Teenagers and Technology

Chris Davies, Rebecca Eynon

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781136159350
• Topic: Psicologia
• Subtopic: Psicologia dello sviluppo

The popular media often presents a negative picture of young people and technology. From addiction to gaming, the distractions of the Internet, to the risks of social networking, the downsides of new technology in the lives of teenagers are often over-blown.

Teenagers and Technology presents a balanced picture of the part played by technology in the lives of young people. Drawing on extensive interviews conducted over several years, this book offers a timely and non-sensational exploration of teenagers' experiences and opinions about the digital technologies they use, desire and dislike.

The book covers a range of topical subjects including:

• Social networking and online engagement in the wider social world
• Building online self-identity and group membership
• Technology in the home
• Developing technology skills in support of learning
• Drawing on technological resources in the journey towards adulthood.

Grounded in what young people actually say about using new technology in their daily lives, Teenagers and Technology presents a picture in which young people have in some respects a unique relationship to technology, but one that is actually not exceptional or of a completely different order to how people in general relate to it.

By providing a nuanced view on the topic, Teenagers and Technology counters the extreme accounts of 'digital youth', and exaggerated anxieties created by the mass media. It will be of interest to students and academics working in the fields of adolescent and Internet studies, along with education professionals, practitioners, teenagers and their parents.

1 Opening

Introduction

In this book we examine the extent and ways in which new technologies are important in the lives of teenagers. This is a topic that has been frequently discussed in many contexts, too often in terms of unexamined generalities about the young that ignore the complexity and gradually changing nature of their participation in a shared digital culture. Popular discourse about this issue tends to assume a rich and rewarding relationship between young people and the technologies they use, to the extent that they are typically represented as the ideal beneficiaries of the digital era. The book will explore both the distinctive and specific ways in which new technologies do indeed have special meaning for teenagers as a broad group, and the ways in which that meaning varies a great deal for different young people, on occasions resulting in ambivalent and sometimes negative feelings about technology.

The notion of teenagers has particular resonance with regard to digital technologies. Much research, including our own, suggests that it is during the teenage years that young people most intensively develop, share and establish their own repertoire of technology-enabled activity, forming a set of practices that – though always to some extent in a state of flux – will remain with them through their studies and on into their working lives. The affordances of new technologies seem particularly pertinent to their needs and goals as people moving from the care and protection of their families towards the autonomy and self-determination of adulthood, and as a crucial means of establishing their own identity and membership of peer group sub-culture. At the same time the adult world is increasingly keen to impress upon young people somewhat contradictory reservations about the very same resources that are offered to them as essential to their future progress.

By new technologies, we mean both the hardware that enables access to digital resources and networks, and the uses of those resources and networks. The key characteristics of technological devices that figure most in the lives of teenagers are increasingly those of convergence and multi-functionality: ‘technology’ refers to a range of digitally-encoded things that people want to do on whatever devices are available, as much as it does to the devices with which specific activities are more traditionally associated. Smartphones, tablets, laptops, netbooks and games consoles all offer scope for communication, networking, play, collaboration, learning, and many forms of making and consuming culture. The capacity to move easily from one activity to another, and do so on any number of different devices, constitutes the technology subculture that is supposedly available now to all young people. How they are actually engaging with such opportunities and that sub-culture at the current time is the focus of the book.

The picture is constantly changing, and therefore this book will not attempt any kind of summative account of the topic, so much as an overview of how things are at a time when constant engagement in networked technologies has become the norm for most young people in the developed world. Central questions that the book addresses are therefore: what does that normality of teenagers’ technology use involve, is that normality common to most young people, and what are the implications for the significant numbers of young people who remain excluded from it? In order to explore such issues, we shall make wide reference to published writing, including studies of adolescence, youth studies and studies into young people’s uses of technology in particular. Alongside this, we shall refer throughout to material from a substantial research project that we carried out between 2008 and 2011 in Britain. In the course of that project we talked with over 200 boys and girls (predominantly but not exclusively teenagers) as well as with some of their parents and carers, and surveyed over a thousand youngsters nationally (we describe this project in more detail below, on page 11). The book will draw extensively on what these young people told us, and will use their own words in order to help us build a picture of its core issues.

