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Politics, Commerce, and Childhood in the Age of the Internet
The MIT Press
August 2007
On Sale: July 31, 2007
368 pages
ISBN: 0262134780
EAN: 9780262134781
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
Children and teens today have integrated digital culture
seamlessly into their lives. For most, using the Internet,
playing videogames, downloading music onto an iPod, or
multitasking with a cell phone is no more complicated than
setting the toaster oven to "bake" or turning on the TV. In
Generation Digital, media expert and activist Kathryn C.
Montgomery examines the ways in which the new media
landscape is changing the nature of childhood and
adolescence and analyzes recent political debates that have
shaped both policy and practice in digital culture. The media have pictured the so-called "digital generation"
in contradictory ways: as bold trailblazers and innocent
victims, as active creators of digital culture and passive
targets of digital marketing. This, says Montgomery,
reflects our ambivalent attitude toward both youth and
technology. She charts a confluence of historical trends
that made children and teens a particularly valuable target
market during the early commercialization of the Internet
and describes the consumer-group advocacy campaign that led
to a law to protect children's privacy on the Internet.
Montgomery recounts--as a participant and as a media
scholar--the highly publicized battles over indecency and
pornography on the Internet. She shows how digital marketing
taps into teenagers' developmental needs and how three
public service campaigns--about sexuality, smoking, and
political involvement--borrowed their techniques from
commercial digital marketers. Not all of today's
techno-savvy youth are politically disaffected; Generation
Digital chronicles the ways that many have used the Internet
as a political tool, mobilizing young voters in 2004 and
waging battles with the music and media industries over
control of cultural expression online. Montgomery's unique perspective as both advocate and analyst
will help parents, politicians, and corporations take the
necessary steps to create an open, diverse, equitable, and
safe digital media culture for young people.
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