iGeneration: The Social Cognitive Effects of Digital Technology on Teenagers

Into today’s world, digital technology changes so rapidly and integrates into our society at such an accelerated rate, it is hard to keep up with it, let alone reflect on the effects it has on our lives. Although Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, did not exist a mere decade ago, they are now ubiquitous forms of media and communication in our culture. Today’s generation of teenagers, born in the 1990s, aptly labeled the “iGeneration”, are the most connected generation ever. These iGen teens are digital natives growing up in an era of a massive influx of technology. They do not know of a world that does not include the Internet and easy access to technology. Parents of iGen youth, however, are “digital immigrants”. As immigrants, they struggle with a learning curve and lack the innate knowledge and ease with digital technology as that of their native offspring. There is little historical data or longitudinal studies of the social cognitive effects of digital media consumption to help inform and guide digital immigrants and natives alike in making choices about digital practices. Statistics change so quickly, it makes for an ongoing challenge to understand how to structure or regulate digital consumption. The intention of this research is to better understand how digital consumption effects teenager’s cognitive abilities and socialization processes, with the goal of discovering best practices and guidelines for educators and parents to implement with regard to their teenagers’ digital consumption, as we spin faster and faster into this digital era

Smartphones

Many of the research approaches to smartphones actually regard them as more or less transparent points of access to other kinds of communication experiences. That is, rather than considering the smartphone as something in itself, the researchers look at how individuals use the smartphone for their communicative purposes, whether these be talking, surfing the web, using on-line data access for off-site data sources, downloading or uploading materials, or any kind of interaction with social media. They focus not so much on the smartphone itself but on the activities that people engage in with their smartphones

PRECAUTION TOWARDS ACCESS TO INAPPROPRIATE INTERNET CONTENT BY STUDENTS WITH VISUAL IMPAIRMENT

The limited condition of visual sense functions experienced by teenagers with visual impairment does not make them safe from exposure to porn-media. Now porn-media is everywhere in various forms and types. Accidentally or unintentionally, people with visual impairment still have the risk of accessing pornographic content through internet media. This research was initiated by the existence of cases caused by the impact of porno-media on teenagers with visual impairment, so the aim of this research was to find out the condition of porn-media exposure, the origin of access and internet resources accessed by blind people who attended school in the SLBN A Wiyataguna complex. This study uses a descriptive case study method with an intrinsic single type of case. The sample was taken from students who were able to understand the questions distributed through questionnaires which became the main data of research other than the interviews results, and FGDs with related parties, as well as literature studies. Based on the results, it is known that most of the students have been exposed to porn-media exposure which originated from a friend\u27s submission, or accidental access, and also known that most students know that porn content can be accessed through the Google and YouTube applications

A MOBILE APPLICATION TO MONITOR ADDICTION ON GAME PLAYING

Modern hand held devices such as smart phones and PDSs have become increasingly powerful in recent years. Dramatic breakthroughs in processing power along with the number of extra features included in these devices have opened the doors to a wide range of commercial possibilities. A lot of free games applications on the platform have driven the kids to spend their time more on the games rather than the studies. As parents, they will be surely worried about the children since the habit may slowly affect the performance on the examinations, school work and social interactions. Researchers say they found in a national Harris Poll survey that 8.5% of youths 8 to 18 who play tablet and computer games show collective signs of addiction that psychologists know exist in pathological gamblers, says Douglas Gentile, PhD, an assistant professor at Iowa State University [1]. Hence, this project will be focusing on the development of an Android application to control the utilization of a game by the kids whereas it will pause the game and alert the kids that they have reached the time limit set by the parents. Besides that, this application also will be very useful for teenagers and students to manage their time between entertainment and studies

