Creating Youth Identities in Digital Era (Book Review)

Youth, Identity, and Digital Media. Edited by David Buckingham. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008. ix, 206 pp.

The period of youth is a time to define and redefine individual identities in relation to the environment around them. Creating these new definitions is influenced by the way people engage themselves in various socio-cultural and technological entities. Today, the use of technology is one such influence that affects the sense of self in creating an identity.
Unlike two decades ago, today young people are exposed to digital media almost as a natural part of their life. Interaction with digital media forms is becoming a casual routine that has grave implications on their experience as learners or consumers or members of the family. The book deals with the effect of digital media and how it impacts individual in the creation of their social identities.

Eleven authors contribute to explore the ways young people use digital media in their “networks.” The individual liberty in creating one’s own network is what determines the actual level of influence the media forms will have upon that individual. The authors discuss the roles media genres have in both Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 settings and explore whether the digital environment actually is a true platform for social interaction.

As digital media become more and more pervasive in our daily lives, their roles “escaped the boundaries of professional and formal practice” which originally led to their development. This “non-institutionalized” use of digital media is best exemplified by the way youths have imbibed the technology in their daily lives almost as a granted phenomenon. The book discusses how learning takes place in such informal and non-institutional settings as digital media cuts across the formal educational settings.

The chapter by Sandra Weber deals with what will become of a “techno-newborn” who is instantly exposed to the multitude means of digital communication. She examines this question with case studies to “highlight the roles that digital media can assume in the construction of youth identities.” Because understanding the identity involves understanding the ways in which digital products are produced and consumed, scholars propose collapsing the two into one word, “prosumers.” This is one of the entry points that unravels the mystery in the construction and deconstruction of youth identity. She refers to how youths visit their Web sites to check the number of hits to understand how their self-created identity is faring in their own network.

Another significant feature discussed in the book is the tendency to break away from the formal educational setting once youth find opportunity to do so. Rebekah Willet discusses the engagement on the Internet within the context of commercial culture to “analyze online activities in ways which account for the power and influence of commercial industries, while at the same time recognizing how young people actively engage with the commodities these industries offer.” Her discussion focuses on the relationship between the “structures of consumerism and the agency of the young consumer/producer.”

Once when television was beginning to be accepted a part of the living room décor, older generation often complained at how the “idiot box” is waning away the creativity of a child. Nevertheless, later generations were born into the house where the TV was always on. The situation is similar today with a new breed of babies born not just with the digital technologies, but with the latest know-how to play with them. On one hand there is a large digital divide across the globe, on the other, there is generational divide – a divide between the older generation separated by youths who are more tech-savvy. Susan Herring’s “Questioning the Generational Divide: Technological Exoticism and Adult Constructions of Online Youth Identity” explores whether the present tech-generation will actually guide the future of the digital media, or whether “today’s young trendsetters become conservative technology users over time.”

In this interesting study, she speculates about the “dual consciousness” of youth perspective to “imagine what the first generation to be raised in a world in which Internet and mobile technologies are taken for granted by everyone will be like.” She concludes saying the “fascination” with technology will move away to focus more on the “communicative needs.” Such needs also function to show “commitments to community dialogue and social justice” as youths engage in social participation. Shelley Goldman and Angela Booker refer to this as “social and cultural technologies.”

Several authors touch upon the notion of “identity politics”- a concept that ties issues of social status. This is manifest in online expression, use of technologies by socially excluded groups. Since the book is about the digital experience of urban youth, there is no evidence how youths in rural areas seek identity with the minimum technology they are exposed to. A pertinent question is, do differing identities also share dissimilar characteristics of identity politics in disparate socio-technological environments? Or, how is individual identity made possible by digital technology?

In this regard, dana boyd analyzes use of social network sites from the perspective of creating “identity formation, status negotiation, and peer-to-peer sociality.” But the study is not clear whether these identities actually give empowerment and promote vibrant social relationship. Whether what is expressed online actually explains why youth engage in digital dialogue is another topic in the book. Because the phenomenon of cyber-bullying has caused deaths among teenagers, it would be worthwhile to understand the relationship between the content and the psychological impact it creates in the process of finding one’s identity. The book could have added a chapter that dealt primarily with theme of how being overwhelmed by the digital technology, youths lose their tendency to mold natural identity but instead mold vis-à-vis the technology around them. Though the chapter “Producing Sites, Exploring Identities: Youth Online Authorship” tries to fill this gap, elaborate discussion is needed to explain the intricacies of making and breaking of youth identity.

Overall, the book examines identity and tries to explain how youth relate with the digital media. Since explaining an abstract concept in terms of empirical methods poses methodical difficulty, the book does some justice by using the available scholarship till now. I would recommend this book to those readers whose interests lie in media effects, especially to understanding the role of youth as primary actors.