Mitos na geração iPod (avisos a ter em atenção)

«This generation of 18- to 24-year-olds is defined by technology. They are the MySpace generation, iPod generation, digital generation, PlayStation generation - sobriquets that evoke lives spent in a techno-maelstrom of blogging, uploading, text-messaging, file-sharing, flash-mobbing and instant messaging. But is the MySpace generation a media myth? A recent survey by the global market-research company Synovate, whose Planet Edge project researches youth lifestyles across Europe, paints a very different picture. Two thirds of 18- to 24-year-olds in the UK have never used MySpace; across Europe - Planet Edge surveyed at least 400 people in 11 countries - it's 76 per cent. Only one in ten of British 18- to 24-year-olds have ever blogged. There is a surprisingly conservative attitude towards online dating: 94 per cent of British young people say they don't do it, and their European cousins are only marginally more liberated, at 92 per cent. Another stereotype-smashing statistic is the 94 per cent of British youngsters who say they never download ringtones for their mobile phones. Perhaps the biggest surprise of all is their preferred source of new music - not MySpace, iTunes, MTV, nor even ripping their friends' music collections to their own hard drives. It turns out to be the humble radio, cited by 31 per cent of British teenagers, with the internet, friends and MTV on 20 per cent each. (...) The picture that emerges, then, is not of a generation unified by the technological revolution, but of one divided by it - with less than a third in the fast lane of the digital superhighway. And it appears that class is a significant factor. "We found that those from the middle class and above understand the value of the internet, and tend to have it explained to them by parents, by older generations and in school," says Rolfe. "As soon as you get underneath that, the knowledge is much less likely to be passed down at home, nor are they as likely to use computers in the workplace. And for many, IT at school is pretty basic."  Dr Paul Hodkinson, a lecturer in sociology at the University of Surrey who has conducted research into youth culture and technology, agrees. "My understanding of social-networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook is that usage is biased - although not exclusively so - towards the white middle class," he says. (...)The answer, of course, is that we don't know yet. "On one level, I want to say that all this talk of a MySpace generation is not as dramatic as everyone is making out," says Professor David Buckingham, of the Institute of Education at London University, who is an authority on young people and the media. "But we should be careful of saying, 'We've seen it all before' or 'Nothing has really changed'. Things are evolving very quickly. The issue is how lasting any of these innovations will be. We probably won't have MySpace in 10 years' time, although we will have something similar but different.»

fonte: «The myth of the MySpace generation» Telegraph.co.uk; 30/06/07 

Mark Ramsey: «I'd be interested in what these proportions look like stateside. If you have access to this research, please point me to it»; e «This is not to say that MySpace and its like are not important. After all, critical trends usually start at the fringes. But it remains important to understand the difference between where we are today and where we'll be tomorrow. Meanwhile it's also important to recognize that a great many supposed MySpace members created a page and left it for dead years ago»