‘Born Digital’: Fighting The Internet Culture Wars
Posted by anastasia on 09-16-2008
Last night I went to a talk for Born Digital, a new book out for parents and educators about youth and technology. The book’s authors are law professors affiliated with Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society — I haven’t read the book yet, but from the talk my sense is that it is very similar in message to Totally Wired but with more emphasis on the legal ramifications of these issues as well as a more global perspective. John Palfrey, one of the authors who spoke last night, made it clear that their audience was parents and educators and that the goal was to defuse some of the “culture war” (aka moral panic) around youth and technology. Last night’s audience was decidedly geekier/techie/academic (though I know there were parents in the room).
I was late and missed the beginning, but I caught some of the myths Palfrey pointed about when it comes to youth and technology:
- Kids are intuitive users (not all are, just as not all adults are complete luddites. Still – I think kids are more motivated to figure out how to make tech work because so much of it for them is meeting core needs that are more prominent in kids’ lives – play, socializing, identity formation, etc.)
- Kids are bad (he used the media’s coverage of cyberbullying to point out that it’s not that kids are doing anything worse, it’s just that we now have a window into what they’re doing)
- Kids are in danger (this is the debunking of the predator scare – see this post on Totally Wired for more background)
- Kids are dumber (the literacy debate — kids are reading less but doesn’t take into account new ways of learning)
Palfrey also talked about the “participation gap” (see Henry Jenkins work on this) as replacing the “digital divide.” There is a global culture of elite kids using this technology in sophisticated ways vs. kids with less access and more importantly less parent or educator involvement in helping them use technology.
He showed a couple of videos from young people about privacy or what makes up our “digital dossiers” and about file sharing.
As part of the project they worked with young people to create media — one piece of learning I thought was interesting was that in teaching youth about piracy, helping them understand the perspective of the creator (by being one) is much more effective than the “it’s just wrong” approach.
They also looked at how youth are finding information (keyword search then Wikipedia) and found that a minority of kids viewed Wikipedia critically and even fewer had ever participated in the editing process on Wikipedia. Similarly, Palfrey shared how they saw youth consuming news, i.e. news grazing, and found many young people stopped there. Some did a deeper diver and actually read articles and a smaller group (that digital elite) participated in the feedback loop (blogged it, created a video about it). He also mentioned that while technology is empowering young activists, it’s not really creating new activists.
All in all, it felt validating to hear a similar message to my own. And the more folks bringing a balanced message about technology to parents and educators, the better! You can find out more about the book/project here.
Categorized under: Totally Wired, Web