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The Internet & Youth Culture Sociology Term 3, Youth are described…

- - - - this view has created controversy, as the others remind us that information and communication technologies are not forces that homogenize young people into a single entity with unique characteristics.
      - Technology is an inherent part of society; it is created by social actors.
        
        Based on social construction of technology approach, it is important to note that social groups differ in the extent of their access to technology, their skills, and the meanings they associate with technology.
        
        The same technology can have different meanigns for different social groups of users
        
        Technologies can and do have a social impact, but they are simultaneously social products that embody power relationships and social goals and structures.
        
        The internet can be constutive of new cultural features of young social life, but it can also reproduce older conditions. A purely deterministic approach ignores the material conditions and the social environment within which, and through which, these technologies operate.
        
        Digital spaces such as social networking sites, weblogs, and clip and photo sharing are owned by companies that target youth and try to shape their consumption patterns
        
        when using these spaces, youth are becoming empowered in different social aspects.
        
        (1) They are able to overcome the limitations of geography by reaching out to others according to specific interests and not only by virtue of residential similarity.
        
        (2) They take an important role in society as co-producers of internet content and reach out with their innovative presentations to large and global audience
    - - various terms have been used to describe this generation of youth
        
        "net-generation"
        
        the "millenium generation"
        
        digital natives
        
        these labels attempt to identify a large group of young adolescents who grew up during the expansion of the internet and from early childhood have been immersed in a media-rich environment, using computers, playing online games, constantly communicating and connecting with their friends by electronic devices.
        
        these youth create and use digital spaces for
        
        social interaction
        
        identity expression
        
        media production and consumption
      - the view presents the internet as an innovative force that has profound influence on children and youth; technology generates new patterns of expression, communication, and motivation
      - Western societies, young people's cultural consumption includes a large number of media artifacts such as
        
        television sets
        
        VCRs
        
        landline cellphones
        
        video games
        
        compact disc players
        
        mp3 players
        
        computers
        
        Overtime, households tend to acquire more than one media item
      - Technological determinism views technology as an independent force that drive social change. Technology itself exercises causal influence on social practices, and technological change induces changes in social organization and culture regardless of the social desirability of the change.
    - - The internet has been hailed for the possibilities it is perceived to offer its users of escaping the constraints of their material surroundings and bodies, enabling them to create and play with online identities.
        
        Thus, the human body is regarded not only as invisible online, but also as temporarily suspended, so that it becomes partially or completely irrelevant.
      - The internet communication creates new forms of social relationships, in which participants are no longer bound by the need to meet others face to face but can expand their social arena by meeting others, located anywhere in the online universe, mind to mind. Thus, virtual relationships are seen as more intimate, richer, and more liberating than offline relationships because they are based on genuine mutual interest rather than the coincidence of physical proximity. It is a zone of freedom, fluidity, and experimentation insulated form the mundane relaities of the material world.
- - - - For example, this approach allows us to understand that adolescents use the internet for the creation of unique social spaces, use DM and social networking sites to maintain friendships - overcome geographical limitations and to sustain relationships
        
        They are able to access others who share their concerns and interests and do not belong to their immediate social group. In doing this, they are accessing new social networks and novel information resources and opportunities
    - - In the same vein, the conception of an internet generation has been rejected as a mere expansion of an adult discourse that reflects the difficulties and fears of adults to achieve digital literacy. Youth have incorporated IM, blogs, information search, and commerce into their lives, using them as additional technological tools to conduct the same activities that youth have always carried on. The internet is being used to conduct these developmental tasks (identity formation, social interaction, etc.), and, at the same time, through its use, it is having an effect on their culture that in certain dimensions looks different than that of the previous generation. When looking at the internet culture, one important development is a shift in the association between youth and media. Youth today are active participatns in the creation of media content.
      - To be come active creators and contributors. to generate their own content and to collaborate with other in social, economic, and political activities. Social media platforms facilitate various adhoc and formal, small as well as large-scale online communities. Youtubers, Musicians, Bloggers,etc. Thus, Youth today are actively involved in web production and tend to appropriate portions of it and to convert them into youth zones. Teens also produce unique, stand-alone content for the web, such as blogs, that allow for a more interactive dialog. Blogs represent a kind of diary that is ahred with a larger audience that refers to the details of their everyday life (daily concerns, thoughts, and emtions), consumer talk, and television and movie critiques.
      - Not all youth are engaged in content production and share the same digital culture For the large majority of adolescents, the internet is being used mostly for another important developmental task: relationship formation and maintanence with their existing friends.
      - During this period social relationships outside the family expand, and their quality has been linked to various behavioral outcomes. Social interaction with peers provides a forum for learning and refining socio-emotional skills needed for enduring relationships. In the last 10 years, the communication environment of youth has changed as more and more teens have access to computer-mediated communication and cellular phones.
      - Youth Social life is conducted both online and offline. and their overlap is leading to perpetual communication with peers. the primary purposes of IM are informal talk and socializing (gossips, etc.) IM is often used as an efficient channel to enable multiple social network members to coordinate face-to-face meetings. With the extensive use of computers, multitasking has become part of the way teens manage a busy life. media multi tasking, (email, web search, messages, etc.) teens are switching back and forth between different activities. It is tru that some multitasking existed in the past, with adolescents doing homework and listening to music at the same time, but now it has expanded from media to social multitasking, conducting various conversations simultaneously with different members of the peer group. These friends may be offline actual friends or acquaintances, or people they only know or have met online, and with whom they have no other link.
      - DATA: In the U.S. found that 91% of the social networking teens say they use the sites to stay in touch with friends they see frequently, while 82% stay intouch with friends they rarely see, 72% use the sites to make plans with their friends.
      - Social networking sites facilitate youth to update others about their activities and whereabouts, part of the culture of perpetual contact. Youth report that the number of individuals in their contact list is important because it is often used as an indication of social standing, the extent of begin socially involved with others. The internet plays an important role in adolescent life as a cultural artifact and culture in itself. It is important to recognize that adolescence is a developmental stage with some common characteristics and at the same time a socially non-homogeneous group of individuals who adopt different components of the internet for different purposes, choose to reflect social values and norms of generating a Net-generation, it is useful to think of constant interrelations that are being created, bridging and mutually affecting online and offline youth lives.
      - Youth adoption of the internet presents opportunities for participation in the information society. most frequent use of the internet is for conducting social contact with family, friends, and acquaintances.
      - Youth are using commercial and non commercial sites to express a large and often unknown audience their identities, artistic creations, and everyday experiences. The expression of identity is a developmental need that is expressed in a digital space. Personal information about our feelings and whereabouts are published on the internet. The perception is that we are sharing experiences and emotions with our friends, when in fact they are being shared with an infinite audience.
        However, the online experience of conducting multiple activities and conversations with others is incorporated in the way youth approach daily life, and the boundaries between offline and online, public and private, are constantly being bluerred, mutually affecting each other in various ways. These mutual affects are in need of more in depth study and understanding.
        
        The social participation of adolescents is shaped both by their developmental need for social association and the technological features of the internet. The need for social association explains why the majority of the contacts in Social Network Sites and IM are with friends from school. The features of the internet support the intensification of youth social life that is expressed in perpetual contact. The need to manage this perpetual contact leads to media and social multi tasking strategies that are needed to cope with perpetual contact with one’s peer group.