Justin Marshall

Sonia Livingstone, Magdalena Bober, and Ellen Helsper (October 2004). “Active participation or just more information? Young people’s take up of opportunities to act and interact on the internet.” London School of Economics and Political Science. Retrieved July 12, 2007, from http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/396.

Sonia Livingstone et al. seeks to uncover whether increasing Internet usage by young people actually encourages civic participation, and if so, whether the education system should provide online chat and media venues that facilitate participation. To do so, the authors engage in an empirical study to understand what type of online behavior actually is most effective at providing collaboration and participation in a community.

Upon analysis, the data shows at face value that “boys, middle class children and teenagers are more likely than girls, working class children and younger children to engage in online communication, information-seeking and peer-to-peer connection (11).”

Interestingly, though girls are less likely to participate on the web, it seems that they are more inclined to visit civic/political websites than boys. And, while middle class children are more inclined than working class children to participate, it can be readily assumed that socio-economic and cultural factors play a role unmeasured outside the study. In other words, other factors outside of Internet behavior play a significant role in why students participate on the web.

In the end, the study shows that online participation can be an influence in encouraging children to engage in civic and social activities. However, the participation is short-lived. And while these technologies help facilitate such involvement, a “build-it-and-they-will-come” approach will inevitably fail.

If the public sector is seeking to facilitate young people’s participation, they need to provide a substantial and valuable “payoff”—an incentive for the students to participate in a deeper way. Essentially, they won’t deepen their participation on their own.