Young People in a Digital World (Part 2) #ypdw2010
At the end of this conference, Sangeet Bhullar of Wisekids approached me to record an interview about my impressions of the conference. I had many positive things to say, but it was only when I had gone home and thought about it that I realised that I had left unsaid the most significant feature of the two events. This was that so many utterly different voices had made themselves heard.
It is relatively easy to organise an event which involves only a single community of practice, and where all the delegates are roughly the same kind of person, and know what to expect. This one was not like that at all. We heard from teachers, youth workers, emoderators, regulatory authorities, policy makers, purveyors and advocates of various technologies , and others who don’t fit any of these categories. There was also participation from outside the physical environs, mainly at #ypdw 2010 on twitter.
Perhaps most importantly of all, we heard from the key stakeholders, the young people who are most directly affected by the issues. Their presentations were well prepared and thoughtful, indicating to the audience what kind of input the Internet has had on their lives. However, the highlight was probably the panel, where they answered honestly and engagingly a series of really challenging questions about their attitudes to the online world, their perceptions of the dangers involved, and the things which they most value about it.
In brief, what these young people said was that they need freedom to explore, to learn and perhaps to make mistakes, but they also expect the adults around them to teach and to support them. They really didn’t see the purpose in simply blocking social networks such as Facebook, and were very confident of being able to circumvent school systems in order to overcome these blocks. Attempts to cover Internet safety in the classroom have clearly been ‘too little, too late’, as far as they are concerned. There were some inconsistencies and differences in their attitudes, but overall they spoke almost as one. Unless we hear this voice, there is precious little chance of us understanding the changes which are happening, or making rational and fair judgements about what support and control might be needed. As John Davitt put it in a tweet, there has been a “… sea change in the quality and range of dialogue from students + impact poss when student voice is heard”. This resonated very clearly with one of Tanya Byron’s opening messages: “Children should be able to resiliently deal with risk, but they can’t if nobody has a conversation with them.” May the conversation continue.
