GoodWork Paper 60: Social Development in the Era of New Digital Media

Author(s): Katie Davis, Margaret Weigel, Carrie James, and Howard Gardner

Editor(s): Howard Gardner, Series Editor

Media: Paper

Description: New digital media pervade all aspects of youth‘s social lives. Young people create personal profiles on social network sites like MySpace and Facebook, use their cell phones to talk and text at a dizzying pace throughout the day, and upload homemade videos to sites like YouTube. These activities have caught the attention of many adults, including parents, educators, and researchers, who wonder if today‘s young people are developing differently than “pre-digital” generations. In this paper, we consider the relationship between youth‘s new media activities and their developing conceptions of selfhood, family, and peer relationships. We are primarily concerned with identifying the ways in which youth use new media to express and understand themselves and fulfill their roles as family members, friends, and romantic partners. In so doing, we argue that youth‘s new media activities satisfy typical developmental and social needs. At the same time, we suggest that these activities may be shaping new conceptions of selfhood, family, and peer relationships. This is the second of three GoodWork® papers on new digital media, cognition, and development. Together, these three papers provide a comprehensive perspective on cognition and social behaviors in relation to new digital media.