Talking 'Bout Their Generation
This week the Los Angeles Times has been publishing a series about the media habits of the digital generation, which shows that many oft repeated truisms about younger users are, in fact, false. "Tracking the MySpace Generation" looks at movies, music, television, and online entertainment. "Contrary to Expectations: 7 Myths Busted" uses data from a new Times/Bloomberg poll to show that voting for the American Idol isn't more important than voting for figures for public office and that The Daily Show isn't their main source of TV News, which I might argue is regrettable, given how poorly the mainstream media covers digital culture. Despite their counterintuitive interest in civic engagement, it sounds like ennui is still a widespread teenaged affliction, as the first article in the series, "Underwhelmed by It All," presents the situation of kids today. What I don't get is the focus of the series on entertainment technology rather than communication technology, which is how many teens see new digital choices being most usefully deployed.
Labels: big media, digital parenting
posted by Liz Losh at 11:54 AM
2 Comments:
I read this piece too. I was interested to learn that young women are more likely than young men to multi-task. Certainly as an adult female, I feel like I have more on my plate. If I'm not doing at least two things at once (cooking dinner AND blogging; supervising the kids at the park AND reading a dissertation chapter; walking to work AND listening to a podcast). But why kids?
In today's installment, there was more on communication. And more on gender: girls are more wired than boys! Who'd have thought. Still, no discussion of kids as shapers of the medium (what about PhotoShop? Flash? Dreamweaver?), only about their consumer patterns.
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