Professor S. Craig Watkins, new book on social media in the news
15 October 2009
RTF Associate Professor S. Craig Watkins’s expertise in social networking and media has been featured in The New York Times, Austin American-Statesman and other publications in recent weeks. Dr. Watkins’s book The Young and The Digital: What the Migration to Social Network Sites, Games, and Anytime, Anywhere Media means for Our Future (Beacon 2009) was published earlier this month.
The New York Times/AP: Grudgingly, Young People Finally Flock to Twitter
Austin American-Statesman: Causes and protests catch fire in Facebook groups
The Chronicle of Higher Education: How Students, Professors, and College Are, and Should Be, Using Social Media
ABOUT THE BOOK
For the first time in over fifty years, television is no longer our dominant medium: young people are now spending an average of six to eight hours a day online. Watkins contends that most teens and twenty-somethings migrate online to share their lives with friends - something television simply cannot offer - and the ubiquitous presence of cell phones, laptops, and iPods places them at the center of our evolving digital landscape.
In The Young and the Digital, Watkins skillfully draws from more than five hundred surveys and three hundred and fifty in-depth interviews with young people, parents, and educators to understand how a digital lifestyle is affecting the ways youth learn, play, bond, and communicate. Timely and deeply relevant, the book covers the influence of MySpace and Facebook, the growing appetite for “anytime, anywhere” media and “fast entertainment,” how online “digital gates” reinforce race and class divisions, and how technology is transforming America’s classrooms. Watkins also debunks popular myths surrounding cyberpredators, Internet addiction, and social isolation. The result is a fascinating portrait, both celebratory and wary, about the coming of age of the first fully wired generation.
On the Web: theyoungandthedigital.com.