A qualitative study of children, young people and 'sexting' : English

The purpose of this small scale qualitative research was to respond to and enhance our understandings of the complex nature of sexting and the role of mobile technologies within peer teen networks. It was designed as a pilot study – to investigate a phenomenon whose nature, scale and dimensions were unknown. Thus the research itself also was small in scale and exploratory in nature and also culturally and geographically specific. We conducted focus group interviews with 35 young people years 8 and 10 in two inner city London schools. At the focus groups we asked participants to friend us on Facebook, with a research Facebook profile. We then mapped some of their activities online and returned for 22 individual interviews with selected case study young people. We also interviewed key teachers and staff at the schools. The study found that threats from peers in digital social networks were more problematic for young people that ‘stranger danger’ from adults. Digital technologies facilitated new visual cultures of surveillance, in which young women were pressured to send revealing body photos or asked to perform sexual services by text and through social networking sites. In this way, sexting aggravated peer hierarchies and forms of sexual harassment in schools, meaning that sexting was often coercive and was sometimes a form of cyberbullying. Girls were most negatively affected by ‘sexting’ in cultural contexts of increasing ‘sexualisation’ shaped by sexual double standards and boys had difficulty in challenging constructions of sexually aggressive masculinity. The research allowed for exploration of when pleasurable sexual flirtation through digital communication moved into sexual coercion and harassment, which was illustrated through narrative examples. Considering the relationship between online and offline risks it found sexual double standards in attitudes to digital sexual communication were linked to incidents of real playground sexual harassment and violence. Finally, it found that children at primary school age were being impacted by the coercive aspects of ‘sexting’ at an earlier age, than prior research indicated

Pleasure and pedagogy: the consumption of DVD add-ons among Irish teenagers

This article addresses the issue of young people and media use in the digital age, more specifically the interconnection between new media pleasures and pedagogy as they relate to the consumption of DVD add-ons. Arguing against the view of new media as having predominantly detrimental effects on young people, the authors claim that new media can enable young people to develop media literacy skills and are of the view that media literacy strategies must be based on an understanding and legitimating of young people's use patterns and pleasures. The discussion is based on a pilot research project on the use patterns and pleasures of use with a sample of Irish teenagers. They found that DVDs were used predominantly in the home context, and that, while there was variability in use between the groups, overall they developed critical literacy skills and competences which were interwoven into their social life and projects of identity construction. The authors suggest that these findings could be used to develop DVDs and their add-on features as a learning resource in the more formal educational setting and they go on to outline the potential teaching benefits of their use across a range of pedagogical areas

Networked participatory cultures in Lusaka, Zambia: how teenagers experience social media and mobile phones.

Doctoral Degree. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban.Teenagers’ networked participatory culture is influenced by the way they interact, self-present themselves, establish and maintain friendships, and the way they coordinate their day to day lives. Livingstone and Third (2017) have argued that these have contributed to teenagers’ pervasive access and use of social media and mobile phones. This study adopted a qualitative approach and an interpretivist paradigm. It adopted Focus Group Discussions [FGDs]. The study sampled a population of teenagers aged 15 to 18 years drawn from six government funded secondary schools in Lusaka, Zambia. Analysis of the FGDs and in-depth interview data using thematic analysis showed that teenagers in Lusaka engage in networked participatory culture. Firstly, the findings reveal that teenagers’ engagement with networked participatory culture is closely linked to the concept of identity and self-representation. The study further reveals that engagement on social media and mobile phones contributes to identity construction through the process of creation of profiles, displaying networks composed of connections, displaying pictures, links, music preference and other personal information. Three key findings emerged from the data on networked participatory culture using mobile phones and social media. Firstly, teenagers consider ownership of smart phones as a key determinant of their participation. The participants reported that absolute ownership necessitated greater privacy and control over information and people they communicated with. Secondly, it was established that the smart phone’s primary purposes were for building social networks, content prosumption and for communication purposes. Thirdly, the study revealed that teenagers were motivated to access and use social media for variant reasons. These include self-expression, gaining freedom and independence to produce content, a need to satisfy an urge to gain popularity, to improve on their personal knowledge and skills, and to cultivate a sense of community belonging and networking in virtual communities. More broadly, the study makes an important contribution to literature as it relates to inter-nationalizing media and communication studies’ (Willems and Mano, 2017: 4; Mutsvairo, 2018; Thussu, 2009; Curran and Park, 2000; Wang, 2011) as well as internet studies and audience studies (Goggin and McLelland, 2009; Butsch and Livingstone, 2014). To be specific, the research makes a novel scholarly contribution to literature on the social and cultural issues influencing networked participatory culture amongst teenagers in Lusaka, Zambia.This thesis looks specifically at teenagers in Lusaka, Zambia

Sophomore

University of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/156355/1/BrooksEisenbiseIPThesis.pd