First off, not everything seems to fit in a single posting. i have no time right now to correct this, as i"m n my way to hand it in on paper, completely, thanx!
Elke Boogert
0208809
June 2004
Teenage Creators
Abstract:
This paper started out as a topic of interest; my curiosity and concern with in the movement of youngsters and adolescents on the Internet. I wanted to know what they focus on, what sites they visit, what music and movies they download. If they download at all.
Furthermore, I linked this to the idea of users-to-creators. My next step was to research this concept; what it means, what it affects, and how much of this theory is applicable to ordinary surfers.
Next I investigated how adolescents and youngsters are becoming creators instead of users. What tools would they use, how have they learned their skills. What skills to they actually have? What made them become creators instead of sticking to the easy path? What or who was of help to them?
Lastly, as a case-study I decided to investigate a bulletin board made by young teens and discuss how they’ve formed their own environment and made their own rules. The creation of their world and the energy they pour into it.
Research Question:
How was the leap from user-to-creator utilized by adolescents to form their own culture online?
1. Movement of Adolescents on the Web
- Help
- Protecting Teens Online
- Girls and Boys
2. Users to Creators
3. Young Creators
- Photoshop and Other Tools
- Webdesign
4. Case Study: The Tribe Holland Forum
5. Conclusion
Actions of Teens Online;
1. Send or receive email 56%
2. "Chat" with people 53%
3. Help on homework 51%
4. Just surf the net 45%
5. Play online games 42%
6. Sample/listen to music 35%
7. Download music/audio 35%
8. Get information about things you'd like to buy 34%
9. Instant messaging/buddy lists 29%
10. Get information on hobbies 25%
Chapter 1: Movement of Adolescents on the web
First off, let’s define the age group that this paper is concerned with. An age group of 11 to 16 can be satisfactory but the truth is it is virtually limitless. As soon as children have the correct motor skills and understand that this piece of equipment can be used to play games with, they can use a computer.
Furthermore, it has been shown that from the age of 8 children begin to grasp the infinite possibilities of a PC and the Internet and will start to experiment. According to the TCP’s (The Children’s Partnership) website, however, it is at the age of 12 that most young people start to use all areas of the internet and with each passing day become more experienced and improve their skills. The interests of teens in online technology can be split up into the following categories: (not in order of importance)
- Creating websites, online diaries (weblogs), message boards and cliques
- Web hosting and moderating message boards
- Participating in simulations and playing games
- Surfing, navigating, linking, and researching topics of interest
- Forming and participating in e-groups
- Programming with HTML and Java
- Developing webzines and critiquing sites
- Downloading and uploading files (Peer-to-peer)
- Creating and editing graphics
Now of course, not all adolescents have mastered each of these skills, and most are just users. Users surf, research, but don’t construct their own webpage. They download music, graphics, play games, chat with their friends, but don’t try to improve on that. Some even manage up to 10 online conversations simultaneously,
Between 77 and 83 percent of teens have Internet access at home, and nearly all have an open connection at school. The percentage is still changing every day, and this number says nothing of the quality and type of connection teens have. According to an article in the Metro recently (June 23rd 2004) it is children that have the most influence on the type of Internet connection a family has in the Netherlands. Many parents feel it is a vital part of the home life, and necessary to complete a study or teen’s room. It wouldn’t be fair however to say that adolescents use their time online merely to research and network.
Evidence that teens use internet access to be informed about real-life topics, has been found by D.L.G. Borzekowski and V.I. Rickert, in their study Urban girls, Internet use, and accessing health information. According to their results, 44% of girls said they had previously tried to get health information from the Web. Of these, 50 % said that they got information on different diseases, 43% on diet and nutrition, 34% on fitness and exercise, 26% on sex, 24% on alcohol or drug abuse, 20% on mental health, 14% on various types of medicines, 12% on violence among peers, 10% on parenting, 8% on violence among dating partners, 7% on tobacco and smoking, 7% on emotional or physical abuse, 3% on sexual abuse and 1% on illness support groups.
This type of research, as mentioned above, is most likely so popular because before the net became so user-friendly, the way to find out much about the above-mentioned topics, was to read magazine articles, library books, or visit a doctor. The Internet serves as a convenient time and place for these questions, but most of all it is more confidential and far less threatening than other sources. Teens are very interested in what is happening to themselves and their bodies, but it is just at this stage of their life they withdraw from adults. They feel self-conscious and avoid talking about their problems or issues. Thus can the Internet guide adolescents through this difficult phase of their life by offering a chance to discuss various topics with teens in the same situation without the chance of embarrassment.
