Streaming U: College Students and Connected Viewing

Abstract

Since the 1990s, demographers, marketers, politicians, pundits, educators, and journalists have proposed a number of names for the generation of Americans born between 1980 and 2000. Some, including “The Millennials,” “Generation Y,” and “Generation Next,” locate this generation in time, positioning it as the latest in a succession of generations that includes Generation X, the baby boomers, and the Silent Generation. Others, including “Digital Natives,” “The Net Generation,” “Generation N,” or the “Digital Generation,” defi ne it in terms of the technologies its members use. Such analyses frequently explain the peculiar identities, values, and lifestyles of this generation’s members as consequences of their lifelong engagements with digital media, and the Internet in particular. 1 Don Tapscott, the founder of the consulting fi rm nGenera Insight and the author of a number of books on youth and technology, calls this generation “N-Geners,” and suggests that its members have internalized the interactive, participatory culture of the Internet. 2 Similar contentions are found in books, newspaper and magazine articles, and research white papers on this generation. For example, a 2005 study by Forrester Research proposes that American youth “have an innate ability to use technology, are comfortable multitasking while using a diverse range of digital media, and literally demand interactivity as they construct knowledge.” 3The idea that those Americans born between 1980 and 2000 constitute a “Digital Generation” has attracted a signifi cant amount of attention in the press and strong support from within the business community. However, scholars in a variety of fi elds, including Henry Jenkins, David Buckingham, and Siva Vaidhyanathan, have criticized this hypothesis on the grounds that it is predicated on technological determinism and essentialism. 4 As these authors have argued, the Digital Generation hypothesis overstates the infl uence that digital technologies have exerted over the identities, values, and lifestyles of members of this agecohort —so much so, in fact, that it cannot account for the infl uences of other political, sociological, economic, and cultural factors, such as the war on terrorism or the prolonged series of economic crises experienced by global fi nancial markets since 2000. 5 Furthermore, it is predicated on a baseless assumption: that members of this generation share similar experiences with and attitudes toward digital technologies. Observes Siva Vaidhyanathan, “Talk of a ‘digital generation’ or people who are ‘born digital’ willfully ignores the vast range of skills, knowledge, and experience of many segments of society. It ignores the needs and perspectives of those young people who are not socially or fi nancially privileged.” 6 Not all millennials were “born digital.” In fact, many members of this generation still fi nd themselves with limited access to some digital and mobile technologies. The Digital Generation hypothesis obscures the unavoidable fact that gender, class status, region, ethnic backgrounds, linguistic competency, and educational background all exert strong infl uences on how young people interact with digital media. 7 A more precise approach, we argue, would take into consideration the various locations where students consume media and the resources available to them when they watch movies and television series. This approach does not strictly follow the logic of a “digital divide,” in which some students have access to digital tools while others lack them. Instead, we found that students across our campuses consume media differently depending on where they happen to be watching, a conclusion that might lead us to pay more attention to site specifi city when seeking to defi ne the practices of connected viewing. Thus, instead of relying on facile binaries between digital natives and digital immigrants or between two sides of a digital divide, we argue that students participate in viewing cultures that develop as a result of a wide range of social and technological factors.