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Adolescents’ Digital Worlds: An Introduction

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Digital Youth

Part of the book series: Advancing Responsible Adolescent Development ((ARAD))

Abstract

Adolescents today live enmeshed in digital media, such as computers, video games, cell phones, and other hand-held devices. Often referred to as digital natives, many have lived their entire lives surrounded and immersed within digital worlds. These new technologies are undoubtedly popular among adolescents, but parents and other observers often see them as negative influences. Are these concerns justified or are media more benign and helpful to adolescents? Which technologies do teens use and what do they do with them? Does adolescents’ use of technology help them navigate the challenges of adolescence or does it only complicate matters? Are digital worlds giving rise to new behaviors or are we seeing the transfer of traditionally adolescent behaviors to digital worlds? What are some of the opportunities, challenges, and dangers that come with technology use? How can we ensure that young people use technology safely? We tackle some of these questions in this book, and hope to leave the reader with an understanding of how youth influence and are influenced by newer forms of interactive technologies. In this chapter, we describe the digital landscape surrounding adolescents, including the technologies and online applications that they use as well as the salient aspects of the communication environment inherent to most newer digital media. The chapter concludes with the specific goals and organization plan of the book.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The World Internet Project is described in greater detail later on in this chapter.

  2. 2.

    Keeping up with rapidly changing technologies is a huge challenge for researchers studying adolescents’ digital worlds and is addressed later on in this chapter.

  3. 3.

    Since the researchers only analyzed the blogs and did not actually contact the blog authors themselves, we have no way of knowing whether the bloggers were actually adolescents or not. This is another methodological concern that we tackle later on in this chapter.

  4. 4.

    Thanks to Roy Cheng, a youth gamer, for compiling this list.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, California State University, Los Angeles, CA, 90032-8227, USA

    Kaveri Subrahmanyam

  2. Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University, Brno, 602 00, Czech Republic

    David Šmahel

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  1. Kaveri Subrahmanyam
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  2. David Šmahel
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Correspondence to Kaveri Subrahmanyam .

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Subrahmanyam, K., Šmahel, D. (2011). Adolescents’ Digital Worlds: An Introduction. In: Digital Youth. Advancing Responsible Adolescent Development. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-6278-2_1

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