Critics agree that adolescents that spend too much time surfing cannot function properly in normal social situations.
And according to a study performed by Sanders, Field & Diego, low internet users, in comparison to high internet users, had significantly better relationships with their mothers and friends. But they found no significant differences between low and high Internet users in terms of the relationship with the father or a history of depression.
Critical research projects consider adolescents to be either substance abusers, or victims of physical or have a mental abuse of some kind, suffer from depression, are stricken by violence and ache for a sense of community of some kind. These teens are the object of research 90% of the time. It seems only unhappy and needy teenagers are investigated in relation to media such as the Internet or television. The actions of ordinary teenagers remain barely unstudied.
Pierre Levy agrees there is a definite division between what he calls organic family groups - families, clans and tribes - organized social groups - religions, institutions, countries, companies – and self organized-groups, such as virtual communities. Levy does not link this to adolescents, but he does point out one thing; that geography breaks down the constraints of communication that might affect organized groups, but should have no effect onto the family.
The use teens make of the web is a vital topic, due to the amount of possibilities of the Internet, and the creativity of teens nowadays. In an article published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, adolescents “take more time to complete online tasks than college students, search less systematically, have difficulty formulating search queries due to misspelling and problems with the level of specificity, utilize less-advanced search syntax, and rarely consider the source of Web pages.”
In reality this means that most adolescents could use some training with regards to their online searching methods. This study deals with adolescent researching skills on the internet pinpointing to health issues, but otherwise it is a very interesting study. Another interesting result from this study is that “little to no attention was paid to the source of the answer. In the vast majority of cases, once an answer was located, it was simply assumed to be correct.”
To touch base on a new topic, that is exactly what endangers many young surfers. In chat rooms, they like to pretend to be different than who they are – be older or younger, look differently, to in the end, feel differently. What they mostly don’t realize is that the individual on the other side of the line is most likely also pretending to be someone else.
Luckily close online communities can stimulate and entertain, inform and educate, and all within a relatively safe context. Especially when this environment is not provided at home or in the offline community, this can be vital.
According to a research project by Wolak, Mitchell and Finkelhor, the type of adolescent who are most likely to form close online relationships are girls who have high levels of conflict with their parents or highly troubled, and boys who have low levels of communication or are highly troubled. The researchers knew little about the nature or quality of the close online relationships, however, neither did they know if they were helpful relationships or not.
The reason teens are so interesting is because they live on a cusp; they form the boundary between maturity and childhood. As Mary Pipher puts it
‘My horticulturist friend says that the environment is the richest and most diverse at borders, where trees meet fields, desert meets mountains or rivers cross prairies. Adolescence is a border between adulthood and childhood, and as such it has a richness and diversity unmatched by any other life stage. It’s impossible to capture the complexity and intensity of adolescent girls.’
Help
It has been proven that adolescents use the Internet for educational purposes primarily to answer homework questions. T
Yet the skills that they learn in computer courses at school centre largely on word-processing, making spreadsheets and accessing databases. They learn to log onto the Internet, and how to search for a topic of interest. However, these courses do not teach or develop creativity, interactivity, or online participation. Some classes do bring up how to write in html language or work multimedia applications, but they are rare.
Especially in the early days, but even in the present, the assistance to new Internet users was big business. This is based on a simple idea: whichever site could attract the most new web users for useful help, advice and tips could sell the most advertising for the highest price.
Many web providers today offer help for designing a web page or site under their wing – there isn’t much skill needed for such an activity. Adolescents show great interest in this easy-to-go way of producing web pages, but many teens consider it boring after a while. The creativity involved with designing backgrounds, choosing your font, the placement of text and images, altering of GIF’s or JPG’s is much greater.
Large search-sites such as Google are also in tune with teens. For example, typing in the phrase ‘Alchoholics Anonymous’ will answer on the returns page with ‘Are you looking for Alcoholics Anonymous?’
Adolescents are great users of the net, and faster than ever becoming creators as well. Teens these days have probably grown up with the Net, consider it as valuable as television, and probably have more skill and knowledge than their parents. In the nineties, teens were the fastest growing group in terms of consumers, and corporations are responding.
Protecting Teens Online: the double-edged sword.
