Berkman Center for Internet & Society

Led by John Palfrey and Urs Gasser, the Youth and Media project encompasses an array of research on youth and technology. By understanding young people’s interactions with digital media such as the Internet, cell phones and video games, we may address the issues their practices raise, learn how to harness the opportunities their digital fluency presents, and shape our regulatory and educational frameworks in a way that advances the public interest.

• Chief among these currently is the Youth and Media Policy Working Group Initiative which has been highly active in the previous year in releasing a number of major reports.
• Alongside our policy working group efforts, we are in the beginning phases of a research project concerning the online safety risks to children in developing countries.
• Also part of the Youth and Media project is the Digital Natives project, the research for and extension of the acclaimed book Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives by Palfrey and Gasser. Along with publication of translations of the work in four languages (with versions in six more languages forthcoming) and a paperback version, summer interns have produced a new series of videos exploring the themes and issues of the book.
• Lastly, there is the Creative Rights project, which came out of the extensive research behind Born Digital that demonstrated the need for a sensible copyright curriculum (see Youth, Creativity, and Copyright in the Digital Age). This project has developed such a curriculum and is in the process of implementing the curriculum in a web space that is easy for teachers to use.

The Youth and Media project is an interdisciplinary academic collaboration of the Research Center for Information Law at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland and the Berkman Center, researching young people’s digital practices, and the intersection of these behaviors with education and the law. We are lawyers, psychologists, ethnographers, sociologists, media academics. We aim to nurture and protect the creative, educational, and revolutionary possibilities of youth interactions in digital space, while at the same time addressing the serious concerns that come with living a life online.