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2 Introductionactors. Although today’s questions about “kids these days” have a familiarring to them, the contemporary version is somewhat unusual in howstrongly it equates generational identity with technology identity. 2 Thereis a growing public discourse (both hopeful and fearful) declaring thatyoung people’s use of digital media and communication technologiesdefines a generational identity distinct from that of their elders. In additionto this generational divide, these new technology practices are tied to whatDavid Buckingham (2007, 96) has described as a “‘digital divide’ betweenin-school and out-of-school use.” He sees this as “symptomatic of a muchbroader phenomenon—a widening gap between children’s everyday ‘lifeworlds’ outside of school and the emphases of many educational systems.”Both the generational divide and the divide between in-school and outof-schoollearning are part of a resilient set of questions about adult authorityin the education and socialization of youth. The discourse of digitalgenerations and digital youth posits that new media empower youth tochallenge the social norms and educational agendas of their elders inunique ways. This book questions and investigates these claims. How arenew media being taken up by youth practices and agendas? And how dothese practices change the dynamics of youth-adult negotiations over literacy,learning, and authoritative knowledge?Despite the widespread assumption that new media are tied to fundamentalchanges in how young people are engaging with culture andknowledge, there is still relatively little research that investigates how thesedynamics operate on the ground. This book reports on a three-year ethnographicinvestigation of youth new media practice that aims to develop agrounded, qualitative evidence base to inform current debates over thefuture of learning and education in the digital age. Funded by the John D.and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation as part of a broader initiative ondigital media and learning, the study represents a $3.3 million investmentto contribute to basic knowledge in this emerging area of research. Theproject began in early 2005 and was completed in the summer of 2008,with the bulk of fieldwork taking place in 2006 and 2007. This effort isunique among qualitative studies in the field in the breadth of the researchand the number of case studies that it encompasses. Spanning twenty-threedifferent case studies conducted by twenty-eight researchers and collaborators,this study sampled from a wide range of youth practices, populations,and online sites, centered on the United States. This book has a broad