[Air-L] Report by the Digital Youth Project released
danah boyd
aoir.z3z at danah.org
Thu Nov 20 13:15:53 PST 2008
We are happy to announce the online release of the findings from our
three-year Digital Youth project (http://digitalyouth.ischool.berkeley.edu
). All of the researchers who have worked on this project will be
writing up individual publications, but this report represents a
synthesis of the findings across the 22 different case studies. It has
been over three years in the making, and is the result of a truly
collaborative effort with 28 researchers and research collaborators.
This project is part of the MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and
Learning initiative.
http://digitallearning.macfound.org.
You can find all the details in the documents linked below, and a
summary of our report below.
Two-page summary of report:
http://digitalyouth.ischool.berkeley.edu/files/report/digitalyouth-TwoPageSummary.pdf
White paper: http://digitalyouth.ischool.berkeley.edu/files/report/digitalyouth-WhitePaper.pdf
Full report: http://digitalyouth.ischool.berkeley.edu/report
Press release and video: http://digitallearning.macfound.org/ethnography
New York Times coverage: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/20/us/20internet.html
We will be celebrating the release of our report at a reception at the
American Anthropological Association meetings in San Francisco. Please
join us on Saturday November 22, at 6:30-8:00pm, San Francisco Hilton
& Towers, Golden Gate Ballroom.
--------
RESEARCH SUMMARY
Over three years, Mizuko Ito and her 28-person research team
interviewed over 800 youth and young adults and conducted over 5000
hours of online observations as part of the most extensive U.S. study
of youth media use to date.
They found that social network sites, online games, video-sharing
sites, and gadgets such as iPods and mobile phones are now fixtures of
youth culture. The research finds today's youth may be coming of age
and struggling for autonomy and identity amid new worlds for
communication, friendship, play, and self-expression.
Many adults worry that children are wasting time online, texting, or
playing video games. The researchers explain why youth find these
activities compelling and important. The digital world is creating
new opportunities for youth to grapple with social norms, explore
interests, develop technical skills, and experiment with new forms of
self-expression.
These activities have captured teens' attention because they provide
avenues for extending social worlds, self-directed learning, and
independence.
MAJOR FINDINGS
- Youth use online media to extend friendships and interests. -
Most youth use online networks to extend the friendships that they
navigate in the familiar contexts of school, religious organizations,
sports, and other local activities. They can be always "on," in
constant contact with their friends through private communications
like instant messaging or mobile phones, as well as in public ways
through social network sitessuch as MySpace and Facebook. With these
"friendship-driven" practices, youth are almost always associating
with people they already know in their offline lives. The majority of
youth use new media to "hang out" and extend existing friendships in
these ways.
A smaller number of youth also use the online world to explore
interests and find information that goes beyond what they have access
to at school or in their local community. Online groups enable youth
to connect to peers who share specialized and niche interests of
various kinds, whether that is online gaming, creative writing, video
editing, or other artistic endeavors. In these interest-driven
networks, youth may find new peers outside the boundaries of their
local community. They can also find opportunities to publicize and
distribute their work to online audiences, and to gain new forms of
visibility and reputation.
- Youth engage in peer-based, self-directed learning online. -
In both friendship-driven and interest-driven online activity, youth
create and navigate new forms of expression and rules for social
behavior. By exploring new interests, tinkering, and "messing around"
with new forms of media, they acquire various forms of technical and
media literacy. Through trial and error, youth add new media skills to
their repertoire, such as how to create a video or game, or customize
their MySpace page. Teens then share their creations and receive
feedback from others online. By its immediacy and breadth of
information, the digital world lowers barriers to self-directed
learning.
Some youth "geek out" and dive into a topic or talent. Contrary to
popular images, geeking out is highly social and engaged, although
usually not driven primarily by local friendships. Youth turn instead
to specialized knowledge groups of both teens and adults from around
the country or world, with the goal of improving their craft and
gaining reputation among expert peers. While adults participate, they
are not automatically the resident experts by virtue of their age.
Geeking out in many respects erases the traditional markers of status
and authority.
New media allow for a degree of freedom and autonomy for youth that is
less apparent in a classroom setting. Youth respect one another's
authority online, and they are often more motivated to learn from
peers than from adults. Their efforts are also largely self-directed,
and the outcome emerges through exploration, in contrast to classroom
learning that is oriented by set, predefined goals.
IMPLICATIONS
New media forms have altered how youth socialize and learn, and raise
a new set of issues that educators, parents, and policymakers should
consider.
-Adults should facilitate young people's engagement with digital
media. Contrary to adult perceptions, while hanging out online, youth
are picking up basic social and technical skills they need to fully
participate in contemporary society. Erecting barriers to
participation deprives teens of access to these forms of learning.
Participation in the digital age means more than being able to access
serious online information and culture. Youth could benefit from
educators being more open to forms of experimentation and social
exploration that are generally not characteristic of educational
institutions.
Because of the diversity of digital media, it is problematic to
develop a standardized set of benchmarks against which to measure
young people's technical and new media literacy. Friendship-driven and
interest-driven online participation have very different kinds of
social connotations. For example, whereas friendship-driven
activities centers upon peer culture, adult participation is more
welcomed in the latter more "geeky" forms of learning. In addition,
the content, behavior, and skills that youth value are highly variable
depending on what kinds of social groups they associate with.
In interest-driven participation, adults have an important role to
play. Youth using new media often learn from their peers, not teachers
or adults. Yet adults can still have tremendous influence in setting
learning goals, particularly on the interest-driven side where adult
hobbyists function as role models and more experienced peers.
To stay relevant in the 21st century, education institutions need to
keep pace with the rapid changes introduced by digital media. Youths'
participation in this networked world suggests new ways of thinking
about the role of education. What, the authors ask, would it mean to
really exploit the potential of the learning opportunities available
through online resources and networks? What would it mean to reach
beyond traditional education and civic institutions and enlist the
help of others in young people's learning? Rather than assuming that
education is primarily about preparing for jobs and careers, they
question what it would mean to think of it as a process guiding
youths' participation in public life more generally.
- - - - - - - - d a n a h ( d o t ) o r g - - - - - - - -
"i was just a girl in a room full of women
licking stamps and laughing
i remember the feeling of community brewing
of democracy happening" (Ani DiFranco, Paradigm)
musings :: http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts
- - - - - - - - d a n a h ( d o t ) o r g - - - - - - - -
"i was just a girl in a room full of women
licking stamps and laughing
i remember the feeling of community brewing
of democracy happening" (Ani DiFranco, Paradigm)
musings :: http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts
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