Youth and digital democracy: Intersections of practice, policy, and the marketplace.

Since the advent of the World Wide Web in the early nineties, the so-called Digital Generation has been at the epicenter of major tectonic shifts that are transforming the media landscape. The more than 70 million individuals born in the United States during the last two decades of the twentieth century represent the largest cohort of young people in the nation’s history, and the first to grow up in a world saturated with networks of information, digital devices, and the promise of perpetual connectivity. Youth are in many ways the defining users of the new media. As active creators of a new digital culture, they are developing their own Web sites, diaries, and blogs; launching their own online enterprises; and forging a new set of cultural practices.1 A study by Forrester Research found that youth incorporate digital media into their lives at a faster rate than any other generation. “All generations adopt devices and Internet technologies, but younger consumers are Net natives,” one of the report’s coauthors explained to the press. They don’t just go online; they “live online.”2 Foundations, music industry celebrities, corporations, and wealthy donors in the United States have poured large sums of money into a variety of initiatives aimed at using digital media to reach and engage young people in civic and political activities. These ventures are based on the hope that new technologies may be able to help reverse the long-term declines in civic and political participation among youth.3 Experts such as Michael X. Delli Carpini, Dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, have expressed some cautious optimism. Commenting on some of the early Web-based efforts, he has identified several important Internet features that lend themselves to enhanced engagement. These include increased speed with which information can be gathered and transmitted, greater volume of information that is easily accessible, more flexibility in how and when information is accessed, and much greater opportunity to interact with others in a range of contexts (one to one, one to many, many to one, and many to many), using a variety of media types (text, audio, and video). As a result, Delli Carpini notes, the Internet both shifts the nature of community from geographic to interest-based and challenges traditional definitions of information gatekeepers and authoritative voices, of content producers and consumers. He suggests, however, that Internet-based initiatives are likely to be more useful in expanding the activities of youth already engaged in civic life, rather than encouraging those who do not participate to become involved.4 The growth and penetration of broadband and the development and distribution of new software applications—such as social networking platforms, blogging tools, and podcasting—have combined to create the next generation of the Internet, often called