Children benefit from exposure to digital culture

Children benefit from exposure to digital culture

Children need to participate fully in digital culture in order to develop the "skills, knowledge, ethical frameworks and self-confidence needed to be full participants in the world around them," MIT Professor Henry Jenkins told members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) recently.

Jenkins, the principal investigator for the New Media Literacies project in the Comparative Media Studies Program, presented some of the project's early research findings.

He focused on 21st-century literacy, which is based on the ability to read and write and includes the digital skills to participate socially and collaboratively in the new media environment.

Jenkins proposed that there is a high 21st-century literacy rate among teens -- measured by their skillful use of all things digital, including instant messaging , Myspace , sampling , zines , mashups , Wikipedia, gaming and spoiling -- that has far more meaning than "screen time" implies.

"Social connectivity, creativity and learning take place through these various media-related experiences," said Jenkins, long a proponent of open-mindedness towards new media and of respect for its political and creative potential.

He tirelessly contrasts passive media consumption -- the slug on the couch -- with the activities of digital culture. The latter is essentially participatory, meaning it has "relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, strong support for creating and sharing what you create, and members feel their contributions matter," he noted.

Rather than focus on the negative effects of media consumption -- the dreaded "screen time" -- parents and teachers should seek to eliminate the "participation gap" between affluent students' digital resources at home and those available to less affluent students at school.

"This may be what is most radical about the new literacies -- that they enable collaboration and knowledge-sharing with large-scale communities. Right now, our schools are still training autonomous problem-solvers. But as students enter the workplace, they are increasingly being asked to work in teams, drawing on different sets of expertise and collaborating to solve problems," he said.

It is an interesting study and links into recent conversations I have had around how we should be educating our children today and in the future. A completely different skill set is required, but also reading this report it gives one a sense of hope - that we will expect full participatory democracy, that will not be confined to 3 political parties and a house of Lords, where apparently you can buy your way into one of the most powerful institutions in the United Kingdom.

This also links into the world values survey which identifies key societal changes.

The second major dimension of cross-cultural variation is linked with the transition from industrial society to post-industrial societies-which brings a polarization between Survival and Self-expression values. The unprecedented wealth that has accumulated in advanced societies during the past generation means that an increasing share of the population has grown up taking survival for granted. Thus, priorities have shifted from an overwhelming emphasis on economic and physical security toward an increasing emphasis on subjective well-being, self-expression and quality of life. Inglehart and Baker (2000) find evidence that orientations have shifted from Traditional toward Secular-rational values, in almost all industrial societies. But modernization, is not linear-when a society has completed industrialization and starts becoming a knowledge society, it moves in a new direction, from Survival values toward increasing emphasis on Self-expression values.

A central component of this emerging dimension involves the polarization between Materialist and Postmaterialist values, reflecting a cultural shift that is emerging among generations who have grown up taking survival for granted. Self-expression values give high priority to environmental protection, tolerance of diversity and rising demands for participation in decision making in economic and political life. These values also reflect mass polarization over tolerance of outgroups, including foreigners, gays and lesbians and gender equality. The shift from survival values to self-expression values also includes a shift in child-rearing values, from emphasis on hard work toward emphasis on imagination and tolerance as important values to teach a child. And it goes with a rising sense of subjective well-being that is conducive to an atmosphere of tolerance, trust and political moderation. Finally, societies that rank high on self-expression values also tend to rank high on interpersonal trust.
This produces a culture of trust and tolerance, in which people place a relatively high value on individual freedom and self-expression, and have activist political orientations. These are precisely the attributes that the political culture literature defines as crucial to democracy.

I see these trends (technological) and (societal) blending with eachother and harmonising our world in new and exciting ways.

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