Lane Sutton is slightly older than this, but you get the idea. (Image by Wpedzich.)

A 13-year-old social media wunderkind from Massachusetts named Lane Sutton has been the subject of a couple of articles on boston.com. He runs his own website and uses words like “exponential.” Kids are being encouraged to be the next Mark Zuckerberg, and no one seems alarmed. (Thanks Newmark’s Door.) An excerpt from an article about him:

“Lane Sutton is tweeting from the second row of a social media conference at the Microsoft campus here in Kendall Square. He’s armed with an iPad and iPhone, and a consulting pitch he can deliver in a smooth minute.

Oh, yeah, and his mom’s sitting beside him. Sutton is 13.

‘We live in exponential times,’ he types in a Twitter post, quoting from the slide presentation. He adds, ‘The Internet is a place to meet, learn, act, react, and transact.’’

People are paying attention to this eighth-grader from Framingham, with his mop of dark, wavy hair and glasses. A budding entrepreneur and self-described geek (better than nerd, he says) Sutton runs www.KidCriticUSA.com, where he reviews restaurants, movies, gadgets, and books.

Hollywood A-lister Tom Cruise and more than 2,500 others follow him on Twitter; executives make time for him (like the head of online retailer Zappos); and his customer service gripe to Steve Jobs reaped a response from an assistant to the Apple chief executive.”