Digital Life Research: Report & Books

Books

Alone Together: A Meditation on the Future of Teaching and Learning in the Digital Age
Sherry Turkle (Basic Books, 2011)

Technology has become the architect of our intimacies. Online, we fall prey to the illusion of companionship, gathering thousands of Twitter and Facebook friends and confusing tweets and wall posts with authentic communication. But, as MIT technology and society specialist Sherry Turkle argues, this relentless connection leads to a new solitude. As technology ramps up, our emotional lives ramp down. Alone Together is the result of Turkle's nearly fifteen-year exploration of our lives on the digital terrain. Based on hundreds of interviews, it describes new unsettling relationships between friends, lovers, parents, and children, and new instabilities in how we understand privacy and community, intimacy, and solitude. The problem, Turkle insists, is not with the emergence of these technologies, but rather with the extent to which we choose to use – or allow ourselves to be used by – them.

• NPR Interview with Sherry Turkle 
  

The App Generation: How Today's Youth Navigate Identity, Intimacy, and Imagination in a Digital World
Howard Gardner and Katie Davis (Yale, 2013)

No one has failed to notice that the current generation of youth is deeply—some would say totally—involved with digital media. Howard Gardner and Katie Davis name today’s young people The App Generation, and explore what it means to be “app-dependent” versus “app-enabled” and how life for this generation differs from life before the digital era. Gardner and Davis are concerned with three vital areas of adolescent life: identity, intimacy, and imagination. Through innovative research, the authors uncover the drawbacks of apps: they may foreclose a sense of identity, encourage superficial relations with others, and stunt creative imagination. On the other hand, the benefits of apps are equally striking: they can promote a strong sense of identity, allow deep relationships, and stimulate creativity. The challenge is to venture beyond the ways that apps are designed to be used, Gardner and Davis conclude, and they suggest how the power of apps can be a springboard to greater creativity and higher aspirations. Visit the book's website at: www.theappgenerationbook.com.

Grouped: How Small Groups of Friends Are the Key to Influence on the Social Web
Paul Adams (New Riders, 2012)

The web is undergoing a fundamental change. It is moving away from its current structure of documents and pages linked together, and towards a new structure that is built around people. This is a profound change that will affect every organization. The reason for this shift is simple. For tens of thousands of years we’ve been social animals. The web, which is only 20 years old, is simply catching up with offline life. From travel to news to commerce, smart organizations are reorienting their efforts around people - around the social behavior of people. In order to be successful, organizations will need to understand how people are connected, how their social network influences them, how the people closest to them influence them the most, and how it’s more important for leaders to focus on small, connected groups of friends rather than looking for overly influential individuals. This book pulls together the latest research from leading universities and technology companies to describe how people are connected, and how ideas spread through social networks. It shows readers how to rebuild their organizations around social behavior.

Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media 
Mizuko Ito, et al. (MIT Press, 2009)

Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out reports on a three-year ethnographic investigation into how young people are living and learning with new media in varied settings—at home, in after school programs, and in online spaces. By focusing on media practices in the everyday contexts of family and peer interaction, the book views the relationship of youth and new media not simply in terms of technology trends but situated within the broader structural conditions of childhood and the negotiations with adults that frame the experience of youth.
(MIT Press, 2010) (Free e-book: http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/ full_pdfs/hanging_out.pdf)

It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens
danah boyd (Yale University Press, 2014)

What is new about how teenagers communicate through services such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram? Do social media affect the quality of teens’ lives? In this eye-opening book, youth culture and technology expert danah boyd uncovers some of the major myths regarding teens' use of social media. She explores tropes about identity, privacy, safety, danger, and bullying. Ultimately, boyd argues that society fails young people when paternalism and protectionism hinder teenagers’ ability to become informed, thoughtful, and engaged citizens through their online interactions. Yet despite an environment of rampant fear-mongering, boyd finds that teens often find ways to engage and to develop a sense of identity. Offering insights gleaned from more than a decade of original fieldwork interviewing teenagers across the United States, boyd concludes reassuringly that the kids are all right. At the same time, she acknowledges that coming to terms with life in a networked era is not easy or obvious. In a technologically mediated world, life is bound to be complicated.

Networked - The New Social Operating System
Lee Rainie and Barry Melman (MIT Press, 2012)

Daily life is connected life, its rhythms driven by email, text messages, tweets and Facebook updates. Some worry that this new environment makes us isolated and lonely. But in Networked, Lee Rainie and Barry Wellman show how the large, loosely knit social circles of networked individuals expand opportunities for learning, problem solving, decision making and personal interaction. The new social operating system of “networked individualism” liberates us from the restrictions of tightly knit groups; it also requires us to develop networking skills and strategies, work on maintaining ties, and balance multiple overlapping networks.

