Second, adolescents enjoy and crave opportunities to talk to anyone about anything, and that that actually is another dimension in articulation of social power, as is keeping secrets
from parents and adults. Part of the way we develop as an independent thinker, as an autonomous human being, is discovering and making choices about who we say what to. Teens practice by transgressing social
norms because it enables them to learn about choices and consequences. Through small and large acts of defiance, transgression and independent thinking, they develop a conscience and a sense of self and understanding of how one fits in society. By stepping over the boundaries of social norms to see what happens, youth learn about themselves in relation to others in society. Some educators and youth advocates could argue that digital and social media provide a safe space for transgression. Others recognize that that space may not be so safe at all, but transgressing social norms is a developmentally natural part of adolescence and is an increasingly relevant activity of adolescence.
Finally, adolescents like to take risks in pursuit of experience, enjoying experience for its own sake. Teens crave novelty, complexity, and intense situations. The Internet and social media provide an impossibly wide variety of situations to satisfy these needs. For example, many teens around the world have viewed a YouTube video that satisfies sensation-seeking needs. They may have intentionally or accidentally viewed the incoherent ramblings of a person high on Vicodin, a scene of teenagers beating up a homeless man, a nature image featuring a giant mass of daddy long legs swarming in a tree, home video footage of costumed little girls or boys dancing in a disturbingly sexual way, or even a close-up of the biggest pimple in the world getting popped. Some people receive these links from friends and family while others find them accidentally through the suggested videos shown on the right hand side of the YouTube page. Other people find them deliberately through participating in social media communities like Reddit, 4Chan or websites like Oddee (www.oddee.com), a blog featuring all manner of fetish videos, crazy animal videos, and other simply uncategorizable videos that generate over 5 million visits a month.
Of course, these three developmentally normal characteristics of adolescence predate the Internet by millennia. And it’s not only young people who are
struggling with the complex functions of the Internet for information, entertainment, persuasion and propaganda. Human development and socialization are life-long processes, and at every stage of life, from the cradle to the grave, we now have encounters with digital and social media that deserve reflection, analysis and critical scrutiny. For this reason, it is important for educators, parents and researchers to reflect on how we, ourselves, are changing and developing in relationship to the digital and social media tools and technologies that are part of our daily lives.
Renee Hobbs is Professor of Communication Studies and Director of the Media Education Lab at the Harrington School of Communication and Media at the University of Rhode Island.
Web: www.mediaeducationlab.com
Twitter: @reneehobbs
Growing up Digital by Renee Hobbs
..educators must pay careful attention to the digital media practices of children at the onset of adolescence and more carefully consider the complex and dynamic interplay between home and school use of digital and social media.
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