One of the most difficult challenges is to keep youngsters away from the dangers of the Internet. The pitfalls and risks of internet use are, according to TCP:
· Easy-to-find sites with sexually explicit images and text
· Easy-to-find sites promoting hatred, bigotry, violence, drugs, cults, and other things not appropriate for children
· Inaccurate, misleading and untrue information
· No restrictions on marketing products such as alcohol and tobacco to children
· Marketing that deceptively collects personal information from kids in order to sell products to them or their parents
· Requests for personal information for contests, surveys, etc., that are used in unauthorized ways
· Easy access to games with excessive violence and gender stereotypes
So-called web-nanny’s or net nanny’s are organisations that offer software that block a whole range of sites that parents feel are not suitable for their children. This software must be continually updated since there are new websites popping up every day. Unfortunately most teens find their way around this software and it is never 100% reliable.
In fact, in a Kaiser Family Foundation survey among 15-24 year olds, it found that 70% of the questioned had accidentally been exposed to pornographic websites. Yet in the same survey, 55 % of those admitted that they didn't mind. 15-17 year olds especially had little problem with this, as 21% said that they had visited a pornographic website and stayed for more than 3 minutes.
Internet access in schools and libraries have software patches that don't allow teens to visit pornographic sites, but as a consequence also prohibit access to sites regarding sexual health. Hence the sword works another way.
Chat rooms are another area to be careful. A high percentage of adolescents use chat rooms simply to talk to their friends, rather than using the phone, but in public chat rooms anyone can talk to them. Most teens do not realise how much of themselves they are revealing in chat rooms and on web pages, but usually after “bad experiences” they only chat to people they know and remove personally identifying information from their profiles or personal web page. This is the smartest move. Many sites also give warnings not to post phone numbers, addresses or credit card numbers. Fans often organize rating systems or ask for a birth date as another barrier. Of course, these can easily be trespassed, but often it’s the thought that counts.
Truth is, children and teens online can only be protected from pornographic sites, erotic pop-ups and such by gently sifting through the bulk of information on the net and discovering for themselves what they do not want to see.
Girls and Boys
Because it is in our homes, schools, and in places of business, the Net is opening up new worlds for all interested adolescents. Seven percent of 14-to-18-year-olds report having gambled (illegally) on the Internet, mostly likely using their parents’ credit card. Though this may sound meagre, the proportion is higher than the 1 to 2.7 percent found in previous studies. One in every 10 boys in the same age group say they gamble at least once a month on the Internet.
Most parents would agree that teenage girls are more at risk when being online than boys, which generally relates to the fact that many girls move away from computers during adolescence. Many perceive computer activity as more for boys than for girls, leaving them with a less positive attitude and less skills and abilities as their male counterparts. Generally females are underrepresented in computer science, often making up less than 30% in US Universities’ computer classes. In fact, the peak of 36% was in 1986.
It’s not all bad news though. The factors that determine adolescence do, in a way, pull girls towards the PC again. In adolescence, girls search for their identities as based on their caregivers and environment. Online, they can explore their identities and make conscious choices about what to reveal and what not to.
Secondly, they realize the importance of social relationships. A set of friends are needed for support, to bounce around ideas, and the development of a certain style. Online, many teens find a sense of freedom and control. There is no need for a face-to-face confrontation yet it is a way to keep in touch with friends.
Thirdly there is in adolescence the quest for confidence and competence. This indicates the collecting of information and abilities into schemata that are used throughout life for reactions. Papert (1993) argues that girls seem to enjoy sound and graphics, online communication, and the functionality of computers when working with real-life problems and situations. Boys seem to prefer programming and abstract activities. In a way, the anonymous world of the net allows girls to increase their confidence and communication, as they don’t have to mind whoever they’re speaking to or chatting with.
There is much to be found on the difference between achievements of girls and boys in the computer and Internet world. Most of the studies come down to a simple explanation: boys and men are interested in the computer as a piece of technology and equipment, most of all enjoying games. In contrast, girls and women buy software and hardware meant for their interest and use, relating to their work and tasks. Margolis, Fisher and Miller describe this as “computing for a purpose.”
To girls, the Internet and its bulletin boards, Instant Messaging and web logs offer a level of support, connectivity and provide a certain degree of natural confidence. The level of control that users find nowhere else is appealing to adolescents.