• Book Chapter Excerpt
• Video Overview
• Project Website: http://networked.pewinternet.org

The Parent App: Understanding Families in the Digital Age
Lynn Schofield Clark (Oxford University Press, 2012)

In The Parent App, Lynn Schofield Clark provides what families have been sorely lacking: smart, sensitive, and effective strategies for coping with the dilemmas of digital and mobile media in modern life. Clark set about interviewing scores of mothers and fathers, identifying not only their various approaches, but how they differ according to family income. Parents in upper-income families encourage their children to use media to enhance their education and self-development and to avoid use that might distract them from goals of high achievement. Lower income families, in contrast, encourage the use of digital and mobile media in ways that are respectful, compliant toward parents, and family-focused. Each approach has its own benefits and drawbacks, and whatever the parenting style or economic bracket, parents experience anxiety about how to manage new technology. With the understanding of a parent of teens and the rigor of a social scientist, Clark tackles a host of issues, such as family communication, online predators, cyber bullying, sexting, gamer drop-outs, helicopter parenting, technological monitoring, the effectiveness of strict controls, and much more. The Parent App investigates how digital and mobile media are both changing and challenging parenting for all families and is based on a ten-year study of hundreds of parents and children, Clark provides best practices for parents and insight into what works for both parents and kids when it comes to social media and new technologies.

Reports

America at the Digital Turning Point: Ten Major Issues & Observations
Center for the Digital Future, USC Annenberg School

This special report summarizes 10 key findings and observations from the first 10 annual studies conducted by the USC Annenberg School Center for the Digital Future on the impact of the Internet on America. Each annual report includes more than 100 major topics in the following broad categories: who is online and who is not, media use and trust, consumer behavior, communication patterns, and social effects

Boys, Girls, and Media Messages in a Digital World
Common Sense Media

Media messages play a powerful role in shaping gender norms, and the shift toward social media means that kids can easily access, create, interact with, and share media messages about boys’ and girls’ roles. These developments present both pitfalls and opportunities, allowing kids to reflect back to the world the gender stereotypes they’ve been exposed to; encounter more extreme, unfettered attitudes about gender roles; but also, create positive community norms that encourage gender equity and respect. The deeper that media messages about boys and girls are embedded in young people’s social media lives, the more important it becomes to teach them how to recognize and curb gender biases. Adult mentors are uniquely positioned to have meaningful conversations with kids about media messages, as well as empower them to challenge harmful stereotypes.

Children, Teens, and Entertainment
Common Sense Media

This survey explores the question of how the TV shows, video games, texting, social networking, music, and other media that are so much a part of young people’s lives affect the other big part of their lives—their academic and social development at school. The study examines this issue through the views and experiences of classroom teachers.

Digital Differences 2012
Kathryn Zickuhr and Aaron Smith 

While increased internet adoption and the rise of mobile connectivity have reduced many gaps in technology access over the past decade, for some groups digital disparities still remain. (Pew Internet & America Life Project)

Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Olds 
Kaiser Family Foundation Study

Over the past five years, young people have increased the amount of time they spend consuming media by an hour and seventeen minutes daily, from 6:21 to 7:38—almost the amount of time most adults spend at work each day, except that young people use media seven days a week instead of five. Moreover, given the amount of time they spend using more than one medium at a time, today’s youth pack a total of 10 hours and 45 minutes worth of media content into those daily 71/2 hours—an increase of almost 21/4 hours of media exposure per day over the past five years.

How Technology is Changing Millennial Faith
Barna Research

They’re called digital natives for good reason—Millennials certainly stand apart from other generations in terms of their technological savvy. They’re also in a class of their own when it comes to faith experience and practice. But what happens when the unique spiritual and technological trends among Millennials collide? Barn's latest study explores just that.

The Influence of the Digital Information Age on the Values of Young Adults 
Stephanie Nance

Today’s young adults require intentional discipleship by a Church that understands their culture and the influence of technology on their lives. This article will look at how the digital information age influences the values of young adults and how they contrast with the values of God’s Kingdom, which depends on a people willing to follow the Spirit’s leading.

