Just in from the PEW Internet and American Life Project, more teens are producing digital content. I’m commenting on the front page summary in this article. You can download the entire PDF report here.
Pew Internet: Teens and Social Media:
Content creation by teenagers continues to grow, with 64% of online teenagers ages 12 to 17 engaging in at least one type of content creation, up from 57% of online teens in 2004.
I’m going to have to change one of my presentation slides to reflect this. It’s still a controversial and controvertible, especially as I compare it to their teachers digital content creation. I think that the point remains, however, that many of our students are, in some ways, more literate than many/most of their teachers.
I made this graph from the data using Excel… Girls continue to dominate most elements of content creation. Some 35% of all teen girls blog, compared with 20% of online boys, and 54% of wired girls post photos online compared with 40% of online boys. Boys, however, do dominate one area – posting of video content online. Online teen boys are nearly twice as likely as online girls (19% vs. 10%) to have posted a video online somewhere where someone else could see it.
Hmmm! I’m not even going to try to comment on this, except to say that of the three, my son makes videos, and my daughter uploads digital photos to her Facebook profile.
The survey found that content creation is not just about sharing creative output; it is also about participating in conversations fueled by that content. Nearly half (47%) of online teens have posted photos where others can see them, and 89% of those teens who post photos say that people comment on the images at least “some of the time.”
It could be that this is the tendency that has the most potential to us, as educators — that teens use their digital media as a point of conversation. Of course the wording isn’t earth shattering (people comment on the images at least “some of the time.”), but this all shows a need, among many of our teenage students, to invest themselves in expressing their experience with information.
However, many teen content creators do not simply plaster their creative endeavors on the Web for anyone to view; many teens limit access to content that they share.
This is one thing that I hear from most teens I talk with about their social networks. They are private/careful to some degree. But again, we don’t know how much of that is true or how much of it comes from our training them to say what they think we want to hear.
There is a subset of teens who are super-communicators — teens who have a host of technology options for dealing with family and friends, including traditional landline phones, cell phones, texting, social network sites, instant messaging, and email. They represent about 28% of the entire teen population and they are more likely to be older girls.
28% is not an insignificant number. Consider that as information and communication technologies continue to evolve, the activities of this quarter of the teen population will likely define a larger portion of what they all will be doing in their social and work lives ahead.
What do you think?
Lenhart, Amanda, Mary Madden, Alexandra Rankin Macgill, and Aaron Smith. “Teens and Social Media.” PEW Internet & American Lif Project. 19 Dec 2007. Pew Charitable Trusts. 20 Dec 2007 <http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/230/report_display.asp>.
Is there any data for what this figure is for the 18-27 demographic and the above age 27 demographic? Id be curious which age range produced the MOST digital content and in what forms.
“I think that the point remains, however, that many of our students are, in some ways, more literate than many/most of their teachers”. I think that saying they are more digitally literate can end up being very misleading to teachers because often students literacy is very specific, is different from using it for effective learning and can be a barrier for encouraging teachers to uptake the use of technology with students.
The reality is our students are more comfortable with using technology and are good at using it their desired purpose which is often very limited to how they want to use it. Most tend to social network differently — restricting most of the interaction with people they know f2f.
Percentages of online teens! It makes think about our responsibility to the ‘not-online teens’. What will their future prospects be in this digital age? How limited are their opportunities gonig to be without some online presence? I know I got two offers for interview via my CV being on my blog and I’m a teacher not a teen, that’s now and not 5-10 years. Schools have a role to play here, as advotes toward leveling the oppotunity field regarding the digital generation. Don’t we?
I get your point, Sue, about teen’s digital literacy being specific. But from their perspective, they might consider the literacy that their teachers are trying to get them to learn to be specific — and their perspective is important, because it’s out of their experience that their future will form.
It’s why I don’t talk about digital literacy. I don’t distinguish it from reading and other traditional literacies. It’s all the same, the skills involved in using information to accomplish goals within a contemporary information landscape. In today’s information landscape, this involves the ability to use information and communication technologies.
I think that as long as we put literacy here and digital literacy over there, then many teachers will feel that over there is a place they really don’t have to go to.
Concerning your last paragraph, Sue, I’m afraid that I disagree with you here. There are certainly teens who escape into the digital realm, just like the teens who escaped into TV in my time and comic books in my mother’s time. But I’ve seen my own children and others use their digital connections to enrich there f2f relationships. They enjoy friendships that I suspect would have been nearly impossible when I was young.
