SİMGE ÇİÇEK

2017108132

PRED 48A “ONLINE CHILDHOODS” MIDTERM

The questions below are equivalent as 20 points. Please write your responses 200-250
words length for each question. Good luck!

1- Postman states that “the idea of childhood as a social structure did not exist in the
Middle Ages, it arose in the sixteenth century, and is now* disappearing." Then, he adds: “if
Piaget** is right, then childhood was not invented by literacy but only discovered, and the
new information environment is not ‘disappearing’ it but only suppressing it.”
*Remember Disappearance of Childhood published in 1982.
**Piaget is the pioneer of the psychology of development as you know, he claims that the stages of
development shape childhood period according to age intervals upon cognitive distinctions.
Considering those different statements above, what do you think about the question “was
childhood discovered or invented?” Please discuss your argument by drawing attention to
changing relations between childhood and technology after Postman’s opinions on television.
1. I believe that there is no accurate answer of childhood is invented or discovered. For
Postman (1994), as we thought childhood is an only creation of culture, it did not exist
in the Middle Ages as a separated nature and needs from the rest of the population.
By invention of printing press and “typographic man”, childhood became a necessity
to be educated a suitable literate man in printed culture. Otherwise, according to
Piaget, children have different needs at different developmental stages in their lives.
In his well-known theory of constructivism, children are active participants of their
understandings of world. For Piaget, childhood is a distinctive period which includes
different needs and nature at developmental stages. If we think childhood with
Piaget’s terms, it was not invented but it could be discovered by literacy. We should
think the concept of childhood with rapidly changing relations between child and
technology. Postman (1994) believed that through the invention of electric media and
graphic revolution created a new symbolic world which does not encourage children’s
intellectual and social development because we do not need to learn language
lessons and skills for interpreting images or movies. Television dissolves the
distinction between child and adult so; there are no secret anymore and without it we
could not think the idea of childhood. Without a hierarchy of information or without a
distinction between adult and child, childhood cannot still exist? Should this means
the lost or disappearance of childhood. In rapidly changing world, children can
construct their knowledge and create their cultures by technology. According to Nick
Lee’s writing of disappearance of childhood, children found the possibility of making
choices among products by television. Therefore, their passive and dependent
position of child in home drastically changing. I believed that the concept of childhood
is rediscovered or reinvented by technology as a human being to be respected.

2. Leena Alanen suggests a way to integrate generation concept as an analytical tool for
childhood studies by referring to the conception of gender. According to the relation
between woman-man contradiction and child-adult relationship, could you discuss
 possible ways to study generation like gender? To clarify your opinions, you can
conduct a research plan within the frame of the effects of technological
developments.

According to Karl Manheim, childhood is a significant period to make new contacts with
social world and forming generational relations. This statement is useful to think new
technological developments and its effects in generation studies. When we think children’s
active positions in the social world, childhood is a distinct period always produced and
transformed by social and cultural process as well as technological improvements in each
historical period. Alanen suggest that intersectional analyses to understand the complex
structured nature of childhood and children’s active participant in generational order. In this
social world, children are not only children but also they are classed, gendered, raced and
disabled as well as generationed. Such in man and woman contradiction, gender plays an
important role as a social category and social process which regulated, organized and
positioned people into different locations in social world. These different positioned helps us
to understand men and women’s the different access of participation into social world. In
children-adult or childhood-adulthood contradiction, these two concepts can be thought like a
gender study. Children and adults are positioned in different category and they are active
actors in both the social and cultural process that shape their everyday activities. Feminists
developed a women perspective to understand their position in social process. We should
not ignore children’s social location and their agency in generational relations. Children are
active contributors of their ongoing life. Through technological improvements, this net
generation opens a new page for understanding children’s active presence in generational
order.

3. In their well-known article, Corsaro and Eder define ‘children’s peer culture’ as “a
stable set of activities or routines, artefacts, values, and concerns that children
produce and share in interaction with peers.” Could you give an example of how
online activities of digital natives shape the culture they produce themselves or the
culture which is created for children by adults who are digital immigrants?