The manner of which boys and girls communicate online is also different. A study that compared preadolescent children by pairing them into same-sex pairs and mixed pairs found that boys in same-sex pairs interacted with one another through action, rapid changes and playful exchanges (by the way, none of the children had been introduced before). Girls in same-sex pairings interacted mostly through written dialogue. In mixed pairs, however, boys wrote more and engaged less in playful exchanges, and girls wrote fewer and increased their actions. This suggests that both boys and girls accommodate with their interacter. Girls and boys each have their own unique styles, but will moderate those patterns during late childhood to communicate with peers of the opposite sex.
Users to Creators
Youngsters nowadays are not only media consumers; they are media fans, but also media producers, distributors, publicists and critics. As a society, we have long since passed the phase of passive consumers, of a mass public that buys to complete an ‘image’. With the development of the Internet, more media companies starting up very day, buyers today have more choices than 10, even 5 years ago. More choices mean more power for the costumer – and interactive audience.
First of all, let’s keep in mind that the interactive audience still operates alongside powerful media industries, but perhaps one day the two will be equal. It would however be naïve to assume that large corporations will not protect their property and power. The production of images is mostly encouraged, since it’s not considered harmful, but peer-to-peer networking has taken a severe beating since Napster was killed.
The reason that creators find their way around is the availability of tools and technologies, software and applications that they can download, buy, or in other ways get a hold of. By means of subcultures, online communities, a small and select fan base media production is promoted and encouraged. Many organisations and companies also encourage active spectatorship.
In a national phone survey between March 12th and May 20th 2003, the Pew Internet and American Life Project found that more than 53 million American adults have used the Internet to publish their thoughts, respond to others, post graphics and share files (P2P). This is 44% of American adults. Of these,
21% have posted pictures on websites,
17% have posted written material on websites,
13% maintain their own website,
10% post comments to an online newsgroup,
8% have contributed material to sites run by companies,
7% have contributed materials to sites owned by organisations they know or belong to,
7% have a web cam (and use it on a regular basis),
6% have posted their own artwork on a site,
5% have added their own audio files to websites,
3% have contributed home made video files to websites,
and only 2% maintain blogs according the results of the phone survey.
Of course, the contributing of material doesn’t mean that it’s updated on a regular basis, just that it is shared. Mostly it is updated very few weeks or so.
Eager content creators break into three groups; Power creators, who are most enthusiastic. Their average age is 25, and they are most likely to own blogs, use instant messaging, play games online and download music. Older creators have an average age of 58 and are most likely to have a corporate history in computer use or creation. They’re experienced, educated, share pictures, and are most likely to build their own site. Their topic of interest is mainly genealogical research. The third group are what Light calls Content omnivores, the heaviest users of the net. With an average age of 40, these creators spend considerable time online at home, doing a range of actions. They’re most likely to have a broadband connection at home, and so log on frequently.
Adolescents also progress in an interesting way by creating their own online environment, setting their own rules, and building their own world. Yet surprisingly, they’re not mentioned in the above survey. Perhaps the researchers should have extended their surveys and asked questions about how the family is build up.
Young Creators
The skills of young creators start with the basics of course: typing skills, the use of the Microsoft system as a whole, the use of Microsoft office, the understanding of the system of systems (the Internet), the complexity of their own computer, installing and using software, etc.
The Net was first perceived as another way of reaching the consumer by advertising. Software is ingenious; spyware can be easily installed to track a users’ moves, pop-ups avoided by downloading or buying, installing special software. Now it is a way for users to meet users, for sharing information or files through blogging or P2P, for the creator to find inspiration or praise. It’s become a human medium.
Children are also using the Internet now, as proven in an analysis of the website diaryproject.com in the year 2000. In an article called Sharing Children's secret thoughts, Matt Ritchel reports that teens are trying out ways to write about their lives, therefore learning how to view and relate to their experiences. They create their own world including the perception of their world. As Ritchel writes, "...the words from inside the war zone called adolescence offer naked, imaginative insights into the travails, joys, and conflicts of growing up (...) just because many of the entries discuss painful, negative experiences doesn't mean that those are the overriding feelings of adolescents.
Teens aren’t interested in providing a certain service that will attract more customers, nor are they concerned with the amount of visitors to their website. Whether it's about their online diaries or their personal web page, teens produce an electronic world in accordance to their skills and abilities.
Photoshop and other tools
When in the old days fans would use pen and ink, paint or coloured pencil for illustrations, nowadays software is most popular. Adobe’s Photoshop is the product of choice. It is, according to reviews, wonderful software. Especially for serious photo-hobbyists it’s a powerful graphics-manipulation tool meant for home or small-business use.
