District Assessment Writing Task

   The youth of today has a luxury that wasn't sophisticated decades ago. They have access to technology that has changed lives, and especially development of lives. A popular belief is that technology is detrimental to the youth's behavior and academic development, but a cohesive study done by Mizuko Ito and her team called the Digital Youth Project shows a completely different view on this topic.

 
The authors' prove that technology is actually creating more stable to be adults for the world, and not deterring them. The summary of these findings include both views - affirmative and negative. However, more examples of affirmative text are found, An example of this is "The research shows that today's youth may be coming of age and struggling for autonomy and identity amid new worlds for communication, friendship, play and self-expression." This text states that youth are finding their own expression through technology and that is helping them combat self-esteem issues and making them more confident, which can make them succeed in school and a career. This statement contradicts the negative statement : "Many adults worry that children are wasting time online, texting or playing video games." The researchers show the study as direct proof to why the youth isn't wasting their time online. If anything, it is helping accelerate their social development. "The digital world is creating new opportunities for youth for youth to grapple with social norms, explore interests, develop technical skills and experiment with new forms of self-expression." 

   
Another example of how the study contradicts the negative view is when it describes why youth uses social media especially, and why technology in general quite often. Not only is it interesting for youth to explore new sites and inventions on the World Wide Web, they can extend their hobbies. For example, a teenager who loves to draw, and would like to professionally produce one day, can expand on his/her skills using programs on a computer and/or tablet, then share their work on Facebook and Deviant Art. They can gain positive and negative perspective on their work. 

   
Overall, this cohesive study validates the affirmative argument that the youth is becoming more confident and expressive through technology using statistics from the findings to prove a very valid point. This study gives so much insight to technology - something people still don't understand.