Pew study finds young are creative doers and thinkers on the Internet

Even though Halloween has branded the term, "Be afraid, be very afraid," it seems that huge numbers of "blogsters and loadsters" are looming all around us as part of a cult of Content Creators. And they are re-making the world as they go.

According to a new report just released by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, fully half of all teens and 57 percent of teens that use the Internet have already become working members of this mysterious virtual community. They freely turn to making their own impact and grabbing what they can of the work of others to inspire their own blogs and webpages, to download music and to post their original artwork, photography, stories, podcasts and movies.

Twenty-one million or nearly 90 percent of young people between the ages of 12 and 17 are already using the Internet, according to the survey, which interviewed 1,100 young people and their parents in November 2004.

Amanda Lenhert, co-author of the report titled "Teen Content Creators and Consumers," said the results are surprising. "For American teens, blogs are about self-expression, building relationships, and carving out a presence online. Most young people aren't spending their time at the highly trafficked A-list blogs. They're reading and creating the 'long-tail' of blogs—personal sites read by networks of friends and families."

Among the key Pew findings:

These findings correspond to other predictions about the pending revolution toward technological accessibility. In 2002, for example, Howard Rheingold wrote in his book, Smart Mobs: Transforming Cultures and Communities in the Age of Instant Access, that the future of always-on connectivity is really more about the sociological impacts it will generate among young people than about the hardware advances the industries focus on.

"The most important next step for the companies that would deploy this (creative, mobile) technology and profit from it has nothing to do with chips or network protocols but everything to do with business models, early adopters, communities of developers, and value chains," he said. "It's not just about building the tools anymore. Now it's about what people use the tools to do."

One nonprofit group knows of this from its early hands-on efforts to capture the potential of America's thinking young techno-artists.

As they say on their Web site, Just Think "envisions a world of critically and creatively engaged young people who influence media more than media influence them, a world where being literate includes being media literate," and Web literate, as well.

Having already reached out to over 7,000 students and millions of other interested individuals from their hub in the San Francisco Bay Area, Just Think is affirming the kind of numbers that the Pew survey found. Thousands of young people want to use their creative talents to benefit their personal networks as well as for purposes such as advancing their community concerns and getting better grades in school.

Just Think's model focuses on using a mobile yellow school bus that has been equipped with computers, digital video cameras and wireless Internet connections to make sure that technology and expertise is available everywhere for young Content Creators.

But they are also finding a warm reception in local schools as teachers and other nonprofit agencies are seeking ways to market the idea of computer creativity.

"Flippin The Script: Critical Thinking in a Hip Hop World" is an amazing curriculum that showcases the music talents of young people and connecting it to bigger social, community and computer potentials. Other projects capture the actions, ideas, footage, graphics and gaming skills of heroes and heroines of health and learning.

While the work of Just Think is designed first and foremost toward cultivating these basic talents, they also strive to ensure that the young people understand the professional and ethical challenges they face as their technological invasion unfolds.

"Today's online teens have grown up amidst the chaos of the digital copyright debate, and it shows," noted Mary Madden, a Research Specialist and another co-author of the Pew report. "At a time when social norms around digital content don't always appear to conform with the letter of the law, many teens are aware of the restrictions on copyrighted materials, but believe it's still permissible to share some content for free."

The survey found that while about half of the students represented believe improper downloading and file-sharing content without permission is generally wrong, they have fewer concerns about that when it comes to their grabbing the music they like.

If the virtual business sector makes such access so easy, they have fewer qualms about grabbing what they want. Being a Content Creator seems to have a stronger pull on these young people than do other issues of the monster called progress.