Responding to a new report from the Pew Internet and American Life Project, Tom Zeller Jr. on today's New York Times Business page takes a look at the new media fluency of the young. The report suggests that "a new generation, armed to the teeth with digital sophistication, is redefining media on its own terms," says Zeller.
Apart from obvious safety and intellectual property issues raised by new styles of youth culture, Professor Paulette M. Rothbauer (U. Toronto) says that young people "take content from media providers and transform it, reinterpret it, republish it, take ownership of it in ways that at least hold the potential for subverting it."
What kind of revolution is it, though? The conversation with Rothbauer continues:
Professor Rothbauer calls this kind of engagement "emancipatory" because "it helps young people fashion their own identities, on their own terms, using whatever content they choose."
If we are emancipating our individual selves, though, what about our communities and our social selves? Are these consumer selves that are being liberated, after all, or something more far-reaching? Zeller doesn't dig that far down.
The Pew report, though, does say that much of the youthful blog reading stays within the circle of one's friends, serving as a way to work through and cement friendships. The survey questions that are the foundation of the report don't help the researchers discover non-consumer-oriented aspects of web use, however. The methodology may have unintentionally influenced the results.
For now, though, the Pew group seems to be saying that the emancipation is purely personal.
"The Lives of Teenagers Now: Open Blogs, Not Locked Diaries," 11/3/05. Later notes: For another walk through the consumerist aspects of the Pew report, see "US youths use internet to create" from the BBC (via Jenn Q). More by Will Richardson and by yours truly in the comments to that message.