Digital Youth, Innovation, and the Unexpected

Publication Date: December 2007

Publisher: MIT Press

Author(s): Sarita Yardi; Ellen Seiter; Christian Sandvig; Robert Samuels; Henry Lowood; Sonia Livingstone; Paula K. Hooper; Robert A. Heverly; Meg Cramer; Justine Cassell; Anne Balsamo; Steve Anderson; Tara McPherson

Research Area: Social conditions

Keywords: Digital generation; Participatory culture; Social inequality; Digital youth

Type: Book

Coverage: United States

Abstract:

Young people's use of digital media may result in various innovations and unexpected outcomes, from the use of videogame technologies to create films to the effect of home digital media on family life. This volume examines the core issues that arise when digital media use results in unintended learning experiences and unanticipated social encounters. The contributors examine the complex mix of emergent practices and developments online and elsewhere that empower young users to function as drivers of technological change, recognizing that these new technologies are embedded in larger social systems - school, family, friends.

The chapters consider such topics as (un)equal access across economic, racial, and ethnic lines; media panics and social anxieties; policy and Internet protocols; media literacy; citizenship vs. consumption; creativity and collaboration; digital media and gender equity; shifting notions of temporality; and defining the public/private divide.