Digital Literacy

Cynthia Lewis

As large-scale studies of Internet use in the United States make clear, young people's Internet use is on the rise. Adolescents, in particular, are turning to the Internet for a wide range of reading and writing purposes. Having conducted an extensive study of Internet use among 9-to-19-year-olds in the United Kingdom, Sonia Livingstone and Magdelina Bober found that young people prefer to use the Internet for communication rather than for information. Yet, as scholars of literacy technologies have pointed out, the technological focus in schools has been geared toward the information component of digital technologies rather than the communication component. This incongruity suggests that, to better understand young people's literacy practices in digital spheres, researchers need to focus attention on the user (reader and writer) of digital texts. In recent studies of digital literacy practices among adolescents, this focus has produced findings related to why many young people choose to ...

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