Young people, digital cultures and everyday life

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Young people, digital cultures and everyday life

• Victoria Carrington
• University of East Anglia

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Everyday?internet access 2010
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Everyday?

• Internet
• Countries are beginning to declare internet
  access a legal right for citizens (including
  Spain, Finland and Estonia)
• 71 of population in developed countries are
  online 21 of developing countries are online
  (Africa 9.6 online) end of 2010, 2 billion
  online (doubled in 5 years up 600m from 2009)
• home internet access worldwide 1.4 (2009) to
  1.6billion (2010) hundreds of thousands of
  cybercafes around the world
• Note 256 kpbs 34 hours movie download 4
  hours_at_ 2 Mbps 10 hours _at_ 10 Mbps 5 mins _at_ 100
  Mbps. Broadband costs 6 times as much/month in a
  developing country

Source International Telecommunications Union
(ITU) (The world in 2010) ATT
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http//www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/worldservice/internetca
fehobo/2009/11/
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Everyday?mobile phone access 2010
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• Mobile phones
• 90 of world now has access to mobile networks
  (and 80 of rural populations) 76 worldwide
  coverage saturation in developed world 68 in
  developing world 41 in Africa
• 5.3 billion mobile phone subscriptions worldwide
  940 million subscriptions to 3G 200,000 text
  messages are sent every second
• rapid shift from 2G to 3G worldwide. Data
  downloads have risen 5000 in the US alone over 3
  years.

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Young people

• Globally, 200 million 5-19 year olds with
  internet access.
• UK, US, Aust, Canada have a combined 136 million
  5-14 year olds with internet access

• 91 of 12 year olds in the UK have a mobile phone
• 51 of 10 year olds in the UK have a mobile phone

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so not hot...

• MSN
• MySpace (just relaunched in beta as Myspace,
  entertainment hub)
• Bebo (but missed by many)
• Flickr
• Yahoo
• SecondLife

• hereiamworld blogs
• non-3G mobile phones
• time-locked television

• Fading
• Desktops - now
• Laptops - soon

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hot...

• Facebook
• YouTube channels
• Skype
• Virtual worlds (for kids, but not SL)
• Online shopping
• P2P

• time-shifted programming
• iPods/iPads/iPhones mobile, small technologies
• 3G everything (no internet, no point)

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about to be hot ...
... via 3G phone and data

• Augmented reality
• Geocaching
• foursquare
• SCVNGR

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• Visual overlay
• Streetmuseum (Museum of London)
• London tube (Transport London)
• Get London Reading (Booktrust)

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2010 xmas list
The top 10 toys for Christmas 2010 1 iPhone 4
(14) 2 iPod touch (13) 3 iPad (12) 4 Kinect
for Xbox (6) 5 Zhu Zhu Pet Hamsters (5) 6
Flip Video Camera (4) 7 Toy Story 3 Jet Pack
Buzz Lightyear (4) 8 PlayStation Move (4) 9
LEGO Harry Potter Years 1-4 Video Game (3) 10
Barbie Video Girl (3)

• Who wants an iPod touch/iPhone/iPad for xmas?
• 17 of 5-8 years olds
• 50 of 9-12 year olds
• 66 of 13-18 year olds

Duracell Toy Report 2010 (UK based survey of 2010)
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How should we frame these shifts?
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The digital natives argument

• Digital natives (Marc Prensky)
• Net generation (Don Tapscott)
• Generation M(edia)
• Gamer generation

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• essentialist notion of adolescence
• overlays generational identity with technological
  competence
• either/or
• assumes digital practices displace others
• ignores issues of diversity
• but .. a counter to the risk arguments

• Digital natives (Marc Prensky)
• Net generation (Don Tapscott)
• Generation M(edia)
• Gamer generation

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The risk factor

• video games and social isolation/violence/attentio
  n deficit
• mobile phones and texting(declining spelling,
  sexting)/videoing (bullying, sexual harassment,
  happy slapping), phone bills, enlarged thumbs
• internet and sexual predators/pornography/plagiari
  sm/credit card fraud/virtual lives...

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More interestingly ...

