Digital Media and Civic Engagement
Empowering Youths
Our Partnership
The University of Denver's Lynn Schofield Clark worked alongside partners from Wake Forest University and other institutions to explore the effects of certain forms of internet use, particularly social media, on youth civic engagement. The understanding and ingenuity achieved through collaboration is essential as we work to understand youth development and promote policies and solutions that can lead to positive outcomes.
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About the Project
While research on the social dimensions of adolescent technology use tends to focus on identifying and preventing risk, there's a great deal of unexplored territory regarding how technology affects the rapidly expanding capacities, expectations of autonomy and identity exploration inherent to adolescence. This project specifically focused on how different aspects of technology use impact youth civic engagement.
Previous research has found that civic engagement during adolescence is a significant factor for adult civic engagement, and tends to generally promote positive developmental outcomes. It's also been determined that certain forms of internet use, such as information seeking and participation in online communities, promote civic engagement. This, combined with the importance of digital tools for general youth empowerment, suggests a need for increased efforts toward promoting digital media competencies and greater coordination of research on adolescent risk, autonomy and empowerment related to internet use.
This project was a collaboration between researchers at the University of Denver, Wake Forest University and San Jose State University.