New Media for Children & Young Adults, 2010-11

I chose this article because I think it gives us a good overview of the online child consumer.  Calvert discusses the differences between television and film, saying that:

knowledge is constructed through interactions between the knower and the known.  Although such interactions do occur as children view television and film, including advertisements, they are different in the newer interactive technologies, which allow for greater user control and interchanges. Interactive technologies are based on dialogue and turn-taking- a child takes a turn, then a computer responds and takes a turn, then the child takes a turn again.  In essence, a conversation is taking place in which each response made by a child leads to potentially different content being shared. (215-216)

Keeping in mind some of the principles of marketing that Calvert discusses in this article, I’d like if you took some time exploring these sites for children.  What age group does the site focused on?  What do you take away as the main messages from the site?  What are some of the more subtle messages?  Looking back on what we’ve already looked at, how do these sites play with consumer identity?  What kind of privacy issues stick out for you?  Also, try out some of the advergames on the sites.  How much time do you spend playing the game?

http://www.luckycharms.com/

http://www.hasbro.com/playskool/en_CA/

http://www.barbie.com/

http://www.gotmilk.com/

http://store.playmobilusa.com/on/demandware.store/Sites-CA-Site

http://www.teenvogue.com/

It’s not your friend; it’s a business: “Facebook To Share Users’ Home Addresses, Phone Numbers With External Sites”

Although, I suppose it’s somewhat relieving that they’re at least considering withholding the information for users under 18..

Scott Nicholson, one of my Librarian / Boardgaming heroes, has a VYou channel as well. If you want to take a look at a topic-focused, rather than purely personality-focused take on online identity, check it out.

The question of online identities has always intrigued me. I was, or perhaps still am, Palfrey’s sixteen-year-old protagonist that had multiple online profiles and was constantly changing them to reflect who I had become, or who I thought others would find interesting, every day.

Palfrey writes that this constant creation of the self is simultaneously freeing and restrictive. While we have the ability to be whomever we’d like in cyberspace, we don’t have much control over who accesses the information and how they perceive it (34-5). Thomas adds that this continuing constructing of the self also leaves us fragmented. Quoting from Agger she writes:

“…the virtual self composes himself in daily email, web surfing, chatting, cell phoning, faxing. It is a postmodern self less stable and centred than the self of previous modernities.” (9)

I thought it would be interesting to talk about this idea of the fractured self, and if the multiple ways of representing oneself in different online “bodies” – which Thomas defines as any virtual text or visual construction that we use to represent ourselves in the online world – are indeed an essential part of our identities outside of cyberspace? Can we ever represent our real-life selves accurately online, or is that necessary or even the point?

Of course, there is so much in these readings that I invite you to address any other topic that strikes your fancy.

Note about the readings: In Thomas’ chapter, stop before you get to Lacan and Psychoanalytical theory. Who needs more phallic symbols in their lives, really?

While I understand that the two fictional texts that I have assigned for reading can be classified in a number of ways, not necessarily Science Fiction (Feed as sci-fi or cyberpunk; Little Brother as dystopian or just disturbing realism), I would like you to consider Applebaum’s introduction as a guide that can apply to other texts outside of the sci-fi realm.

Perceptions of technology as a corrupting force, particularly in relation to young people’s use of it, are related to the prevailing myth of the innocent child, as explored by Jacqueline Rose (1984), Anne Higonnet (1998), Jack Zipes (2000) and Henry Giroux (2000), to name but a few, and result in fiction written for a young audience which endorses a technophobic agenda. (Applebaum 1)

Please read the two excerpts (from Doctorow and Anderson) and see how they relate to the introduction from Applebaum, using the following questions and the above quotation to guide you:

• Do these excerpts show instances of this “technophobic agenda”?
• In what ways to the two texts seem to address technology either positively or negatively?
• In your experience, are young people interacting with technology in such a way that necessitates fictional representations of teens being “freed” from said technology?
• Or do you see technology  instead as “freeing,” in that it can be used to overcome forces of oppression?

I’m not sure this brings anything new to our discussion on the topic, but this article from McSweeney’s caught my eye; “YOUNG ADULTS ARE READING MORE THAN YOU.”

The rise of screen-based media has not melted children’s brains, despite ardent warnings otherwise: “It does not appear that time spent using screen media (TV, video games and computers) displaces time spent with print media,” the report stated. Teens are not only reading more books, they’re involved in communities of like-minded book lovers.

Today I decided to try my hand at something slightly different, or at least different from Second Life, which I have come to abhor, but I’ll stop there so I don’t rant.  So today I made an avatar for myself from Pixie Hollow.  My name is Hale Rivercloud and I am a sparrow-man.  I have an awesome little green suit and fancy-shmancy little wings that I can use to fly around and collect things like spider webs, berries, and flowers for trade.  I will admit that I felt somewhat sleazy being in a virtual world for children much younger than myself.  It is for this reason that I refrained form taking part in any chatting or “friendly” behaviour.

Once I had my fill of this fabulous fairy land, I logged out and went in search of privacy and security information for the site and the “virtual space” in which children take part.  I ended up coming across parental information.  The information provided for parents related to security and chat settings, since this seems to be the main way that children would be “preyed” upon while in Pixie Hollow.  As Meyers et al. (2010) write:

The challenge in our current childhood landscape is that any risk is perceived as unacceptable. We appear to live in a risk-averse culture that works not just to reduce unnecessary risk, but also to eliminate the slightest possibility of harm to children (Byron, 2010).

