1GyAp2x

300 Mizuko ItoThis last set of practices introduces what is perhaps the most intriguingand significant wrinkle that new media bring to young people’s experienceof work. In digital-culture studies, theorists have been describing the growthof various types of unpaid digital work, including open-source softwaredevelopment (Weber 2003), “nonmarket peer production” (Benkler 2006),“crowdsourcing” 1 (Howe 2006), virtual economies (Castronova 2001;Dibbell 2006), and other forms of noncommercial free culture (Lessig 2004).In many of these kinds of new media work practices, the unpaid labor ofyouth is a significant factor. Our case studies describe how these practicesare being driven forward by the interests and social practices of youth fromwired households. The opportunities that youth have to participate in newforms of creative work is discussed in chapter 6.Here we look more broadly at the range of ways young people work invirtual worlds and with new media, motivated by reputation, learninggoals, a sharing ethic, and their own satisfaction rather than economicgain. Although the free time and online activities of youth are certainlynot the only factors driving free culture and peer production online,it is one integral component of what theorists have identified as a trendtoward exploiting free labor in digital economies (Terranova 2000). AndrewRoss notes how networked media have initiated a process “by whichthe burden of productive labour is increasingly transferred on to the useror consumer” (Ross 2007, 19). Our ethnographic material describes someof the specificities of these trends by describing the unique alchemybetween the marginalized role of youth in the labor market and the developmentof nonmarket forms of collective work. The story cannot bereduced either to a simple equation of empowerment or exploitation asyouth gain nonquantifiable social benefits, though they may not be reapingeconomic ones.In many ways, the current practices of youth engaged in new media–related work complicate our existing assumptions about youth, labor,work, and the role of educational institutions to prepare youth for theworkplace. First, the cases we describe challenge the assumptions that theappropriate role of youth work is in preparatory educational contexts orin unskilled labor. Youth media production and ventures, when combinedwith the distribution capacity of the Internet, means that the nonmarketwork of childhood is channeled in broader networks that can challengethe authority of existing industry models. New media practices are becom-