Teens & Their Secret Digital Lives

Prevention Magazine (April '08) published The Secret Life of Teens and a number of other articles (Secret Life of Teens by Rich, Secret Life of Teens: Clubbing by Cuomo) and books (The Secret Life of Teens by Patnaik and Shinseki) have targeted this topic as well. Those writing about teens cover topics such as alcohol and drug abuse, teens' lives, hopes and dreams; teens' nightlife; and how to help teens survive these often exciting and dangerous years. It's evident that teens look to online communities and digital communication for interaction. Going to FaceBook, for example, helps them get away from the adults in their lives. In an online community they can share their secrets, which often aren't secrets for long. It's their world, and probably many of us ex-teens would have liked to have that world available at times when we were teens. But it's also a world that can become addictive. Aside from the possibility of online dangers, there's the danger that teens are so drawn to digital communities that they go there instead of interacting with those around them. It's not just online communities that are keeping our students from being part of the real world. Katie Baldo, the guidance counselor quoted in the Prevention piece warns that kids, because of being wired to their digital connections, aren't getting the practice they need with non-digital social interaction. She recommends that use of technologies such as cellphones, MP3 players, and video games be limited to one-hour on weekdays and two-hours on Saturdays and Sundays. Of course, teens and even pre-teens would say that this digital world is an important part of their real world.

Comments

[Peter Williams]

I was interested in some of these comments about teens’ digital lives. I am a Research Fellow working at UCL with the British Library and Bristol University on a project to better understand personal information management behaviour and what this might mean for digital curation practice. Could you take a look at our survey (at: http://tinyurl.com/5wtwgm) and fill it in? Even better, please, could you forward the following invitation text to any lists or colleagues who might be interested?

Many thanks

Pete Williams
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/slais/research/ciber/people/williams/

Digital Lives: Helping People to Capture and Secure their Individual Memories, their Personal Creativity, their Shared Historic Moments

Increasingly, our family memories, our personal achievements, our experiences of historical events, are being facilitated and recorded digitally.

Digital Lives is a pathfinding research project that is setting out to understand how individuals retain and manage their personal collections of computerised information - everything from digital photographs and videos to favourite podcasts and sentimental email messages - and how these digital collections can best be captured in the first place and preserved in the long term, perhaps for family history, biographical or other purposes.

The project is led by Dr Jeremy Leighton John and colleagues at the British Library who, together with experts from UCL and Bristol University, are researching the challenges that lie ahead as more and more of our memories and documentary witnesses exist in electronic form.

We would like to invite you to take part in our research by completing an online survey. This should take no more than ten minutes of your time and it will provide us with crucial information that will benefit both individuals such as yourself, in your day to day management and storage of information, and also help the work of the British Library and other archives enormously as we plan for what is fast becoming a largely digital world.

If you would like to take part in the survey, please click here: .

If you would like to enter our Prize Draw and stand a chance of winning £200 in British Library gift vouchers (drawn at random and with no further obligation) you can register your interest at the end of the survey.

Please note that all responses are strictly confidential. No individuals will be named when we report our findings, and the information collected will only be presented in an aggregated form. You will not be contacted again as a result of completing this survey.

If you have any questions, or are concerned about the bona fides of this survey, please email Principal Investigator, Dr Ian Rowlands (UCL School of Library, Archive & Information Studies)at: i.rowlands@ucl.ac.uk
(Digital Lives is funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council: Grant number BLRC 8669).