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Adolescents’ Digital Worlds: Conclusions and Future Steps

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Book cover Digital Youth

Part of the book series: Advancing Responsible Adolescent Development ((ARAD))

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Abstract

Today’s youth, as digital natives, have lived virtually their entire lives surrounded by digital media, especially computers and the Internet. Not surprisingly, their interactions with technology have raised questions and concerns. Research has begun to uncover the many different ways that technology intersects young people’s lives. Our goal for this book was to sift through this body of work and present a balanced and comprehensive account of youth digital worlds and their implications for adolescent development. In this concluding chapter, we revisit some of the themes encountered throughout the book, consider their implications, and identify questions and gaps in our understanding that future research must address. In particular, we examine the role of digital media in development, summarize findings that provide support for our contention that young people’s offline and online worlds are psychologically connected, clarify and consider the implications of such connectedness.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See Information Society Statistical Profiles 2009 – Asia and the Pacific – at http://www.itu.int/en/pages/default.aspx

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, California State University, Los Angeles, CA, 90032-8227, USA

    Kaveri Subrahmanyam

  2. Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University, Brno, 602 00, Czech Republic

    David Šmahel

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  1. Kaveri Subrahmanyam
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  2. David Šmahel
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Correspondence to Kaveri Subrahmanyam .

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Subrahmanyam, K., Šmahel, D. (2011). Adolescents’ Digital Worlds: Conclusions and Future Steps. In: Digital Youth. Advancing Responsible Adolescent Development. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-6278-2_12

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