View source for Template:Creating, Exploring

Digital media affords individuals with new ways of expressing, exploring, and asserting their identity.  For natives, who are immersed and fluent in these technologies, while finding themselves in a key stage of identity development, these new identity-forming activities present exciting possibilities.  However, it is important to take a hard look at these activities, and how they are changing the ways people express and understand both themselves and others within the larger social context.  There exist important issues for discussion in looking at how Digital Natives make use of emerging digital media tools available to them as they form identities both on and off line.

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== Technological Architectures: Changing the way people connect ==
{{Template:Technological Architectures: Changing the way people connect}}

== Records of Identity ==
{{Template:Records of Identity}}


== Sharing Secrets on the World Wide Web: Negotiating digital media forums for both interpersonal and mass-communication ==
{{Sharing Secrets on the World Wide Web: Negotiating digital media forums for both interpersonal and mass-communication}}

== Blogging:  Forming identity, developing relationships, and finding the courage to share ==
{{Blogging:  Forming identity, developing relationships, and finding the courage to share}}

== Asserting Identity with the Mobile Media ==
{{Asserting Identity with the Mobile Media}}

== Problems ==

* '''Do digital technologies facilitate escapist behaviour?'''

Consider, in the case of the Mp3 player, the comment of Keisha, a twenty-year-old college student:

''I use [my Mp3 player] everyday. I have the remote for it, so I lie in bed, and press play, and it comes on in the morning. And then when I walk to school, I use it to walk to school, and then, walking home, and I also have it on as background when Iâm cleaning or somethingâ¦ I fall asleep listening to it through my speakersâ¦I donât like silenceâ¦I like to have something going on constantly, I think I might just sit there and think, and if I think too much, ahh, I donât like it, I just like to get on with things.''

''Q: So it keeps you from thinking?''

''A: Not keeps me from thinking, but keeps me from thinking about things that I donât want to think aboutâ¦It distracts me. ''

Keishaâs listening routine points to just how constantly connected many Digital Natives are throughout their daily lives.  Her invoking of a continual soundtrack to avoid unpleasant thoughts point to the possibilities of this digital media to serve as an escape.  By filling in all time and sound with music, natives may ignore problems they face by squeezing out any challenging or unpleasant thoughts.  However, the media decry after the explosion of the iPod market of âtuned-outâ kids, no longer paying attention to the world they live in, is an exaggeration of both the way Mp3 players are being used, and the power of the object to be responsible for young peopleâs inattention. Such panics are also reminiscent of past generation-gap related concerns.  The  above exploratory study showed that in fact, users are very aware of the different ways and levels to which they immerse themselves in the music playing in their Mp3 players. Users purposely navigate their level of attention to surroundings, and their level of âpresenceâ in different environments. 

Nevertheless, it remains important to note the abilities that the Mp3 player, as well as other digital media, gives to its users to escape their f2f (face2face) lives and concerns. This is not to say that it is the digital media that is encouraging this escapist behaviour, but that the emergence of a generation with a capability to be so constantly connected provides a new, and perhaps better facilitating medium through which escapist behaviour can be pursued.

* '''Who owns and controls the interactive platforms that Digital Natives are personalizing, modifying, and creating identities in?''' Also see [[Digital Creativity]]

== Solutions ==
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