The Young and the Digital: What the Migration to Social Network Sites, Games, and Anytime, Anywhere Media Means for Our Future - Hardcover

Watkins, S. Craig

3.4

50 ratings by Goodreads

9780807061930: The Young and the Digital: What the Migration to Social Network Sites, Games, and Anytime, Anywhere Media Means for Our Future

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 080706193X ISBN 13: 9780807061930

Publisher: Beacon Pr, 2009

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In 2006, S. Craig Watkins participated in the MacArthur Foundation’s well-funded digital media initiative alongside a select team of scholars and tech experts. The goal was simple: to understand young people’s emphatic embrace of social and mobile media. Watkins went on to build a small research team that skillfully collected over 500 surveys and conducted 350 in-depth interviews with young adults, parents, and educators while visiting the online spaces where young people gather. It was a full-scale immersion into what Watkins calls the “digital trenches,” and when he emerged, his understanding of the ways young people learn, play, bond, and communicate had become more detailed and dynamic.

It may come as no surprise that more teens are online than ever before—in fact 87 percent are. Consequentially, television is no longer the dominant medium it once was because young people are now spending an average of six to eight hours a day online. Watkins contends that most teens and twenty-somethings migrate online to share their lives with friends, something television simply cannot offer. As Melinda, a twenty-one-year-old student, proclaimed, “What do people do without Facebook?” In other words, for young people today, if you’re not online, then you’re not really living—and the ubiquitous presence of their mobile phones, laptops, and iPods positions them at the center of our evolving digital landscape.

Timely and deeply relevant, The Young and the Digital covers a host of provocative issues—the influence of social sites like MySpace and Facebook; the growing appetite for “anytime, anywhere” media and “fast entertainment”; how online “digital gates” reinforce race and class divisions; how technology is transforming America’s classrooms—and takes a fresh look at the pivotal role technology played in the historic 2008 election. Watkins also debunks popular myths surrounding cyberpredators, Internet addiction, and social isolation. The result is a fascinating portrait, both optimistic and cautious, about the coming of age of the first fully wired generation.

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Review:

“With thorough research, deep thinking, and lively prose, Watkins adds enormously to our understanding of how the combination of new media and a new generation is changing the world. Read this refreshing book to understand our future!”
—Don Tapscott, coauthor of" Wikinomics" and author of" Grown Up Digital"

“The best and most nuanced report yet from the digital frontier.”
—James Paul Gee, author of "What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy"

“A must-read for parents and educators!”
—Anastasia Goodstein, author of" Totally Wired: What Teens and Tweens Are Really Doing Online
"“"The Young and the Digital" is remarkably readable. Maybe even more remarkable is what a focused account Watkins has produced about a media climate that is still in flux, in which he ponders questions that may not be answered until this moment in media history has long passed.”
—Bel

"With thorough research, deep thinking, and lively prose, Watkins adds enormously to our understanding of how the combination of new media and a new generation is changing the world. Read this refreshing book to understand our future!"
--Don Tapscott, coauthor of" Wikinomics" and author of" Grown Up Digital"

"The best and most nuanced report yet from the digital frontier."
--James Paul Gee, author of "What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy"

"A must-read for parents and educators!"
--Anastasia Goodstein, author of" Totally Wired: What Teens and Tweens Are Really Doing Online

"""The Young and the Digital" is remarkably readable. Maybe even more remarkable is what a focused account Watkins has produced about a media climate that is still in flux, in which he ponders questions that may not be answered until this moment in media history has long passed."
--Belinda Acosta, "Austin Chronicle"

"Bracing yet reassuring, often surprising, and always substantive, Craig Watkins acts as an honest broker, testing the contradictory claims often made about young people's digital lives against sophisticated fieldwork."
--Henry Jenkins, author of "Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide

""Watkins convincingly captures the digital world inhabited by today's young adults while illustrating what the digital landscape means for our future." --Michael X. Delli Carpini, dean, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania

With thorough research, deep thinking, and lively prose, Watkins adds enormously to our understanding of how the combination of new media and a new generation is changing the world. Read this refreshing book to understand our future!
Don Tapscott, coauthor of" Wikinomics" and author of" Grown Up Digital"
The best and most nuanced report yet from the digital frontier.
James Paul Gee, author of "What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy"
A must-read for parents and educators!
Anastasia Goodstein, author of" Totally Wired: What Teens and Tweens Are Really Doing Online
" "The Young and the Digital" is remarkably readable. Maybe even more remarkable is what a focused account Watkins has produced about a media climate that is still in flux, in which he ponders questions that may not be answered until this moment in media history has long passed.
Belinda Acosta, "Austin Chronicle"
Bracing yet reassuring, often surprising, and always substantive, Craig Watkins acts as an honest broker, testing the contradictory claims often made about young people s digital lives against sophisticated fieldwork.
Henry Jenkins, author of "Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide
" Watkins convincingly captures the digital world inhabited by today s young adults while illustrating what the digital landscape means for our future. Michael X. Delli Carpini, dean, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania"

About the Author:

S. Craig Watkins is associate professor of radio-TV-film at the University of Texas-Austin. The author ofHip Hop Matters (Beacon / 0986-4 / $16.00 pb) and Representing, he resides in Austin.

S. Craig Watkins writes about youth, media, technology, and society. He is associate professor of radio-TV-film at the University of Texas at Austin and the author of Hip Hop Matters: Politics, Pop Culture, and the Struggle for the Soul of a Movement and Representing: Hip Hop Culture and the Production of Black Cinema.

From the Trade Paperback edition.

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