Spotlight on Digital Media And Learning

3.31.09 | Christopher Ferguson, an expert on the effect of violent video games, calls the volume “of immeasurable value” and its forward-looking view “unprecedented” in his review in PsycCRITIQUES®.

He goes on, however, to caution that scholars and others must guard against becoming cheerleaders too quickly, that “fun activities like video games and Internet use may, in the end, just be fun, producing neither negative effects nor any particular gains” in civic participation.

Even with the caution, he finds that the book “represents a different view of the topic from most of what we hear from mainstream psychology,” that digital media are harmful to youth. “In that sense alone,” he says, “it is of immeasurable value.”

On his blog, John Palfrey, himself writing a book, Born Digital, called Civic Life Online “a great contribution to our understanding of a critical topic.” In fact, he found the volume inspiring as he tackled revising his own chapter on civic participation.

“I put down this volume hopeful again about what we can do to engage young people in civic life. It’s clear, from the work of these scholars, that we’ll have to expand our thinking about what we mean by ‘civic life’ if we mean to engage these young people,” he said. Palfrey is a professor at the Berkman Center at Harvard Law School.

Six volumes of the MacArthur Series are available for free download here.