Page 605 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

| Youth and Med a Use

of programming youth are creating. Seventy-six to one hundred percent of the
time, news and documentary programming make up the largest two categories
of programs produced.
Youth media programs provide numerous benefits for youth consumers and
participants. They prepare youth for a digital world, facilitate learning in aca-
demic subjects, offer healthy recreational activities, prepare youth for future ca-
reers, and strengthen their respective communities. Yet more important than
any of these stated benefits, youth media programs give youth a voice, some-
times rare in an adult-run world. Youth media programs provide the training
and venue for youth to provide for their own.

ConsiDEring ConTExT

Many youth are defying the stereotypes of apathy so prevalent in much youth-
related public policy. To be sure, not all young people are proactively taking con-
trol of this situation or engaging in civic life. Still, it is only when accounting for
the fact that youth engage in a multifaceted, complex, and diverse world that
we can begin to understand how youth appear in, consume, produce, and uti-
lize media to continue their development as individuals, groups of citizens, and
members of the global community.
see also Alternatives to Mainstream Media in the United States; Children and
Effects; Digital Divide; Internet and Its Radical Potential; Media and Citizenship;
News Satire; Online Publishing; Political Entertainment; User-Created Content
and Audience Participation.
Further reading: Buckingham, David. After the Death of Childhood: Growing Up in the Age
of Electronic Media. London: Polity, 2000a; Buckingham, David. The Making of Citizens:
Young People, News, and Politics. New York: Routledge, 2000b; Campbell, P. B., L. Hoey,
and L. K. Perlman. Sticking with my Dreams: Defining and Refining Youth Media in the
21st Century. Groton, MA: Campbell-Kibler Associates, 2001; Fisherkeller, JoEllen. Grow-
ing Up with Television: Everyday Learning among Young Adolescents. Philadelphia:
Temple University Press, 2002; Giroux, Henry A. The Abandoned Generation. New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2003; Howe, Neil, and William Strauss. Millennials Rising: The Next
Great Generation. New York: Vintage, 2000; Kohut, Andrew. “Cable and Internet Loom
Large in Fragmented Political News Universe.” Pew Research Center for the People and
the Press and the Pew Internet and American Life Project, January 11, 2004; Krolikowski,
Walter P., and Michael A. Oliker. Images of Youth: Popular Culture as Educational Ideol-
ogy. New York: Peter Lang, 2001; Lerner, Richard M. America’s Youth in Crisis: Chal-
lenges and Options for Programs and Policies. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1995; Lerner,
Richard M. Liberty: Thriving and Civic Engagement among America’s Youth. Thousand
Oaks, CA: Sage, 2004; Males, Mike A. Framing Youth: Ten Myths about the Next Genera-
tion. Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 1998; Miles, Steven. Youth Lifestyles in a
Changing World. Milton Keynes, UK: Open University Press, 2000; Roberts, Donald F.,
Foehr G. Ulla, and Victoria Rideout. Generation M: Media in the Lives of 8-18 Year Olds.
Kaiser Family Foundation, March 2005; Williamson, Howard. Youth and Policy: Con-
texts and Consequences. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 1997.
Dov Zacharia Hirsch