Thoughts on Digital Natives and Produsage

For my third and final blog post this week, I wanted to talk about the youth in the world today and produsage. 

The youth today don't just consume content; they remix, produce, and share it constantly (actively and passively). This means that the youth (and everyone else) have the agency to create and participate at their fingertips. While this is great, I can't help but feel that something has been lost (maybe forever). 

Activities that were once done just for the sake of doing them (i.e., dancing, eating, thinking) are now often done with an audience (real or imagined) in mind. In today's world, I would argue we don’t just experience things; we frame them for visibility, content, or social capital. Even when no camera is present, our behavior can be shaped by the anticipation of being seen or shared. I saw a thread of tweets earlier this week that kind of shocked me to my core (I encourage you to look at it). One of them read:

"You don't just "dance," you dance for the video.
You don't just "eat," you eat for the post.
You don't just "think," you think for the tweet.
Everything is FOR something, nothing is an end in itself.
There's no dwelling, just optics.”

This tweet made me consider "produsage" and the "hive mind" in a different way. Yes, these things are concerned with participation and collaboration, but more often than not, I think they are more concerned with things like visibility, validation, and performance. As our youth produce more and more, it may erode genuine presence and internal motivation. We aren't just capturing real life anymore, we are curating it in real time, even when nobody is watching.

In terms of education, I think this means we need to be prepared to challenge our youth. While they are becoming increasingly more digitally fluent, they may not have the critical awareness necessary to navigate our digital world. Educators must be ready to teach students to recognize how digital environments shape their actions, values, and attention. We need to create spaces where students can question these dynamics. A place where they can dwell, reflect, and engage with ideas and experiences not for likes or shares, but for meaning. 

If we want to help young people thrive in a digital world, we need to support not just their technical fluency, but their ability to unplug from the performance and reconnect with intention.

Source: 

https://x.com/nosilverv/status/1923661028992188761

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