The book will therefore cover many aspects of teenagers’ experience of technology: social networking and online engagement in their wider social world; building self-identity and group membership online; games-playing; developing technology skills; using those skills in support of their own learning; coping with issues of risk online, and drawing on technology resources to support their journeys towards adulthood. In the final section of this chapter, we show how these things will form the content of the rest of the book.

Before that, in the two following sections, we discuss the theoretical foundations underlying the two key notions around which this book is written: first teenagers, and then technology. This is followed by an introduction to the research project upon which much of this book is based.

Teenagers

Adolescence and the teenage years is a period of life that is characterised by numerous biological, cognitive and social changes. It is a recognised life stage, which people pass through on the way to becoming an adult. The precise nature of this period and the perspectives people hold about it differ. Indeed, there are numerous competing positions on childhood and adolescence both in terms of disciplinary focus and ontological viewpoints (Wyness, 2012).

While there has been a fascination with children over centuries, the specific term teenager was first used after the Second World War in America. It was initially used to reflect a category of young people aged 14–18 for marketing purposes, highlighting a new market segment that had spending power and ‘a group with its own rituals, rights and demands’ (Savage, 2007: xiii). Now, of course, it is widely used as a common-sense term to represent those young people aged between 13 and 19.

The term adolescence has a longer history, established as a field of study in 1904 by Stanley Hall (Adams and Berzonsky, 2005). Stanley Hall’s research on adolescence was primarily concerned with psychological processes, yet emerged at a time when concerns about youth delinquency were prevalent in wider society (Savage, 2007: xvi). Thus, from the beginning the inextricable link between biology and society was clear. As with the term teenager, most of us hold a common-sense view of what we mean by adolescence, typically associating it with the onset of puberty. In academic terms the definition is somewhat more contested, with differing views about when adolescence begins and ends, the relative importance of biological and social processes and if it encompasses one or multiple life stages (Coleman, 2011).

In this book we deliberately use the word teenager, and for the most part use age to make sense of this category. As will be seen in later chapters we use Steinberg’s three broad phases of adolescence: early adolescence, from about 10 to 13 years old; middle adolescence, from about 14 to 18 years, and late adolescence, which might then continue into the early 20s (2002: 4). We recognise that age, on its own, cannot account for the significant variation in young people’s physical, social and developmental circumstances (Coleman, 2008; Steinberg, 2002), but it is a relatively useful proxy to help us understand the various cognitive developments and contextual aspects of young people’s lives that may help us to make sense of their experiences. For example, at the age of 12 young people are just becoming very aware of social situations and contexts (Coleman, 2008), by 14 and in later adolescence the development of identity, a sense of agency towards educational institutions (both positive and negative) and the importance of peers becomes even more significant (Fine, 2004); by 17 young people are no longer in or nearing the end of compulsory schooling and have made or will soon make certain choices (e.g. about staying in formal education and/or starting a job).

We are not biologists or developmental psychologists, and so come to this discussion from more of a social and cultural perspective. In doing so we wish primarily to highlight the experiences of teenagers, but set this within a broader frame. As Larson suggests, research in this area needs to think both about ‘adolescents (i.e. the immediate experiences of individual youth) and adolescence (i.e. the generalised patterns, norms, and expectations that affect what those individuals experience, including changes in the adulthood for which they prepare)’ (Larson, 2002: 7–8). In the next two sections we review some of the literature from these two related perspectives.

Understanding individual experience

Until relatively recently, the majority of social science research viewed children and teenagers as the objects rather than subjects of research (Green and Hill, 2005). This began to change quite significantly in the 1960s, when there was a wider movement to recognise the voices of marginalised groups, including a more explicit acknowledgement of a child’s position as a fully functioning member of society. This is neatly illustrated in the field of sociology, where the Sociology of Childhood paradigm was introduced in the 1980s (Corsaro, 2004; James and Prout, 1997). From this perspective children were viewed as a heterogeneous group, who were able to speak for themselves and the society of which they were part (Matthews, 2007).

