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What is it that kids are doing online these days, and what does it mean for the shape of knowledge, culture, and information in the future? We all know that text messaging, MySpace, Facebook, YouTube are part of changes in how kids are communicating and engaging with media. But how much of this is really different from the kind of hanging out, sharing, and media consumption that earlier generations engaged with?
The big challenge in looking at the space of youth and new media is disentangling what are just familiar social patterns dressed in new cultural clothing, and what are more fundamental changes in behavior. It’s very easy to get caught up in the latest outrageous piece of Internet culture or the flashy new video game the is all the rage among kids these days. Are video mashups, MySpace profiles, and online games just this generation’s version of punk rock? Is it an experimentation that they will eventually grow out of once they start losing their time to play with kinds of cultural expression, when they realize that their employers will check out their online profiles, and when they settle into the social patterns of adulthood? Or is there something more fundamental that is changing here?
I’m a cultural anthropologist, and I’ve spent a good chunk of my time over the years talking with kids, playing games with them, and chatting with them online. I also spend a lot of time arguing that kids these days are not so different from earlier generations, and that what they do when they are hanging out online is pretty much the same as what an earlier generation did in the lunchroom, mall or video arcade.
But today I want to talk about what is different about what today’s kids are doing online.
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