WEB KIDS: New Media and Youth

Today's youths inhabit a world where media have reached saturation levels. By using blogs, MSN, hyves, facebook, twitter, etc, youths have created networks and ‘republics' more powerful and influential than has ever existed before. Whole range of new technologies enable youths to animate, archive, annotate and re-circulate media content in milliseconds in non-hierarchical manner and without fear or censure. Net thrill and sensation characterizes today's world for youth. A stiff contest for time between new media technologies and other activities like schooling is raising serious questions on likelihood of healthy coexistence between the two. In the most important youth research he has ever conducted, Gerald Kweri shares the most astonishing revelations on how new media have altered the ways youth interact with core institutions e.g. schools. With more than 9 years working with youth in local and international contexts, the author shares how institutions like schools should ‘acclimatize' with the fast changing world to be in sync with the sensation created by new media.