But what it really is is a way for adolescents intent on seriously learning the techniques to use their creativity to produce web-friendly graphics. Especially those that own or have access to a digital camera. The software includes everything needed to touch up an image, for the average consumer since its interface is simple and there is excellent online help, but more advanced users will like it as well. For adolescents, Photoshop presents a challenge, but not impossibility.
Editing software has replaced videotapes and fans nowadays produce edited footage from TV shows. They mingle it with lyrical music to make music videos, often to express a character’s emotion, devotion, and love. In that fans become media producers, and their product is distributed via peer-to-peer networking. These are virtually limitless, though most of these music videos can only be found for popular Hollywood shows. This type of fandom can be considered the loss of control over intellectual property, since fans are using images and scenes from the show to blend something new. On the other hand, corporations might be able to use these re-edited selections for their own purposes.
Web design
It is surprising how creative adolescents are when designing their own web page. Often their skills aren’t sufficient or adequate, but they make do. Web design is used but it is sometimes spotty and inconsistent. Links sometimes don’t work at all.
Mostly the content is quite personal. Information about themselves includes family data, interests, hobbies, accomplishments and awards, sometimes physical descriptions or photo’s of themselves. Mostly they comprise of a bulk of writing regarding personal emotions, goals, beliefs, plans for the future, and personal or family values. Poetry seems to most easily accessible, and deals with topics such as love, hate, relationships, death, friendships, etc. It’s an outlet for many teens. They don’t know who’s going to view their site, but it is out there – away from their own community by geography. The appeal is that there is life beyond their borders, time past high school, people further than their own street.
The sites are relatively short-lived; most are discarded after several months of hard work, or upgraded into a newer, better thought-out version. This is entirely in queue with the adolescent mind, as they’re fickle and can become indifferent easily.
The Tribe Holland Forum
<www.bbfree.com/tthf>
The favourite pastime for teenage fans of TV shows or other series is to discuss their show. To broaden the field of meanings that circulate around the primary text – mostly in an effort to arrive at the ‘truth’ of the series. One of these is The Tribe Holland Forum, centred on the show The Tribe.
It is a self-organized group, focused around the production, debate and circulation of meanings, interpretations and fantasies as a reaction to a teen soap opera. Because that is what The Tribe is; it is a soap opera, and it has all the qualities of it.
The defining quality of a soap opera is its seriality. There is a strong, individual and narrative linkage between episodes. In episodic television programs, one episode tells a somewhat contained story with a beginning and ending. A soap opera likes to see its story never end. The prediction of what is going to happen next is, for the soap opera viewer, mostly based on previous knowledge of serial characters. Soap Opera characters, also, function differently. They undergo changes that transcend a single episode, give references to events in previous episodes, can age and die. A soap opera is also meant to move slowly; so that missing one episode won’t throw the view off.
The forum is in its entirety run and operated by adolescent fans. These girls have written their own rules for what they find appropriate. They’re resourceful. They’ve produced their forum from scratch, photoshopped pictures to add to borders and frames.
The show itself is interesting, but not exquisite. The ambivalence of it is out of the ordinary. It’s a kids’ show yet it involves teen pregnancy and sex. Ordinary social problems find their way to the screen – yet without input from adults. Most of the conversations and actions occur inside a built studio, much like a soap opera, yet enormous outside sets characterize the show.
See, The Tribe is a post-apocalyptic show, where all people above a certain age have perished due to some mysterious virus. As a consequence kids – of all ages – are the actors in the show, and no one else. In fact, the only adults shown in the series are in flashbacks.
It’s a show aimed at pre-adolescents, in the age group 11-14, but it stretches out either way.
The Tribe Holland Forum has gathered around this television show, but it is merely a focus. Half of the site is dedicated to off-topic posts. They discuss homework, holidays, interesting bits of news and concerts. They announce updates on their own blogs, post links to personality tests, rules and developments of the site itself. Fear of spiders, the European Union, Idols and the discovery of a new planet (Sedna).
According to Nancy Baym, who focuses primarily on online groups surrounding soap opera’s, online communities are united and formed by interests, not by mere geography (a street or town). Shared interests are however never defining and discussions and differences will always occur. The discussions on the Forum are therefore always an interesting read. One topic, dealing first and foremost with Christian holidays, became a discussion topic regarding the importance of morals, ethics, and the Bible.
Fans do not have input into the run of the series, in fact they don’t have influence in when or whether The Tribe will be on television at all. The channel,
