Spotlight on Digital Media And Learning

12.14.06 | If you spend enough time on YouTube, you’re bound to run into things like this (a “music video” with a kid dancing to his favorite song).  This is user-generated content and it terrifies big media.  What if people watch this instead of programmed content?

Cable companies control access to the Internet for many consumers (they deliver a lot of it through cable broadband).  What if the cable companies could value certain websites over others based on their business needs?  Say, for example, the video content of their subsidiaries downloads really fast but the videos at YouTube are super slow.  Unfortunately, this isn’t science fiction… this is what the “net neutrality” debate is all about.  Internet providers (cable companies, DSL companies, telcos) want to be able to prioritize content so that content companies would pay them to distribute their content fast.  If you don’t pay, your users might experience videos that start and stop or are otherwise painfully slow.  (For more on net neutrality, ask a ninja.)

So, what does this have to do with youth and identity?  User-generated content is all about identity and it’s mostly being done by youth.  Teens are making videos and posting them on their blogs and MySpaces because these videos say something about who they are.  Maybe the kid in the video wants to be a dancer and he’s hoping someone will notice his skillz… or maybe he’s just showing off for his friend.  He’s consuming cultural artifacts and producing identity (as well as culture).  He’s not trying to compete with The Pack’s official video; he’s trying to be himself.  And yet, if the net doesn’t stay neutral, his voice, his identity production will be systematically limited in favor of the content put out by big corporations.

Net neutrality is not just a geek thing; it’s also a generation thing.  If we want to build a world where youth have a voice online, we have to keep the net neutral.  Hopefully, youth mean more to us than their consumer power.