CENTER FOR MEDIA EDUCATION
FOR RELEASE: December 12, 2001 Report available at: http://www.cme.org/teenstudy/ CONTACT: Ellen O'Brien or Sharon Flynn - CME (202) 331-7833
From Sales Pitches to Civics Lessons: Something for Everyone Online
New CME Study Explores the Online World of Teens
Washington, D.C. -- The Center for Media Education (CME) today released a new study that surveys the burgeoning new-media culture directed at--and in some cases created by--teens. TeenSites.com-A Field Guide to the New Digital Landscape examines the uniquely interactive nature of the new media, and explores the ways in which teens are at once shaping and being shaped by the electronic culture that surrounds them.
With nearly three-quarters of 12- to 17-year-olds online, the Internet is having a profound and far-reaching impact on the lives of today's youth. "Young people are as comfortable growing up with digital media as their parents' generation was with the telephone and TV," explained Kathryn Montgomery, Ph.D., president of the Center for Media Education. The book-length report examines this online teen world, from the glitzy commercial sites designed by marketers to capture the lucrative online teen demographic, to civic youth sites that promote political, cultural, and community engagement. And with an eye toward the future of the new media, the report also looks at some of the next-generation technology that is transforming the digital landscape.
But for the teens themselves, the impact of the new technology is often much more immediate. As they grappled with the September 11 attacks, for example, many teens turned to the Internet as a forum in which to sort out the facts--and to share their feelings. "For many teens the Web surpassed television as the medium of choice in dealing with this crisis," Montgomery pointed out. "Within this unfiltered space, young people could speak out in their own online communities and join with others in their struggle to make sense of the suddenness and severity of this national tragedy."
In many ways young people are the defining users of this new digital media culture. "Teenagers have embraced the new online world with great enthusiasm," Montgomery explained, "responding eagerly to its invitation to share ideas, contribute content, and otherwise place their stamp on a media system that they themselves create and manage. However, even as this new medium is becoming a pervasive presence in teens' lives, it remains largely under the radar of parents, scholars, and policymakers."
Thus Teensites.com is designed to shed light on the new digital media culture, which is often overshadowed by sensational stories about the alleged dangers of cyberspace, or about the rise and fall of various dot-com empires. But Internet usage continues to grow, and young people are at the center of that revolution. "How today's young people consume and participate in new media," explained Montgomery, "will help determine the future shape and direction of the media system."
Among its findings, the study highlights the following aspects of the new media culture:
* The economic underpinnings of the teen Web sites--advertising, e-commerce, market research, and data collection. * The prospects for a teen "civic culture" that subordinates profits to public service. * An assessment of future directions in the new media as the Internet reaches further into everyone's life through a variety of wired and wireless devices.
"Conducting a study of such a volatile industry was not without its challenges," Montgomery explained. "During the period when we were researching the online marketplace, the dot-com crash claimed a number of casualties, including some of the teen sites we were examining. Even as the final report was in production, several of the sites we wrote about closed, and there were further consolidations in the online teen market," she added. "But these stops and starts in the dot-com business should not divert our attention from the inexorable movement of digital media into the lives of teens."
In its new study CME calls for academic researchers to look more closely at the impact of new media on youth. "Much of what is known about how teens are interacting with the new digital media," the report notes, "is confined to the proprietary domain of market research, which is either completely off-limits to outsiders or priced so prohibitively as to be inaccessible to the public." CME also points to a combination of government policy, responsible industry self-regulation, public education, and citizen activism as the best means of realizing the full potential of the digital revolution.
The study makes a number of recommendations for policymakers, industry, scholars, health professionals, and parents, including calls for the following:
* Research on new media and teens, especially policy-relevant, focused research that addresses specific issues and needs, and which is broadly disseminated in a much more timely fashion than is the norm for most academic studies.
* Consumer protection policies ensuring that teens are not taken unfair advantage of in the new-media marketplace, either through deceptive marketing or exploitative advertising practices.
* Policies that ensure equitable access, not simply to the most basic Internet services, but also to the emerging broadband environment that will bring increasing amounts of multimedia resources into homes and schools.
Support for a quality civic media culture, one that serves teens not simply as consumers, but also as citizens, with a robust array of civic content and opportunities for teens themselves to contribute to a new "electronic commons."
The full study, Teensites.com-A Field Guide to the New Digital Landscape, is available at http://www.cme.org/teenstudy/ ----------------------------------------------- The Center for Media Education (CME) is a national nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to creating a quality electronic media culture for children and youth. CME's cutting-edge studies on the new-media marketplace have had major impacts on a number of key public policy decisions during the past decade. Its documentation of online marketing and data collection practices targeted at children established the groundwork for the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). CME's Research and Public Education Initiative on New Media, Children and Youth is designed to stimulate research on digital media and serve as a clearinghouse of research and policy developments for academics, industry, the public, and policymakers. The organization's current research and public education project, "Youth as E-Citizens: The Internet and Youth Civic Engagement," will help ensure that the Internet serves young people as a bridge to community and civic engagement.
########################################## _______________________________________________________________________ Ellen O'Brien eobrien@CME.org Communications Director http://www.CME.org Center for Media Education (CME) 2120 L St., NW, Suite 200 202/331-7833, ext. 31 Washington, DC 20037 fax: 202/331-7841
_________________________________________________________ Nancy Baym nbaym@ku.edu http://www.ku.edu/home/nbaym Communication Studies, University of Kansas 102 Bailey, 1440 Jayhawk Blvd., Lawrence, KS 66045, USA Association of Internet Researchers: http://aoir.org