Herring, Susan, ‘Questioning the Generational Divide: Technological Exoticism and Adult Constructions of Online Youth Identity” in Buckingham, David (Ed.) Youth, Identity and Digital Media, Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2008
For my final Media, Culture & Everyday Life blog, I’m going to write about Susan Herring’s “Questioning the generational divide”, which I think was really interesting. She looks at the ‘iGeneration’, or Generation Y, and how our generation has come to be defined by the technologies we’ve been using since we were young. She analyses the “divide” between us and those before us, and the way in which we are perceived by the older generations.
Herring made a good point about the fact that although we are the generation defined by the use of new technologies, it is the adults who create them and profit off us. In a way, she almost makes it sound like Generation Y is being taken advantage of by the older generations. By this I mean, we are more closely aligned with the new digital media, and anything bad associated with it comes back down to us, even though it’s the adults who facilitate these means! David Buckingham had similar sentiments in the reading, stating that the “autonomy and freedom” we may experience through media is “illusory” (p290). However, Herring says that members of the iGeneration are “not yet old enough to have attained positions of influence within the media production industry” (p291). This point can be refuted by the example of the creator of Facebook, arguably the largest social networking site in the world right now, Mark Zuckerberg, who is part of the iGeneration.
As usual, news media has something to say about new communicational tools used by my generation, as well as “Netspeak”. Now, I find writin lyk dis as unbearable as your average Gen X-er, but it really isn’t as awful as some media make it out to be (http://www.myfoxatlanta.com/dpp/news/fox_5_links/Top_50_Text_Acronyms_Parents_Should_Know_052009). I don’t think anyone actually used about 99% of those abbreviations; so unless everyone starts speaking in Lolcat, nobody really has anything to worry about!
Interestingly, Herring looks at youths own perspectives on their generation. Her research shows differing opinions on new digital mediums, and how some peoples own beliefs echo those of older generations. She also looks at the effect of advertising on youth, and reveals that we are mostly “indifferent” to it. This can be attributed to the fact that we have been exposed to it all our lives, but also with programmes like The Gruen Transfer on ABC, which sheds some interesting light on the advertising industry.
In conclusion, I think the bottom line of this reading was that the youth of today are not stupid! We are often misrepresented by various forms of media, including TV (see The Simpsons episode ‘Homer Goes to College’) as well as advertising; but essentially as members of the iGeneration, we are “street wise”, “media savvy” and not necessarily “vulnerable” or “victims”.
“Want to be more than info super highway traffic… when imagination gave participation in creation of of culture and manifestation”
iGeneration- MC Lars
