Growing Up DigitalDr Erika Pearson

OSS Seminar 24 May 2013

Three MythsFour IssuesOne Question

Myth #1: Youth Are “Born Digital”

“The first generation of “Digital Natives” – children who were born into and raised in the digital world – are coming of age, and soon our world will be reshaped in their image. Our economy, our politics, our culture and even the shape of our family life will be forever transformed. “

-- Palfrey and Gasser

Myth #2: Youth Post Everything(and privacy is dead)

Female (age 15): “Yeah. I mean, I'm not going to let somebody know something that I don't want them to know. Or I'm not going to tell something to somebody that I don't trust.”

Female (age 13): “I feel like I kind of just have a filter in my brain. I just know that's not a good idea [to post revealing content].”

Pew Internet & American Life Report: Teens, Social Media & Privacy (21 May 2013)

Curation and Performance Management“They are all people who I know, or who go to my school in my grade and therefore are people that I should know. Most of my close friends, my sister, and classmates. I don’t accept friend requests from people who I don’t know. I don’t friend people who just want it for Facebook apps and games, like Farmville.”

“My friends on Facebook are about 90% all people I know, friends, family, and classmates. My rules are only people that I know can be my friends.”

“I change them [privacy settings] when I add new friends if I don’t want that friend to be able to see statuses and things. If I don’t want certain friends to see something, I make it invisible to them.

“Because I think I deleted it [my Facebook account] when I was 15, because I think it [Facebook] was just too much for me with all the gossip and all the cliques and how it was so important to be-- have so many friends-- I was just like it's too stressful to have a Facebook, if that's what it has to take to stay in contact with just a little people. It was just too strong, so I just deleted it. And I've been great ever since.”

“Like, I deactivated it [Facebook] because drama, drama, drama.”

“Participating in the newest communications technologies becomes compulsory if you want to remain part of that

culture.” David Porush

Myth #3: “Being Digital” is Universal

Digital Divides

Mnet, 2010

99 Problems by Diran Lyons (Explicit!)

Issue #1: Copyright

Criminalizing creativity?-- impacts on the future information economy

Copyright stifling ‘learning by doing’?

Is corporate approaches to copyright a dying model?

Pastiche, briccolage and remix?

Issue #2: Privacy

Do we still expect privacy? Do we have a right to privacy?

Tumblr just sold for US$1.1B – what did they buy?Privacy and personal information as commodities

Global marketplaces and data mining

Digitization of information what is it worth, and to whom?

Issue #3: Identity(Resisting) Geolocation and ‘Legal Identities’

Minimyth: the “real”

Anonymity, Nomymity, Pseudonymity and Obscurity

Safety in Numbers?

Reclaiming Granulated and Partitioned Identities and Social Performances

Issue #4: FriendshipNetworks as Commodities

As social good

As reinforcing our worldview (information overload and confirmation bias)

Social ties, new ideas, and the wisdom and stupidity of the crowds (GIGO)

One question