The Children’s Media Foundation (CMF)

Living and learning in the digital age.

Is Digital Access Enabling or Disempowering?

CMF Academic Advisory Board member Professor Sonia Livingston has published 'The Class: Living and Learning in the Digital Age' with co-author Julian Sefton-Green.

Preview:
Do today’s youth have more opportunities than their parents? As they build their own social and digital networks, does that offer new routes to learning and friendship? How do they navigate the meaning of education in a digitally connected but fiercely competitive, highly individualized world?

Based upon fieldwork at an ordinary London school, Sonia Livingstone and Julian Sefton-Green have spent over a year examining children’s experiences of growing up and learning in a digital world. They followed a class of Year 9 students across their different social worlds - in school, at home, and with their friends - engaging in a range of activities, from video games to drama clubs and music lessons.

Providing insights into how young people’s social, digital, and learning networks enable or disempower them, Livingstone and Sefton-Green reveal that the experience of disconnections and blocked pathways is often more common than that of connections and new opportunities.

Livingstone, S. and Sefton-Green, J. (2016) The Class: Living and learning in the digital age. New York: New York University Press.

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The Children’s Media Foundation (CMF)