Young Citizens In The Digital Age

A social anxiety currently pervades the political classes of the western world, arising from the perception that young people have become disaffected with liberal democratic politics. Voter turnout among 18-25 year olds continues to be lower than other age groups and they are less likely to join political parties. This is not, however, proof that young people are not interested in politics per se but is evidence that they are becoming politically socialized within a new media environment. This shift poses a significant challenge to politicians who increasingly have to respond to a technologically mediated lifestyle politics that celebrates lifestyle diversity, personal disclosure and celebrity. This book explores alternative approaches for engaging and understanding young people’s political activity and looks at the adoption of information and ICTs as a means to facilitate the active engagement of young people in democratic societies. Young Citizens in a Digital Age presents new research and the first comprehensive analysis of ICTs, citizenship and young people from an international group of leading scholars. It is an important book for students and researchers of citizenship and ICTs within the fields of sociology, politics, social policy and communication studies among others.

What do young people really do with digital media? Young People's Literacies in the Digital Age aims to debunk the common myths and assumptions that are associated with young people's relationship with digital media. In contrast to widespread notions of the empowered and enabled 'digital native', the book presents a more complex picture of young people's digital lives. Focusing on the notion of 'critical digital literacies' this book tackles a number of pressing questions that are often ignored in media hype and political panics over young people’s digital media use, including: In what ways can digital media enhance, shape or constrain identity representation and communication? How do digital experiences map onto young people’s everyday lives? What are young people’s critical understandings of digital media and how did they develop these? What are the dominant understandings young people have of digital media and in whose interests do they work? These questions are addressed through the findings of a year of fieldwork with groups of young people aged 14 to 19 years. Over the course of eight chapters, the experiences and views of these young people are explored with reference to various academic literatures, such as digital literacies, media and communication studies, critical theory and youth studies. Starting with their early socialisation into the digital context, the book traces the continuities, contradictions and conflicts they encounter as part of their practices. Written in a detailed but accessible manner, this book develops a unique perspective on young people’s digital lives.

Young people spend a significant amount of time with technology, particularly digital and social media. How do they experience and cope with the many influences of digital media in their lives? What are the main challenges and opportunities they navigate in living online? Youth in the Digital Age provides answers from a decidedly interdisciplinary perspective, beginning in a framework steeped in context; biography; and societal influences on young people, who now make up 25% of the earth’s population. Placing these perspectives alongside those of current scholars and commentators to help analyse what young people are up against in navigating the digital age, the volume also draws on data from a five-year research project (Digital Media and Young Lives). Topics explored include well-being, privacy, control, surveillance, digital capital, and social relationships. Based on unique and emergent research from Canada, Scotland, and Australia, Youth in the Digital Age will appeal to post-secondary educators and scholars interested in fields such as youth studies, education, media studies, mental health, and technology.

This book explores alternative approaches for engaging and understanding young people’s political activity and looks at the adoption of information and ICTs as a means to facilitate the active engagement of young people in democratic societies.

The future engagement of young citizens from a wide range of socio-economic, ethnic and cultural backgrounds in democratic politics remains a crucial concern for academics, policy-makers, civics teachers and youth workers around the world. At a time when the negative relationship between socio-economic inequality and levels of political participation is compounded by high youth unemployment or precarious employment in many countries, it is not surprising that new social media communications may be seen as a means to re-engage young citizens. This edited collection explores the influence of social media, such as YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, upon the participatory culture of young citizens. This collection, comprising contributions from a number of leading international scholars in this field, examines such themes as the possible effects of social media use upon patterns of political socialization; the potential of social media to ameliorate young people’s political inequality; the role of social media communications for enhancing the civic education curriculum; and evidence for social media manifesting new forms of political engagement and participation by young citizens. These issues are considered from a number of theoretical and methodological approaches but all attempt to move beyond simplistic notions of young people as an undifferentiated category of ‘the internet generation’.

This book explores young people’s civic experiences in contemporary American society, and how they navigate the political world in an era defined by digital media. Drawing on the experiences of young people before they have reached voting age, the book provides vital perspectives on citizenship and civic engagement of a part of the population that is often overlooked. The author engages with the tensions young people encounter in their everyday personal and civic lives, particularly in their understanding and experience of civic identity in ways that are shaped by society’s (mis)perceptions of youth. The book introduces a new framework of civic identity that has been directly informed by the lived civic experiences of young people themselves. The findings will be of great interest to researchers and students working in political science, sociology, youth studies, education studies, and media studies, as well as policy-makers, practitioners, and parents of young people.

This book examines the presence and effects of new technologies in the lives of young people. The rapid pace of change in the development and use of digital technologies, and the likely impact this has on youth, means that the topic has wide implications for educational institutions, theory and practice. There is a demand for a concentration on the ways in which new devices such as smart phones and tablets, as well as new platforms and recent notions such as the ‘flipped classroom’, are affecting the way education is being provided. However, there is also still a small minority who do not have full access to the internet, and the disadvantages suffered by this group must also be addressed. The internet offers a vast range of opportunities for young people, and yet for various reasons it is not always available. This can partly be attributed to the controls that schools impose on the use of digital technology, for reasons of safety and security, and can in part be explained by the fact that policy makers have contradictory attitudes to technology. While they may argue for the need to have a well-educated and well-trained workforce, they fear the threats to privacy and safety posed by the internet. This book asserts that society needs to have more open debate about the threats and opportunities of digital technology as it is a dynamic and ever-changing topic for us all. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Oxford Review of Education.

There have been many attempts to define the generation of students who emerged with the Web and new digital technologies in the early 1990s. The term "digital native" refers to the generation born after 1980, which has grown up in a world where digital technologies and the internet are a normal part of everyday life. Young people belonging to this generation are therefore supposed to be "native" to the digital lifestyle, always connected to the internet and comfortable with a range of cutting-edge technologies. Deconstructing Digital Natives offers the most balanced, research-based view of this group to date. Existing studies of digital natives lack application to specific disciplines or conditions, ignoring the differences of educational fields and gender. How, and how much, are learners changing in the digital age? How can a more pluralistic understanding of these learners be developed? Contributors to this volume produce an international overview of developments in digital literacy among today’s young learners, offering innovative ways to steer a productive path between traditional narratives that offer only complete acceptance or total dismissal of digital natives.