Thanks for helping to continue the conversation.
Simon, I agree that the should be concerned about the teens without access. They are without not only the technology, but also the experience of working in networked communities.
But I do not think that it is necessarily your schools responsibility to get them connected. It’s a national problem and it needs to be solved at the national level.
Very interesting discussion! Thanks!!
Dave,
Regarding your statement “In today’s information landscape, this involves the ability to use information and communication technologies”
Readers should check out MIT’s SCRATCH
http://scratch.mit.edu/about
“Scratch is designed to help young people (ages 8 and up) develop 21st century learning skills. As they create Scratch projects, young people learn important mathematical and computational ideas, while also gaining a deeper understanding of the process of design”
Encourage learners to become media producers, not just consumers.
Thanks for the post–I present at a state conference for tech. educators in February and this research is a goldmine for me. As the kids say, “You rock!”
>>I’ve seen my own children and others use their digital connections to enrich there f2f relationships. They enjoy friendships that I suspect would have been nearly impossible when I was young.
I’ve seen the same thing with my kids–and with myself, for that matter. Digital communication has allowed me and my family to maintain friendships all over the globe.
I agree with Sue. My experience with teachers, students, family & friends is that most will only communicate online with those whom they know f2f anyhow. For example, recently, I accidentally sent a Twitter invitation to everyone in my email contacts list. I’m still getting comments identical to “… got a strange message from someone claiming to be you. I didn’t recognise the sender so I deleted it.” People are very much stuck in their own networks and only the curious few will explore outside their comfort zone. Using online networking tools for educational purposes forces people to do this.
I think it is definitely true that students of all ages are producing more digital content. My school district (www.irvingisd.net) has an annual Technology Media Fair. It is an opportunity for students and staff members to display products they have created with technology.
We have actually done for this many years, but we want to bump it up a little. So, we have decided to open up several categories for online judging. This way, we can open the judging up to professionals and enthusiasts near and far to help judge the entries without having to ask them to show up at a particular location on a particular day. We are hoping this will make it easier to get our community and extended global community involved with our students’ work. This is where we need YOU.
We are in need of judges to provide some critique and comments on our students’ entries. (http://www.irvingisd.net/mediafaironline) All of the projects have been uploaded to our judging website and can be judged any time from now to January 7, 2008. We have six categories of projects that need to be judged, and you can choose to judge as many or as few entries as you have time. Judging consists of filling out a short rubric (multiple choice) and making some brief comments for each project. The projects are separated into eight grade-level categories ranging from pre-kindergarten (yes, 4-year-olds!), elementary, middle school, high school to adult/staff. The categories are Digital Photo, Digital Audio, Website Design, Original Illustrated Art, Product Design, and Digital Video (under 90 seconds).
The main goal of opening the judging to those outside of our district is to connect our students who are learning about technology with practicing experts around the world. Your encouraging words will go a long way in promoting technology skills and causing our students to become better evaluators of their own work. We would appreciate a few positive comments and a few “instructive†statements for each entry. The rubric items will be averaged and will be used to determine our first, second and third places in each grade category. Your comments, while not figured in to the composite score, are still very important.
We have more than 250 entries in our online judging categories this year and would like every project to be judged by at least three different people. As you can see, we have a great need for participation from the online community. If you have a passion for technology, media, or education and the time to comment and critique some student projects, then you qualify as a judge.
If you know of anyone else who would be qualified to judge or interested in this process, please pass this on to them as well. We’re trying to get people from across the country and all over the world to critique our students’ projects. Please help us by logging in and spending a few minutes reviewing our student entries. Our time is limited to December 17, 2007, to January 7, 2008.
ABOVE ALL, we want to get and keep kids excited about technology and sharing their work with a global audience. We need folks with an eye for design and a knack for communicating that would be willing give some feedback to our students and get them excited about improving their skills.
To judge the projects, go to http://www.irvingisd.net/mediafaironline and click on the judging link. When judging, please include your name and email address. Your email address will not be published. It will be used for security only. Please expect an email from our administrative staff confirming that the address listed next to your name is a valid email address.
Thank you SO MUCH for participating. If you need to contact me, my email address is mkindsfather@irvingisd.net. Any help you could offer would be GREATLY appreciated. I’ll keep you posted as we progress. Thanks in advance.