• The evidence around young peoples engagements
  with digital media and culture shows that
• (i) engagement and learning moments are generally
  outside formal education
• (ii) the shape and outcomes of peer-based
  communication differs from older generations in
  terms of expertise and peer networks/learning
• self directed learning, peer to peer, rapid
  development of specialist skills in particular
  areas (access to networks of expertise), just in
  time learning (use of online tutorials, peer
  contacts), use of peer group and expert adults in
  reciprocal learning environments

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Youth literacies online

• building websites, hyperlinking, creating and
  uploading videos, information searching, locating
  and using cheat sheets, appropriate engagement in
  online chats
• amateur media production and distribution

• shared norms about representation (e.g. profile
  pages) displaying peer networks
• new genres of written communication (e.g.
  profiles, fansubs, co-constructed public texts,
  web comics, interactive videos)
• elite vocabularies associated with fandom and
  gaming

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• a way to look at all of this stuff without the
  essentialist and simplistic sound bites about
  adolescents ... while recognizing that there is
  both change and continuity ... and attending to
  literacy practices as a central interest

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Newer framings

• Peter Paul Verbeek (2005) What things do
  (artifacts actively co-construct the world)
• Daniel Miller (2010) Stuff (digital communication
  is material culture and draws its valuemeaning
  from praxis)
• Tim Ingold (2010) Lines A brief history (traces
  - lines on a surface and threads - lines in a
  medium)
• Mimi Ito et al (2010). Hanging out, messing
  around and geeking out (ethnographic case studies
  of kids online)

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Communicative ecology
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Communicative ecology
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Communicative ecology
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Formal education
pedagogies of consumption, gendered literacies,
literacy-lite
global networked public, issues of
representation, information control
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(No Transcript)
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facebook...a timeline
Mark Zuckerberg US6.9billion Facebook
US35billion (Source Forbes)
Source Facebook.com
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Australia 9, 306,520
Source http//www.checkfacebook.com/
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facebook

• Privacy is no longer a social norm (Zuckerberg
  2009)
• Nissenbaum (2010) has identified three types of
  privacy issues associated with the rise of social
  networking
• Individuals posting information about themselves
  that they later regret, for example, embarrassing
  photos that are seen by colleges or prospective
  employers
• The posting of content onto other peoples social
  networking sites, including personal information
  about self or others
• The capacity of new technologies to monitor,
  track, store and aggregate information for a
  range of purposes either unknown or unintended by
  an individual.
• spheres of justice and information injustice
  - attaches information to spheres (medical,
  financial, family). Injustice occurs when
  information flows unexpectedly from one sphere to
  another

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Virtual worlds
Revenue generation Microtransactions 1b 2008
17.3b by 2015 Subscriptions, Advertising,
sponsorships
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BarbieGirls

• Launched in beta in April 2007
• Attracted 1 million registrations in first 28
  days
• More than 15 million registered users
• 85 identify as girls 8-15years
• Began with toy quickly moved to subscription

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Pedagogies of consumption

• To furnish bedroom and buy fashion accessories,
  need Barbie Bucks. The more BB, the more options
  for styling and restyling self and space
• Purchase and display is constructed as
  pleasurable leisure activity (and is linked
  directly to identity and taste). Most activities
  are linked to consumption shopping is major
  recreational activity
• VIP subscription required to access all but the
  most basic of items
• VIP access requires Credit Card transaction (ergo
  parental buy-in)

• Independent participants in the economic cycle of
  BG
• Consumption and display linked to popularity and
  success in-world

BG makes available a shared social context that
inculcates a strongly delineated set of practices
and tastes linked to consumption and display of
consumer goods that are, in turn, associated with
highly gendered constructions of femininity. In
Bourdieuian terms a global, gendered consumer
habitus (1992) is being formed. In this sense the
site is explicitly structured and highly
pedagogic.
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Textual landscapes in BarbieGirls

• Safety consumer information
• Instructions
• Bot interactions
• Store signage
• Price labels
• Advertising billboards (animated static)
• Pop up menus
• Navigation lists
• Internal email messages chat
• Word search games
• videos advertising footage

Range of genres Range of levels ...but... Predomin
antly low level demand Highly gendered Text
production is monitored
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• Culturally significant social spaces and
  activities for young people
• Opportunities for new social spaces,
  interactions, customization, opportunities to
  engage with a variety of texts, informal/peer
  learning, aesthetically pleasing entertaining

BarbieGirls limited models of girlhood
gendered consumption conflation of play,
identity consumption in-world texts and
textual practices that reinforce these
messages Literacy-lite
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whats my point?

• Digital cultures are global pervasive
• New theoretical and empirical work evidences that
  there is a change in kids
• how you articulate this change can range from new
  communicative practices to new worlds and
  being Useful model material communicative
  ecologies
• avoids essentialist notions of adolescence
• avoids risk/native polemic
• attends to the complex connections between
  praxis, identity and multiple forms of
  communication

• There is a key place for education in these
  ecologies
• building initial peer networks start up
  projects, predicting skill sets and back-filling,
  supporting P2P learning ensuring a multimodal
  view of communicative skill sets being explicit
  about the print traditional of schooling
• working towards the bigger issues around ethical
  engagement, analytical and critical practices,
  good citizenship on/offline.
• Allows recognition of the communicative ecology
  in which school, new media technologies and kids
  are located.

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Thank youv.carrington_at_uea.ac.uk