Volcano Brain

27Oct

Digital Youth and Online Culture (keywords)

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By Dag Wood

Going on 30 years now most of us have a hard time remembering what we did before the Internet. Going online has become as commonplace as eating breakfast in the morning. Sure there are some people who don’t do it, or perhaps only do it occasionally, but for most of us the Internet is part of day to day life. From communicating through email, messaging programs or even video chat, to doing our important shopping, when something needs to be done, most people start out online.

One thing that people like us who are older have a hard time realizing, is that there is now a generation growing up who have never been without the internet. Have you ever heard the expression, “If you need help with your computer ask a 5 year old?” It funny but true. If you have children, they probably know just as much, if not more, about the internet than you do.

So what do kids do online all day? What does their digital world look like. Are they driven to video sites? Media or networking sites? Do any of them use the internet for learning or for education. Kids, and technology are now inextricably intertwined. But is their access to user posted digital content like blogs a good thing. What interests kids when everything is just a click away?

Youth and Digital Media

Several years ago the Berkman center for Internet and Society at Harvard University came up with the term, “digital youth,” to describe this rising generation. Many studies have been done on the effects of passing your formative years connected to the web. In fact researchers at Berkeley University performed a collaborative 3 year study on how children learn with digital media. They logged over 5000 hours of online observation and interviewed 800 youth about their habits.

So what did they find?

It’s no surprise that social networking sites, video-sharing sites and digital games and gadgets are now a ubiquitous fixture in modern youth culture. While the youth’s development still involves the same struggles, identity and autonomy, they have to do so in new and ever changing modes of communication and interaction.

One of the interesting findings of Berkeley’s study of digital youth and media is the disconnect between how parents perceive their children’s media usage and how the children see it. While many parent’s see Facebook and Twitter, Youtube and 4chan as a waste of time, these sites allow the young users to explore normative behavior, develop interaction skills and more.

Contrary to the general opinion that internet interaction cause youth to be less interactive and lazy, this study found out that most youth actually use digital media to continue hanging out with their friends in an always on way.

It has even been determined that children engage in self-directed learning online, based on the interests and knowledge of their peers. If you have ever seen two kids “geek” out about something on a message board or even a social media wall, it is obvious that the knowledge they are sharing was acquired by them on the internet for the very purpose of being able to converse intelligibly.

Where Parents Know More

One thing is certain however, while children may know more about the technical side of the internet, may even be more familiar with internet syntax and slang, trends and sites, they tend to be much less concerned about the possible dangers of online existence. Since everyone’s facebook or twitter page shares a similar format, it is hard to differentiate between adults and kids, friends and possible foes. So there are several things that, as a parent, you need to do to help protect your children.