The information put forth by Disney seems to be sometimes overly protective in nature, bringing attention to their moderators and monitors a number of times.  The chat is filtered through moderators at all times within the game, thus hindering the communication in some ways.  Perhaps this is for safety of the children, but there are ways to monitor without necessarily interfering in word choice.  Maybe I’ll just end up being a horrible parent, but I don’t think that monitoring children to such an extreme is always helpful.

But it’s not only safety and security issues involved here.  There are suddenly more limitations on children participating in the online environment.  They lose control of their own behaviour because of parental and adult interference.  I can’t help but feel that this is a bad thing.  Perhaps I’m only saying this because I don’t have children or because I haven’t suffered from online issues of bullying or abuse, but I feel that limiting freedom is something that is complex and must be very, very carefully considered.

Meyers et al. also address the issue of what can happen to ideas of freedom when adults attempt to constantly monitor and inform online social behaviour of children and youth.

Efforts to eliminate exposure to risk may limit opportunities for young people to develop essential cognitive and metacognitive strategies (Livingstone, 2009). Donovan and Katz (2009) argue that children are informed social actors and that attempts by adults to monitor their online behavior and filter their websites has a chilling effect on children’s and youth’s privacy and free speech.

This post has been very limited in scope, but it’s my experience and my reactions so I obviously can’t cover everything that I would like from the article in the Journal of Virtual Worlds or in the Livingstone chapter.  Perhaps I will make another small post or add some comments at a later time, but this is all for now.  Thanks for listening!

“[T]he relative lack of concern about, and research on, children’s encounters with racist content […].                                  We worry primarily about children’s sexuality.” (Livingstone, p. 176)

This quote shows that the moral discussion of the use of Internet is based on a genital moral. I don’t deny that this is a huge point to consider, but there are others moral problems that should be studied too. You can damage a child not only in a physical way; there is a lot of psychological damage that can be infringed. For example: the liberties that have some totalitarian groups to express their point of view as the neo-Nazi sites, as Livingstone pointed out.

But there are others moral problems strongly discussed through the use of Internet: intellectual property is an excellent example of this. The points of music and movies have been discussed in class, so I want to bring another actual example. As a fan of Chilean football (soccer) I wanted to keep seeing the games on real time even if I’m living in Canada and I found a page (http://rojadirecta.com/) that linked and showed the games. But even when the page (the author of it) won the trial of the intellectual property in Spain, the government of USA blocks the website (as you can see in the link).

Another moral point to discuss is the concentration of power of mass media on the Internet. One more personal example: in Chile there is a project to construct hydroelectric dam in the south of the country (mostly in Patagonia). The ambientalist groups reject this project because the 60% of the energy generated in the country is consumed by the large mining (see http://www.patagoniasinrepresas.cl/final/index-en.php -I linked it in English for your comfort)  so to construct a hydroelectric dam just benefits the mining. But the news conglomerates are publishing in the media that next year would exist power rationing by the water shortage and, in this way, generate public opinion to benefit the HydroAysen Project.

One last moral problem I want to point out: the imaginary construction of female bodies and subjectivities through virtual sites designed for girls as Barbie Girls (http://www.barbiegirls.com/). I visited this virtual world, but in order to start “playing” I need to create my avata. My options weren’t so many: the same doll (or body) that you change dress, colour and name it. The idea of avatars having the same body with different accesories seems extremly ideological and polemic but society seems to see the dangers in the chat room.

These kinds of behaviours should be subject to debate: what are the ethics in a virtual space? Because if conglomerates want to censorship material protect by copyright, while the conservatives want to censor the space from a genital morality; other social spaces have the right to build their demands and built a more democratic space.

I’ll add that I appreciated Baym’s approach here, as well, especially her insistence on comparing contemporary issues to how people responded to technological change in the past. The more I look into these issues in technology and new media, the more I see that things aren’t really all that different.

Technology has always had unintended consequences, and really that’s not saying very much. It would be pretty hubristic to claim that the impact of anything but the simplest of technologies can be accurately predicted. For example, computers are essentially super-efficient copying machines. I’m sure, however, that Babbage and Turing and friends couldn’t have anticipated the widespread copyright violation that would occur on account of their inventions, which in turn would lead to the de-facto criminalization of an entire generation.

I will jump on the bandwagon here and agree with the gang about enjoying this article.  I also thought that the responses were really insightful.  So thanks to everyone for being really smart!  I spent yesterday thinking about the points brought up, and wondering about the cross-over effects of technology and literature.  On this front, I would say that Baym’s social constructivism plays strongly here.  Most books that discuss technology and its effects (utopic, or dystopic) are science fiction- a genre whose popularity does not generally extend to a wide population.  It’s even less discussed in children’s fiction.  The novel I’m reading right now is fascinating in its use of technology. The characters talk on their bluetooth devices, and drain their ipods of batteries.  It’s great, because it’s so up to date right now, but as a piece of literature, I feel it will likely fall out of print faster than a book that doesn’t have technology in it; it will soon be archaic and possibly seen as clunky  and boring.  So then, does this mean that the “standards” or “classics” of modern literature will never be an accurate voice for society’s views of technology?  This would be strange, since our understanding of ancient cultures, their norms, and values often stems from the literature of the period. I think this could be even more prevalent in children’s fiction “classics”, a genre that is often looked at to garner the values of a particular culture or time period.  Also of note here- we could argue that the internet or new technologies will host these views and values, however, paper is still the only medium that we know of  as permanent.  Just a thought on the unintended consequences of new media on classic literature.