Power to the Digital Youth?

“We don't need no education

We don’t need no thought control

No dark sarcasm in the classroom

Teachers leave them kids alone

Hey! Teachers! Leave them kids alone!

All in all it's just another brick in the wall.

All in all you're just another brick in the wall.”
Another Brick In The Wall, Part 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUASiDg-kg4

Far from being anti-education, Pink Floyd’s 1979 song is “an anthem about reclaiming stifled individuality”.
http://www.thewallanalysis.com/secondbrick.html

Identifying the benefits of informal learning through digital cultures has only recently been grasped by education systems around the world. A three year study carried out at the University of Southern California and University of California, Berkley, entitled “Kids’ Informal Learning with Digital Media: An Ethnographic Investigation of Innovative Knowledge Cultures” discovered that:
“New media allow for a degree of freedom and autonomy for youth that is less apparent in a classroom setting. Youth respect one another’s authority online, and they are often more motivated to learn from peers than from adults. Their efforts are also largely self-directed, and the outcome emerges through exploration, in contrast to classroom learning that is oriented by set, predefined goals.”
http://digitalyouth.ischool.berkeley.edu/files/report/digitalyouth-TwoPageSummary.pdf

The paper does recognize, however that: “…adults can still have tremendous influence in setting learning goals, particularly on the interest-driven side where adult hobbyists function as role models and more experienced peers.” Teachers and adults “…should facilitate young people’s engagement with digital media” as through their experiences they are “picking up basic social and technical skills… [needed] to participate in contemporary society”

A very important element of child development is socialisation – although there are dark sides to digital trends (ie Happy Slapping, Cyberbullying), peer to peer learning can be incredibly productive.

The power that media change has had on all faculties of youth culture is quite phenomenal. Peter Barron (editor of BBC’s Newsnight) likens “what’s going on with [the] digital media industry” to being not unlike what the music industry experienced in the late 1970s. The advent of punk created a deluge of artists who threatened many of the multi-million pound major record labels who were unwilling to adapt to the youth-led market.
(Damien Steward) Digital Cultures: Case Study: Making Television News in the Digital Age (2009) p 56

Continuing with this point, appreciating the power of digital youth can be seen with the success of “the peoples’ favourite”, the Arctic Monkeys. Prior to being signed in 2005, they created a huge following by harnessing the internet and social networking to push their product.

Steve Lamacq, in an interview for the BBC at the Reading Festival 2006 said: “They’ve gathered a huge and fiercely loyal fanbase without the permission of the traditional mainstream media”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43TdJQtXw3M



More recently, however, Jack White (White Stripes, The Raconteurs, The Dead Weather) has publically identified some of the difficulties of a generation who have “grown up downloading music”.

Speaking in an interview on 29 October 2009: “… White has claimed the music industry was in a ‘dying era’, and told how artists now had to use ‘trickery’ to make money … every meeting he had with labels was ‘depressing’ and in 10 years’ time it would be difficult for bands to make a living”
http://www.chorleycitizen.co.uk/leisure/cinema/showbiz_news/4713231.White_fears__dying_era_for_music_/

How you continue to make money in all aspects of media from a generation that have harnessed the power of digital culture is a question in itself – one perhaps I will review at another time. It is now, however, so ingrained with youth culture. Some independent animation studios are looking at innovative ways to greatly cut production costs (to keep profits high) by harnessing the “globalisation of content” (outsourcing different tasks to contacts in different countries.)

This youth power, however, could be seen as something to be embraced, not feared. Grammy award winning songwriter, Allee Willis, speaking in conversation with Peter Hirsberg, chairman of the board of advisors at Technorati, summed it up quite succinctly: “with millions of collaborators what is a song, because to look at them certainly as fans is missing what this medium is about”

Hirshberg stated in his address at EG ’07 Conference:
“What the entertainment business is struggling with, the world of brands is figuring out”
http://www.blogcatalog.com/blog/barking-robot-derek-baird/8d875d9181b671999b0c9063d9a2c522

The power really falls with big business “connecting with consumers”. Is, therefore, target marketing the biggest challenge to the youth movement?

“We don’t need no thought control”?

Perhaps I should end on a more positive note; Nicholas Negroponte, writing in the epilogue of Being Digital:
“My optimism is not fueled by an anticipated invention or discovery. Finding a cure for cancer and AIDS, finding an acceptable way to control population, or inventing a machine that can breathe our air and drink our oceans and excrete unpolluted forms of each are dreams that may or may not come about. Being digital is different. We are not waiting on any invention. It is here. It is now. It is almost genetic in its nature, in that each generation will become more digital than the preceding one. The control bits of that digital future are more than ever before in the hands of the young. Nothing could make me happier.”
http://archives.obs-us.com/obs/english/books/nn/ch19epi.htm Being Digital; Epilogue: An Age of Optimism

Time to embrace the potential power of the digital youth, and time for me to scour:
http://napsterization.org