Corsaro and Eder (1990) concluded that children’s peer culture has a common concern to
gain control over their fears, confusions, and curiosities from adult world by creating routines,
rituals, and games. These routines mean the escape of adult world and feeling relief and joy
from this escape. Shortly, peer culture mostly comes up with children’s experiences of fears,
dangers, excitement in adult world. Digital natives find a space for expression and
developing a sense of identity in online platforms. Actually, they find an opportunity to go
beyond the boundaries of physical world that is created by digital immigrants. Palfrey and
Gasser (2008) denote that these digital natives create their culture and they have common
practices such as multitasking, expressing them by creating new identities, communicate and
build relationship by digital technologies. They create parallel worlds called second life. In
their lives, there are no differences in their offline and online identities. They live
simultaneously in physical and virtual world by creating an avatar which is a virtual
representation of the computer users. Online gaming becomes a popular second life sphere
which shapes digital natives culture. Sherry Turkle (2011) used “cyborgs” term which is
always wirelessly connected to the Internet, and always being online. We can say that digital
natives are cyborgs who live simultaneously in the physical and online environment. These
virtual places become their second life that they can make several things such as getting an
education and having a social life that may include love, sex, and marriage.

 
4. Genie was a girl who was isolated from social life till the age of 13. Because she was
away from socialization, her linguistic skills could not have developed, and her later
behaviours were also like animals or non-human, we may say. 
In the contemporary world, not only the internet has become a part of the socialization
process of human beings, but also it is almost mandatory for education due to COVID19
situation. Considering those facts, imagine a child who was born in 2020 would be kept away
from digital technology during his/her first 13 years on earth. Then, please tell your opinions
about the possible consequences of that child's lack of having digital world experiences. You
might also write a fictional text on her future life after 2033.
Genie was born in 2020 in a technologically remote village and she lived this place until her
thirteen years old. She does not have any idea about technological improvements which the
internet, smartphones, and computers etc. When she moved out her village, she found
enormously different place or world in 2033. Her peers are first generation who was born in
entirely technologically stimulated world. Technological devices become their part of body
like smartphones and tablets, video games, and smart speakers that speak back to you like
Siri, and Google Assistant. They cannot think a world without technology. The tablets are
indispensable toys for children and their parents. They are basically screenagers. Their
relationship of technological devices during early years, have an enormous influence on their
cognitive, emotional and physical. They have been starting to engage these devices from
before they could talk and walk. Because of the Covid19, online education becomes more
frequent and compulsory in our lives. Children begin to connect their friends through Zoom,
Skype, and other virtual places. Social media has a great impact on children’s identity
development. They live simultaneously in virtual and physical spaces. Genie probably is a
feral child in this digital age. Genie’s lack of having digital experiences lead to several
negative consequences such as adoption to education system and having friends.

5. In “Always on” chapter from Alone Together, Sherry Turkle indicates young people’s
multitasking mind. Referring to her examples from that time, could you explain your opinions
about the ways of thinking of new generations? Can there be any specific features of ‘net
generation,’ which might cause a drastic change for the human mind?

I am doing this assignment with opened WhatsApp Web and at the same time listening
Spotify in the background. As Turkle mentioned in his book, multitasking feels good and
satisfying because our neurochemical highs deceive us to thinking more productive.
Multitasking feels magical because it gives us time because we can do two things
simultaneously. Even though Turkle thought that we are doing worse and worse by
multitasking, Dan Tapscott in Growing up Digital (2009) believed that spending time with
digital technologies can change Net geners’ brain development. The intense use of particular
brain region can increase its efficiency and productivity. The Green and Bavelier experiment
of compared action game players with non-video game players demonstrated that active
video game players are good at processing visual information more quickly than non-players.
Net geners absorbing information skills are change drastically. In Growing up Digital (2009)
suggested that Net geners remembered less from traditional newscasts which is television,
radio, or reading newspaper. McLuhan’s famous statements the medium is message which
means the way we perceive information affect our understanding even more than meaning of
message. Our generation is following news from mostly social media and this is so effective
to remember. In Growing up Digital (2009) concluded that our adaptive behaviors can
change brain to optimize multitasking. Sherry Turkle (2015) believed that, this is a result of
brain plasticity. The brain’s optimizing feature does not mean multitasking results in
productiveness and creativeness. Sherry Turkle (2015) claimed that brain plasticity gives us
an opportunity to focus on deep attention in net geners.