This shift has led to more studies that aim to understand the experiences of what it is like to be a child or teenager using a range of methodologies to enable the individual’s voice to be heard. As Green and Hill note, ‘The researcher who values children’s perspectives and wishes to understand their lived experience will be motivated to find out more about how children understand and interpret, negotiate and feel about their daily lives. If we accept a view of children as persons, the nature of children’s experiential life becomes of central interest’ (Greene and Hill, 2005: 3). This has been supported by policy-makers and practitioners who have also sought over the last couple of decades to obtain children’s and young people’s perspective and voice in their decision-making (Greene and Hill, 2005).

Social life

Of course, these experiences do not operate in a vacuum. They take place in a social context, one which is supported and constrained by social structures such as the education system, gender inequalities, employment laws and practices, norms, stereotypes and expectations of the family and teenagers themselves. Teenagers interact with this world, thus both contribute to and are influenced by it. As Christensen and Prout note, ‘rather than looking only at how children are formed by social life, children are seen as social actors whose actions can both shape and change social life’ (2005: 50).

The nature of the society of which teenagers are part changes over time, and this has implications for the way that teenagers experience the world. In the industrialised West we see three conflicting trends: institutionalisation, where young people spend increasing amounts of time in formal spaces such as school and after-school clubs; familialisation, where young people are more economically dependent on their family, spend more time at home for leisure, and leave home older; individualisation, where teenagers are in some ways more independent – determining their identity through purchasing goods, using their newly acquired right for their voice to be heard and being less dependent on expert authority (Christensen and Prout, 2005: 50, citing Brannen and O’Brien (1995) and Nasman (1994)).

As we discuss in Chapter 3, the interaction of these trends leads to the adolescent years becoming longer, with young people starting work later (Coleman, 2011; Livingstone, 2009). Related to this are the consistent (and in some cases growing) inequalities within countries. In general, adolescents from better-off homes have improved opportunities to prepare for adulthood due to the availability of a range of resources (Larson, 2002), whereas those with multiple disadvantages (such as substance dependency, homelessness and being in care) have far less opportunities to prolong this period of their lives to help them with the transition to adulthood (Parry, 2006).

Also important here are the numerous tensions and contradictions teenagers experience due to these trends (Christensen and Prout, 2005; Livingstone, 2009). The trend of individualisation in some ways does not fit well with familiarisation. For example, teenagers live in a very consumerist culture, with marketers targeting them to choose purchases that define their identity. Yet, these young people are still at school or have limited resources. Thus, the finances for these purchases typically come from parents. As Livingstone notes, ‘parents must tread the difficult path between providing for their children economically for an extended period of time while simultaneously recognising their independence in terms of sociality and culture’ (Livingstone, 2009: 6). Throughout this book we highlight a number of these kinds of contradictions in the world of teenagers. Technology in some cases enables certain kinds of freedom, yet this typically operates within a context that is characterised by the control and rules of others.

Like other researchers in this area (e.g. Christensen and Prout, 2005:50), we believe that there is a need to understand both the experiences of adolescents and the wider, more macro trends and institutions in which these experiences play out. In understanding teenagers then, we try to understand the interaction between individual experience and wider society primarily through the eyes of young people. We try to place the teenagers’ experiences at the heart of our discussions and to understand these within their local sub-cultures, and how they interact with and are informed by the interaction with wider social influences (Holloway and Valentine, 2000).

Technology

Drawing on the work of Arthur (2009), Jones (2012) suggests that technology is often used to reflect three different levels of analysis: technology as a tool; technology as part of a system; and technology at a society wide level. In simple terms, looking across the history of technology studies, it is possible to detect a continuum in the ways that people conceptualise technology across all of these levels, ranging from a strong form of technological determinism through to those that utilise perspectives from the social shaping of technology approach.

