Spotlight on Digital Media And Learning

12.8.06 | Social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook have unfairly received a bad rap because of a small number of high profile cases involving child predators. In reality, these sites are safer places for kids to hang out than most physical spaces. Yet, policy makers are crafting new laws to try and protect kids by regulating these digital spaces. Ironically, kids know far more about these sites and in many cases how to protect themselves online than the adult policy makers, making this an unfortunate example of kids being entirely left out of a process which will have a huge impact on their lives and on an issue where their input would be invaluable.

In spite of all this, some youth are demonstrating that social networking sites and other online spaces are useful for many kids, but can actually be used for positive social change. Five years ago, before MySpace or Facebook even existed, two teens (Jennifer Corriero and Michael Furdyk) and a core group of other youth founded TakingITGlobal (www.takingitglobal.org), an online space to empower and inform youth about global issues. The site has continually grown since then, both in number of users as well as in sophistication. Now, over 130,000 members from around the world are using TakingITGlobal.org’s blogs, wikis, social networking tools and a host of other features. By providing online tools and interactions familiar to youth within a context of civic engagement and positive social change, TakingITGlobal helps youth to inform themselves, organize around issues and improve their communities. Most importantly, however, TakingITGlobal enables youth to become involved in local and global decision making processes.

So, how can we ensure that future initiatives were youth are involved on their own terms and in a meaningful way become the rule rather than exception?

How can we change negative perceptions of youth which serve to further alienate and divide the youth and adult populations?