Latinos & Digital Technology
Gretchen Livingston 

This Pew Report analyzes digital technology use patterns among Latinos, whites and blacks in 2010. Among its findings, almost two-thirds (65%) of Hispanics were online, a rate comparable to that of blacks (66%) and significantly lower than the rate for whites (77%). More than eight-in-ten (81%) native-born Latinos are online, compared with 54% of foreign-born Latinos. While the overall internet usage rate among Spanish-dominant Latinos remains low, the share using the internet has increased rapidly—from 36% in 2009 to 47% in 2010. 

Multiple Worlds: Adolescents, New Digital Media, and Shifts in Habits of Mind
Margaret Weigel and Celka Straight with Howard Gardner and Carrie James

Today’s youth are the first generation to have lived their entire lives in a world rich with new digital media (NDM). NDM are ripe with the potential to transform young people’s experiences, for better and/or for worse. Have these tools prompted changes in the ways young people think and act? This question has informed the research of the Developing Minds and Digital Media project. Our data, collected from forty excellent and experienced educators practicing at secondary schools in the Boston area, paint both an in-depth picture of the typical upper middle class high school student and contextualize this information with respect to earlier generations of students.

Older Adults and Internet Use
Kathryn Zickuhr and Mary Madden  

For the first time, half of adults ages 65 and older are online. Once online, seniors make internet use a regular part of their lives. (Pew Internet & America Life Project)

Reaching the New Digital Parent
Schoolwires and Project Tomorrow

The demand for more effective use of technology both in the classroom and in school-to-home communications is being increasingly driven by the emergence of a new, digitally proactive cadre of parents within the school community. This new digital parent is fluent with technology tools personally, and has high expectations for the use of digital tools and resources within their child’s learning environments. This report covers key characteristics of the digital parent; using digital tools to communicate with digital, parents; involving digital parents in digital learning; and creating a shared vision with the new digital parents. 

The Religious Authorities and Pundits are Wrong: Technology is Good for Religion
Lisa Miller

This well-circulated column by the Washington Post’s Lisa Miller cites several researchers’ work studying faith groups and the use of technology. Miller argues that technology enhances faith engagement and practice “rather than substituting for it.”

Social Media, Social Lives - How Teens View Their Digital Lives
Common Sense Media

The survey presented in this report is an attempt to complement existing research with a broad, quantitative snapshot of how U.S. teens experience the role of social media in their social and emotional lives. By using survey data from a nationally representative, probability-based sample of 13- to 17-year-olds, we are able to put a broad context around the experiences of individual teens.

Social Networking Sites and Our Lives 
Keith N. Hampton, Lauren F. Sessions, Eun Ja Her, and Lee Rainie

Do social networking technologies isolate people and truncate their relationships? Or are there benefits associated with being connected to others in this way? The Pew Research findings paint a rich and complex picture of the role that digital technology plays in people’s social worlds. The findings suggests that there is little validity to concerns that people who use social networking experience smaller social networks, less closeness, or are exposed to less diversity. Americans have more close social ties than they did two years ago. And they are less socially isolated. We found that the frequent use of Facebook is associated with having more overall close ties. 

The Social Side of the Internet
Lee Rainee, Kristen Purcell, and Aaron Smith

The internet is now deeply embedded in group and organizational life in America. A national survey by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project has found that 75% of all American adults are active in some kind of voluntary group or organization and internet users are more likely than others to be active: 80% of internet users participate in groups, compared with 56% of non‐internet users. And social media users are even more likely to be active: 82% of social network users and 85% of Twitter users are group participants.

The Touch-Screen Generation
Hanna Rosin 

Young children - even toddlers - are spending more and more time with digital technology. What will it mean for their development?

Virtually Religious: Technology and Internet Use in American Congregations
Scott Thumma

This report from American Congregations 2010 research describes technological use by religious groups, identifies the factors that either aid or hinder its use, and highlights the positive outcomes for the congregation that embraces the use of technology in all its forms. The report suggests several reasons why all congregations should intentionally develop their technological ministry capabilities.

Zero to Eight: Children's Media Usage in America
Common Sense Media

The media world that children are growing up in is changing at lightning speed. Nine-month-olds spend nearly an hour a day watching television or DVDs, 5-year-olds are begging to play with their parents’ iPhones, and 7-year-olds are sitting down in front of a computer several times a week to play games, do homework, or check out how their avatars are doing in their favorite virtual worlds. Television is still as popular as ever, but reading may be beginning to trend downward. This report continues and expands upon a series of studies originated by the Kaiser Family Foundation in 2003 and conducted again in 2005. (CommonSenseMedia.org)