Screenagers
The Pew Internet and American Life project has released a report about how teens use the Internet. 57% of students surveyed are not passive browsers of information, but actually creating content through posting web pages, blogs, or uploading music and movies. The latter are often re-mixed media that they have created themselves.
I find this very encouraging. Realizing that the vast majority of what kids are creating may simply be drivel, it’s still better for them to create drivel than to be passive consumers of drivel that others create. If kids are already in frame of mind to be creators, it’s a lot easier to move them into creating worthwhile stuff.
This follows a pattern that I’ve noticed with technology over the many years I’ve been messing around with this stuff. The most enthusiastically adopted technologies are usually those that feed into our innate needs to communicate and build social connections (such as cell phones and email) and those that support our drive to create (such as word processors and digital cameras). The frustrating part is that it’s often really hard to get these technologies integrated into school use.
(By the way, the term “screenager” was used in a New York Times article from a week ago. I’d give you the link, but now you have to pay to see archived articles at the Times. Hrmph.)