Children make great props for gadget commercials. They're cute—like lil mini grown-ups with years before the regret sets in. They also say the darndest slogans. But a recent barrage of precocious tots in tech ads puts a cheery face on latent panic currently hovering around threat level teal: our inability to keep up with rapidly changing technology.

This weekend, the Level Playing Field Institute brought together a group of middle and high school students "from minority groups underrepresented in computer science" for a brainstorming meetup and tech project competition. Here's what TechCrunch wrote about instead:

OK, we've got a problem: we need to figure out what "young people" think is "cool" so that we can "be like Snapchat." But we're not Snapchat yet, so we can't afford to organize an actual focus group. Solution: get high school kids to work for free and call it a "teen advisory board." By God, we've done it again.