melanie mcbride online

A new report from PEW Internet illuminates some surprising trends about teens and social media. Of these findings:

• 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.
• Girls continue to dominate written content creation with boys creating more video content
• Almost half (47%) of online teens 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.”
• “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.”

While much of the data is compelling, my experience in diverse learning communities leads me to question PEW’s findings on social class and social media:

“There was little or no variation in blogging activity among teens according to household income or family structure in 2004, both variables have become important indicators in the 2006 data. Teens living in households earning less than $50,000 per year are considerably more likely to blog than those living in higher-income households; fully 35% of online teens whose parents fall in the lower income brackets have created an online journal or blog, while just 24% of those in the higher income brackets have done so.”

Based purely on my own experiences working with lower income and at risk learners (as well as more privileged youth), I’d argue that it’s quite the reverse: That it’s largely more privileged youth who are taking part in longer form composition and blogging. By privileged, I mean that they have the time, skill, knowledge and inclination to create longer form content.

Given the ever increasing multiple literacies (PDF) required for participation in culture and civic life (online and off), there are still a lot of barriers (real and self-produced). In my opinion, the digital divide - though it has changed in nature - is still alive and well and continually reinforced by the ever updated platforms that further marginalise those who cannot afford to keep up with the game.

As much as I believe in tapping into our wired youth for more wired pedagogy, I think it’s important that we don’t lose sight of some of the more elusive elements of social class - feelings and experiences, for example - that play into who takes part in what.

Despite the best efforts of schools and community programs providing advocacy, access and instruction for digital media production - there are still great numbers of youth who are not compelled or engaged to take part. I’m very interested in those youth, in particular, because they are the first to tell me “I won’t” and “I can’t” … for them, the problems are deeper than access. Access isn’t the same as motivation, curiosity, engagement, confidence - the softer and more elusive qualities that constitute the lived experiences of disadvantage and social class. The internet is a great place to get empowered - if you’re already willing and interested in doing so.

I feel that PEWs findings are questionably optimistic at a time when lower socio-economic learners face ever-increasing issues of access/cost, skills and prior knowledge required to participate in online life and culture. I’m simply not convinced that LSES demographics are properly represented online because so many of these learners are - literally - absent from the forums in question. So how do we get beyond echo-chambers and get into some genuinely transparent and inclusive data?

An idea for teachers …

Why not turn the PEW study into in-class unit on teens, class and internet culture? Teachers could distribute the study among groups of students and come up with some inquiry questions based on student suggestions and teacher guidance. Students could conduct their own polls with other students from their school and then do short presentations on their findings - complete with a blog component and Facebook group!

Further reading:

• For a far more authoritative response to the PEW study, see danah boyd’s response to the PEW study
• For more about the importance of multiple literacies v. the digital divide see “Multiple Literacies and Critical Pedagogy in a Multicultural Society” by Douglas Kellner (UCLA)