A recent commercial shows a boy commandeering his school's PA system to play a song (never mind that, in this era of zero tolerance, he would doubtless be suspended or perhaps even expelled for this prank). It is not really clear whose voice he plays over the PA. Is the bland rap about peanut and jelly sandwiches his own song? A friend's? A pop star's, improbable as that is? All we know is that he causes the rap to be played, and his friends are impressed. We see him looking on from another room, enjoying their reaction. What interests me is that he is at least twice removed from his own experience: Once by sharing his recorded voice, and again when he looks on from a distance as the other students react.
Alternatively, if the song he plays is not his own, his experience of authorship is diluted. He is like a frantic college freshman who is copying and pasting from Wikipedia, only the boy in the commercial goes a step further. He is crowd-sourcing his own school years and social life.
A student who is consuming media or on the internet sits at the point of two prisms connecting. An infinite amount of possible inputs stream in, and infinite possible creative outputs stream out. At least, that is what we envision in the best case scenario. Yet the sheer overwhelming force of that much input diminishes kids' real, stumbling, imperfect experiences. Few middle school students will command a whole school's attention (to good effect, anyway). Their experiences will rarely yield the regular wins of computer games, and their images don't compare to the airbrushed perfection of teen pop stars.
Does the flood of information and images discourage young people from engaging in their own lives? Do young people take time to dwell quietly in thought, come to know boredom as a birthplace for action, and embrace their own experience as full enough?
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