which has significant implications for their opportunity to cultivate the social and academic skills that support either the school-to-work or the school-to-postsecondary-education transition.
The school district that we encountered while conducting our fieldwork was undergoing a dramatic transformation. Between the 1990s and the close of the first decade of the 2000s, the MASD transformed from a predominantly white and middle-income school district to a high minority and immigrant and lower-income district. Life at Freeway reflected these changes and the challenges that ensued for the school, students, and their families. These big demographic shifts were visible in our fieldwork and illuminate the social, economic, and educational disparities that are central features of the digital edge.
The Resegregation of Schools and Learning
One of the defining characteristics of U.S. schools is sharp racial segregation. Because most schools are neighborhood schools, this is a reflection of the legacy of residential segregation along racial, ethnic, and economic lines.20 Freeway, however, was a multiracial, multiethnic, and multilingual school. During our fieldwork, the Freeway student population was predominantly Latino (48 percent) and African American (24 percent), but Asian (13 percent) and white (11 percent) students were also represented among the student body. English language learners represented 11 percent of the student population.
If the racial and ethnic diversity at Freeway ran against the norm, the racial academic achievement gaps at Freeway were consistent with long-standing patterns. One of the ironies of racially diverse schools is that they end up being racially segregated within, especially along academic lines and perceived academic ability. White and Asian American students, for instance, are much more likely to be represented in the high track, Advanced Placement (AP), college prep, and gifted courses.21 By contrast, black and Latino students are typically underrepresented in those classes, thus leading to some racially inflected notions about race, learning, and ability. Some researchers refer to this as second-generation segregation, a reference to a post–civil rights era of schooling that reproduces many of the disparities in educational opportunity associated with previous formations of racially segregated schools. Data compiled by the Texas Education Agency highlights clear racial achievement disparities at Freeway.
For example, Asian (57 percent) and white (43 percent) students were more than twice as likely as Latino (20 percent) or black (15 percent) students to have taken at least one AP or International Baccalaureate examination. White (71 percent) and Asian (66 percent) students were substantially more likely than Latino (39 percent) or black (38 percent) students to be college ready in English language arts and mathematics, two cornerstone academic subjects. English language learner (71 percent), Latino (83 percent), and black (88 percent) students were less likely to complete high school in four years than their Asian (93 percent) and white (91 percent) counterparts. Moreover, Latino and English language learners were the most likely to leave high school without a diploma in hand. The academic disparities at Freeway are consistent with national educational trends in which black and Latinos, compared to white and Asian students, score much lower on educational tests and are also less likely to be enrolled in advanced academic courses.22
These achievement gaps explain, in part, why white and Asian students were much more likely to earn a postsecondary degree within six years of high school graduation than their black and Latino counterparts.23 Many of the students that we met did not see college as an option in their future. As we discuss in the book’s conclusion, students who do not earn a postsecondary credential are especially vulnerable in an economy that privileges higher-educated and higher-skill persons.
The Shifting Contours of the Digital Divide
Our examination of the digital edge was also shaped by another important development—the remaking of the digital divide. Even in a school in which 65 percent of the students were designated as economically disadvantaged, we routinely witnessed students using the Internet and social and mobile media technologies. For example, students used digital cameras, computers, and editing software to produce videos and graphic art in technology courses. Students also used game-authoring software to design simple games in their game design class. At Freeway, technology was incorporated in some of the classes, but the most creative uses took place in the after-school hours. During that time we observed students codesigning digital media and learning environments to support extracurricular activities and media projects that were peer driven, creative, and tech savvy.
Freeway was not a technology-poor school. In fact, the use of technology by the students in our study illuminates how widely the adoption of the Internet, for example, has spread across U.S. schools. In 2000 low-income students attended schools that offered limited access to computers and the Internet, if they offered it all.24 By 2005, schools emerged as one of the more reliable places for lower-income students to access computers and the Internet.25
As recently as the early 2000s, young blacks and Latinos barely figured in the conversations about technology adoption and use. At best, they were considered laggards or late adopters. This gave rise to the digital divide concept, a narrative that largely viewed blacks and Latinos as marginal to the digital world.26 The data since the middle 2000s strongly suggest that black and Latino teens have become increasingly central in the making of the teen-driven social media and digital world.27 The adoption of the mobile web and social media by African American and Latino teens has been decisive and also turns the theories about the digital divide and diffusion of innovation on their heads.
No one would have predicted that black and Latino youth would be trendsetters when it came to the early adoption of the mobile Internet. No one would have predicted that by the close of the first decade of the new millennium black and Latino teens would be spending more time online than their white and Asian American counterparts.28 But their reasons for the adoption of the mobile Internet are complex. Their use of mobile platforms, especially smartphones, suggests early adopter status, on the one hand, while also illuminating the lack of reliable access to home broadband connections, on the other. In chapter two we refer to this as the “mobile paradox.”
Black and Latino youth are extraordinarily active when it comes to using their mobile phones to connect with peers, play games, listen to music, and watch videos.29 Still, very little is known about the creative and media production practices that are also a part of their social and media ecologies. When Steve Jobs introduced the iPad to the world in 2010, he repeatedly stated that the tablet “was like holding the Internet in your hand.” Our fieldwork suggests that black and Latino teens had already been holding the Internet in their hands via mobile phones. Throughout this book we consider two questions. First, what kind of Internet are black and Latino teens holding? Second, what are the social and educational implications of the Internet they hold? Researchers must develop a sharper portrait of the rapidly evolving media ecologies of black and Latino teens to learn what, if anything, is distinct about their use of media and Internet technologies.
Some of the more interesting questions regarding the media practices of black and Latino teens are sociological. How is their media ecology evolving with the adoption of social and mobile platforms? How does their embrace of the mobile phone as the hub of their social, informational, and cultural life rewrite the digital divide narrative? What distinct skills, assets, and dispositions do they bring to their adoption of smart technologies? Likewise, how does their adoption of mobile reproduce concerns about digital access, participation, and literacy that have been long-standing themes in the digital divide narrative? What are the social, educational, and civic implications of their engagement with media technologies? We address these and other questions in the following pages.
Black and Latino teens go online often and from a variety of places—school, libraries,