The reality is really not that teens have short attention spans, it's that they have short attention spans for things they don't care about.

Were you ever certain you'd found love at first sight, only to find out that the more you learned, the object of your desire wasn't what you expected? Similarly, brands are spending increasing resources to catch Generation Z's eyes, but if the wooing doesn't have substance and brand truth behind it to form an authentic relationship, then all efforts are wasted. In the era of "fake news" and a loss of trust in corporate and political institutions, brands need to be honest and transparent about who they are and what they offer to constantly prove themselves trustworthy to this critical …