A connected and plugged-in worldview: Young people and new media

Considering their enthusiastic adoption and utilisation of the latest media technologies, the question whether today’s (2011) youth is critically aware of, and paying due attention to, the multitude of influences and information that technology transmits into their lives, may legitimately be asked. Questions concerning connectivity, community interaction and peer interaction, identity (and loss of identity) and what the author terms ‘space-time discrepancy’ are raised in this article. The methods by which people (students or other young people) acquire and assimilate new knowledge (epistemologically), process and understand information (cognitively) and create or formulate personal meaning and significance (metaphysically), are all modified and informed by their consumption of new technologies. Therefore, in the pursuit of an ’acceptable’ (by their peers and their community) worldview, young people have to grapple with both the objectively perceived, as well as the subjectively experienced manifestations of the networked world; a world ’immersed’ in new media.