Introduction: A Generation at Risk?
Introduction: A Generation at Risk?
This chapter asks: how do expectations of youth, technology, and risk shape policies, practices, and lived experiences? Through an analysis of harm-driven and opportunity-driven expectations, the chapter outlines key concerns related to young people’s digital media practices; specifically the ways privileged understandings of risk create unequal opportunities for marginalized youth. It identifies three disconnections that lead to fear. First, young people’s lived experiences with media differ from sensational fear-driven media narratives and policies. Second, the ways young people value media differ from how adults value digital media. Third, harm-driven narratives focus too overtly on the role of technology in young people’s lives, rather than broader social changes. The chapter aims to shift conversations away from harm and toward opportunity.
Keywords: Harm, Fears, Youth, Technology, Media, high school, education, teens, moral panics, inequality
MIT Press Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