In many countries, the dominant discourse about technology tends to be relatively upbeat, with many seeing new technologies as something that offers society a great deal of opportunities for the individual and for society as a whole. Indeed for some, information and communication technologies are the defining feature of our times, making our world significantly different to the lives that have gone before (Dearnley and Feather, 2001; Robins and Webster, 1999). The excitement and hope around information and communication technologies has led to a belief in ‘keeping up’ with technology and a stress on the importance of harnessing its power in a range of contexts including in the lives of young people, to support their learning, to ensure they are equipped with the necessary skills to become effective members of the workforce and to develop the necessary skills to protect them from the potential harms as well as the opportunities of technology.

The key problem with much of the debate, particularly in the domains of policy and the media, is the relatively deterministic assumptions that are made about information and communication technologies. This leads to a way of thinking and asking questions about technology that are too simple and couched in terms that are not necessarily helpful, that focus on impacts or effects rather than influences or experiences. Thus instead of thinking about the complexity of the interactions between the person, other people, the technology and the context, the focus is all on the technology and what it can do ‘to’ us – a highly instrumental focus that is apparent in a numerous policy areas (Friesen, 2009). It is generally accepted in the research community that any influence of ICTs will vary as a result of a range of complex and interrelating factors both at micro and macro levels (Dutton, 1996; Kling, 2000; Preston, 2001; Woolgar, 2002). Indeed, social shaping theories of technology emerged in the 1980s in response to a critique of technological determinism that was popular at the time (Williams and Edge, 1996; MacKenzie and Wajcman, 1985), and we take a similar view.

In debates about technology we also tend to forget the past, so that both policy-makers and researchers are sometimes guilty of reinventing the wheel and neglecting the insights from research and experiences of previous technologies (Caldwell, 2000; Jones, 2012; Selwyn, 2011). Historically, each new media technology tends to be associated with ‘utopian projections about how they will transform humanity’ (Flew, 2002: 55) and often similar dystopian ones too (Burnett and Marshall, 2003). We try hard in this book not to make a similar mistake. Here, then, what we try to do is to understand technology within the social, economic, cultural and political context of which it is part; and this applies to all three levels of technology outlined by Jones (2012). Crucially we are not interested in the effects that technology has on young people’s lives but the way that they experience, use and think about technology as a part of their life: a life which is, as it always has been, characterised by biological changes, significant others, multiple expectations and numerous choices.

Why teenagers and technology?

As noted above, there is a clear link between our understandings of teenagers and the society of which they are part. When we look at the trends that may influence what it means to be a teenager now and in the coming years, technology is likely to play an important role in at least some of them. In saying this we are not suggesting that we are in a radically new era, one that is fundamentally different from the past due to the impacts of technology (c.f. Webster, 2006). Yet society is constantly changing in a number of subtle ways over time, and these changes are likely to influence what it means or feels like to be a teenager, and the part that teenagers play in society. As Larson notes, ‘there is every reason to believe that population growth, globalization, new technologies, and other fast moving changes will reconstruct the concept of adolescence again, in many forms’ (Larson, 2002: 2).

These changes in society mean that our understandings of young people need to be constantly renegotiated and critically assessed. Indeed, Savage argues our understanding of teenagers now needs to be redefined as the American teen image from the 1950s still continues to dominate world views about young people (Savage, 2007). Thus part of our reason for writing this book is simply because it is important to study teenagers’ experiences of technology given that they represent an important and significant segment of the population. Quantifying the sheer amounts of technology tells us little about what this actually means for people’s lives (Webster, 2006), and we believe that there is a great deal to be gained from determining the nature and importance of these social changes in qualitative terms.

Enabling possibilities

One way of thinking about this question is through thinking about if and how technologies offer teenagers new ways of doing old things or, less commonly, taking advantage of entirely new opportunities.

As indicated above, the teenage years are characterised by transition(s). This is conceptualised in different ways. Initially research viewed adolescence as one transition, but over the past decade or so this has shifted. Some researchers support the notion of different kinds of transition, such as those related to school and lifestyle, in young pe...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Opening
• 2 Uses
• 3 Contexts
• 4 Identity
• 5 Learning
• 6 Outliers
• 7 Autonomy
• Closing
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index