Author Spotlight: 'The Young And The Digital' By S. Craig Watkins

Today’s Ypulse Author Spotlight  is on S. Craig Watkins and The Young and the Digital, a new book on the impact of social and mobile media on young people based in research inspired by the MacArthur Foundation’s digital initiative. Craig touches on the positive, the negative and the many shades of gray that exist in issues raised by social networking, games and digital media on the whole, creating a nuanced, comprehensive picture of the wired generation.

The Young and the Digital is available in bookstores now, but we’re giving away a free copy to the first three commenters that share a positive consequence that’s come from youth’s adoption of social media.

Ypulse: What are some of the biggest lifestyle changes, both positive and negative, you’ve observed in young people from when you started your research for “The Young and the Digital” in 2006?

S. Craig Watkins: There are several changes. One of the biggest has to be the degree to which young people have moved from legacy media platforms—think television and CD’s—to emergent media platforms— think computers and mobile phones. The rules of media engagement have changed so profoundly in a relatively short period of time. Whereas TV, for nearly fifty years, was the preferred screen of choice in young people’s lives that is less so today. Our research—the survey data and in-depth interviews—suggests that other screens have emerged as the first screen of choice in young people’s lives. When we ask young people when you arrive home after a long day at work and/or school, which screen are you likely to turn on first, your computer or television almost seven in ten, or 69% of our survey respondents chose their computer. Not that long ago television was the first and for many the only screen that they turned to for entertainment, information, and leisure. The implications of screens that are more social, mobile, and personal than television ever was or is likely to be are quite interesting. Importantly, it indicates how our use of media—the way we engage content and each other—is changing and that has enormous implications for the society at large, our communities, and media industries.

The other major change is the “always on” nature of our current technological environment. Today’s technological landscape completely changes how we think about the major spaces in our lives—work, school, and leisure spaces. I think society and many of our institutions are just beginning to come to grips with that fact that in an anytime, anywhere media environment, any place can be a good place to watch a video clip, play a game, or check our friends’ status updates on Facebook. The rise of what I call “fast entertainment”—the various short media content we increasingly access on the go—creates an urge for constant play and entertainment even in spaces where it may not be appropriate, say the classroom, work, or while driving a car. The surge of information and entertainment at our fingertips is creating an unprecedented battle for our attention. We all grapple with it in some way. Many college students tell us that the pull of instant media—YouTube videos, online games and quizzes, and the latest pics posted by their friends on Facebook—is a constant source of distraction, especially when they are trying to study or complete an assignment. So, despite all of the euphoria over iTunes, iPods, iPhones, fun applications, Webisodes, minigames, and one-minute media we have to ask ourselves: “is the ability to be entertained constantly no matter where we are always a good thing?”

YP: Can you speak to the racial divide we’ve seen in social networks? How do you feel we, as a culture, address this digital segregation?

CW: There is definitely a social divide in the digital world. My own work, for instance, focuses on the role of race and class in the rise of Facebook and the fall of MySpace. I discuss the results of that research in detail in a chapter from The Young and the Digital titled, “Digital Gates: How Race and Class Distinctions Are Shaping the Digital World.” What did we find? We found, in part, that young people have developed some interesting racial and class distinctions when it comes to MySpace and Facebook. They even have devised a language to mark the two social network sites. They use words like “crowded,” “trashy,” and “uneducated,” to describe MySpace while using words like “selective,” “clean,” and “educated,” to describe Facebook.

When we started this research about three years ago young collegians were leaving MySpace to join Facebook. They saw it as a more superior platform and a much more exclusive community.  I liken it to moving into a new and more upscale neighborhood, except this one is digital of course.

What can we do it about it? Well, I believe that much of our online lives today are intimately connected to our offline lives. We still live in neighborhoods that are segregated by race, class, and education. So, too, are the other spaces we frequent—work, school, and faith-based institutions. Even our leisure spaces are marked by race and class distinctions.

The real challenge is figuring out ways to fortify the social media experiences of young people whose families are on the social, economic, and political margins. Youth from less affluent households use social media. They use mobile phones. The question, I believe, is how does their marginal social status influence their participation in the digital world and the knowledge, skills, and cultural capital they bring to their engagement with digital media.

YP: How do you see the role of games evolving in young people’s lives, inside and outside the commercial entertainment space?

CW: Games are no longer restricted to the living room, the game room, or the television. They are everywhere. Our research suggests that social gaming is more and more common. That is, games are increasingly a source of community, a way to interact with friends. The stereotype of the gamer tucked away in some basement or bedroom isolated from friends and the world around him or her is outdated. Young people’s most desired gaming experiences are casual, social, and communal. During research for The Young and the Digital we followed four young men we called, the “four pack.” Games were their leisure media of choice. These young men (average age was 20) played games whenever they could throughout the week. But they almost always played with each other and their friends. This was not always the case. They told us how they often played games alone when they were young but that their motivation for playing games was changing. They played primarily for the friendships and companionship.

Games are becoming more social in another way—through platforms like Facebook. This is a relatively recent phenomenon—the explosion of gaming applications designed for social media systems like Facebook. Just a year or two ago, the idea that social network sites would be fertile grounds for gaming would have appeared strange. But that is exactly what is happening.  We are launching a new project that includes some consideration of how the social media sphere is evolving into a gaming space and what it all means for how humans express themselves socially.

YP: Could you describe a wired classroom with a model that really impressed you? Which one and why?

CW: I’ve visited a number of classrooms. One really interesting class was a third grade classroom I visited that had a smartboard. I’m referring to these boards that function as traditional white boards (you can write on them) interactive screens (you can use your hands to move objects around), and as computer screens (you can project computer based content on them). I watched as a teacher used all three aspects of the board/screen to teach her class of third graders a math lesson. I thought it blended some traditional teaching methods—instruction—with non-traditional methods—YouTube clips related to math. This group of eight and nine year olds were totally in the teaching moment and I can’t help but think a classroom and technology that they could relate to had something to do with it. When a young girl asked if she could continue the class exercise, which included watching a video clip about math from YouTube, at home I thought to myself, “this is what all kids should be experiencing in the classroom.”

YP: We’ve seen moral panic grow around young people’s online activities first around online stranger danger, and more recently “sexting.” How do we quell the panic before it becomes overblown, and effectively identify and educate tweens and teens about issues that surround online privacy?

CW: The key is education not isolation. In other words, the idea that we can somehow keep our kids from the social media landscape is really naive. Rather than trying to keep them off of Facebook we should be teaching them how to use the platform effectively. We tend to take the view that our kids are naive, simple, and always vulnerable. But kids are growing faster and they are certainly exposed to more than kids of previous generations. Tweens and teens are typically savvy, complex and assertive. So, rather than fear the technology we should be investing in programs and efforts that help empower our kids to be responsible citizens in the digital world. Young people are going online no matter what their parents or teachers say. In many cases, parents are introducing very young children to the online world. Thus, we need to help them understand the importance or privacy, civility and community in an age when everything they say or post online can be accessed by someone else.