Mikie Kindsfather
Instructional Technology Coordinator
Irving Independent School District
Irving, Texas
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Dave,
Disclaimer: My experience with computer technology dates back to your role as Director of Technology in 84. I now provide my information management expertise to the world’s largest IT vendors. I’m torn between my fascination with the possibilities – and my fear of the realities – of technology, particularly with regard to overdependency.
While I agree that we should not distinguish digital and traditional literacies, I believe too many parents, teachers, districts, and states sacrifice traditional literacy at the alter of information technology. Simply put, they tend to overemphasize the importance of digital literacy at the expense of other forms. This is, of course, a generalization.
But, for me, just one is too many.
A few thoughts for your readers to ponder:
1. While parents may believe technology is somehow “enriching” their children’s face-to-face relationships I have yet to listen to a single parent clearly describe the perceived or actual enrichment. In contrast, I can go on for hours describing the potential negative impact in great detail. Parents will spend hours researching the attributes of dozens of LCD televisions and digital video recorders before making a purchase decision, yet they spend little, if any, time trying to understand how their kids actually use the Internet and other technologies.
2. How kids say they use technology, and how they actually use it, are two very different things. While we can all agree that they share an affinity for producing and sharing photos, videos and stories online, it doesn’t stop there. Many also seem to share forms of social ignorance, intolerance, disrespect, and ineptness exacerbated by [an over-reliance on] digital communication. That is to say, sometimes technology unintentionally amplifies both the good and the bad signals. Again, I know of no recent study that even begins to attempt to measure the net effect of modern computer technology usage on children. We can clearly observe the tip of the spear and its impact on Generation’s X and Y.
3. I do not believe that technology itself is at the root of the problem. Parents and teachers have an obligation to the children to teach them to use technology effectively and responsibly. For the time being, technology should be viewed and taught as a means to enrich, not replace, the human experience. Failing that, we may find ourselves wrestling with another form of substance abuse – digital.
4. The responsible use of technology is as essential to human life as responsible motoring. In a recent report I discuss the impact of Internet “abuse”. Teenagers [and adults] may wish to express themselves, but at what cost? More importantly, who is going to pay for it? I wrote, “Reports about unprecedented data growth rates, network bandwidth usage, and storage consumption seem like old news. Little effort is required to find numerous extreme examples online – remember when YouTube first announced that it experienced more than 51,000 daily video uploads and more than 2.5 billion downloads during the month of June 2006? That adds up to several petabytes of storage and hundreds of petabytes of bandwidth consumed in a single month, 18 months ago . The company has since increased the maximum allowable video upload ten-fold, from 100 megabytes (MBs) to 1 gigabyte (GB).” When a single video may be viewed upwards of 250,000 times – some more than a million times – one can barely imagine the impact on resource consumption as teenagers and adults alike begin uploading a great number of large videos, of questionable value, online.
I firmly believe that the value of content online should, at the very least, be equal to its cost. That is, the cost to store, protect, secure and make it available to others. Unfortunately, I can offer no simple answer for how to establish that value, or foot the bill.
In much the same way that industries are attempting to educate teenagers about copyright laws and illegal downloading, there should be a movement to educate them about the hidden cost of using the Internet and other technologies. While freedom of expression while sitting on the proch with friends is relatively free, freedom of expression in a digital world has a definite and substantial cost.
I could go on, but I believe I’ve made my points.
Sorry Dave normally really quick to respond back but I wanted to think about it more, in reflection would have been easier if I responded immediately.
Actually I really like your reply to my comment — “It’s why I don’t talk about digital literacy. I don’t distinguish it from reading and other traditional literacies. It’s all the same, the skills involved in using information to accomplish goals within a contemporary information landscape. In today’s information landscape, this involves the ability to use information and communication technologies”. The only reason I actually brought up digital literacies is your statement “I think that the point remains, however, that many of our students are, in some ways, more literate than many/most of their teachers” implied to me that you were talking about digital literacies.
And your comment “I think that as long as we put literacy here and digital literacy over there, then many teachers will feel that over there is a place they really don’t have to go to” is definitely a very valid reason why we shouldn’t be separating it.
I will still continue to disagree regarding their social networking behaviours — from my experience “Most tend to social network differently — restricting most of the interaction with people they know f2f”. I should point out this is not based on asking them but from actually watching them in action, and social networking with them myself. I work in the vocational, training and education sector here.
good