the goal of our research was to gain an on-the-ground perspective of the role that digital media play in the formal and informal learning environments of teens from resource-constrained schools and households. We were aware of the many studies that suggested that Latino, African American, and lower-income youth were adopters of social and mobile media.4 In fact, their adoption of social and mobile media has prompted some to argue that smartphones, the poor’s primary platform for Internet access, have accomplished what many well-intentioned policy makers, philanthropists, and educators have failed to do—bridge the nation’s stubborn digital divide. Even before beginning our fieldwork at Freeway we knew that the story was more complex than that narrative suggested.
Freeway presented an opportunity to develop a more detailed and textured understanding of the media practices forming in the daily lives of black and Latino teens. Additionally, we wanted to explore the implications of this evolving digital media ecology for learning, opportunity, and social mobility. More specifically, we explore in detail what we call the digital edge.
The digital edge is a reference to the institutions, practices, and social relations that make up the daily and mediated lives of black, Latino, and lower-income youth. Our notion of the digital edge is informed by an essential conflict that is woven throughout the chapters in this book: even though a greater diversity of children and teens are using Internet technologies than ever before, not all forms of technology adoption are equal. The digital media practices of black, Latino, and lower-income youth are influenced by broader social and economic currents that give rise to distinct practices, techno-dispositions, and opportunities for participation in the digital world.
In the technology world, “edge” usually connotes something positive and even forward oriented. Being on the “cutting edge” of technology usually references innovation in either the design of technology (e.g., building a new platform) or the creative use of technology (e.g., finding inventive ways to use technology). Our use of the term “edge” is meant to highlight the contradictory contours that mark the digital media lives of black and Latino teens.
For example, the “digital edge” acknowledges the marginalized position that black and Latino teens navigate as they participate in the digital world. Black and Latino youth often live in homes with intermittent access to broadband Internet, confront outdated hardware and software, and learn in poor curriculum classrooms. In this context, “edge” is equated with being on the margins of the tech economy, tech rich households, and high quality schooling.
But the “digital edge” also acknowledges the innovative position that black and Latino teens occupy in the digital world. As we reflected on our fieldwork it became clear that so much of the literature focuses on what we might call the deficit narrative—that is, an almost exclusive examination of what black, Latino, and lower-income youth do not have in relation to a rapidly evolving tech landscape. While we understand that black and Latino teens are often bereft of key resources, what they do have is an important part of the story too. We call this the asset narrative. For example, black and Latino teens bring a number of assets to their engagement with technology, including innovative techno-dispositions and practices that have led to important modes of digital expression and community like Black Twitter and social media enhanced movements like Black Lives Matter. Media practices like these highlights the degree to which diverse users of digital media expand what is possible in the connected world.
Three specific dimensions of the digital edge inform our efforts to understand the educational environments and the technology and creative practices that we observed during our fieldwork. These dimensions are the new geography of inequality, persistent racial achievement gaps in education, and evolving trends in the adoption of media technologies. Though distinct from each other, these three elements intersect in complex ways to give an uneven shape and urgency to the making of the digital edge and the lives and futures of young people coming of age in the social and economic margins.
Income inequality in the United States is rising.5 Although some progress has been made in closing the academic achievement gaps in U.S. schools, racial and class disparities persist at the primary, secondary, and postsecondary levels. And then there are the complex shifts that mark the diffusion of technological innovation. For example, even as black and Latino teens are just as likely as their white and Asian counterparts to use the Internet, they are also more likely to grow up in homes that do not provide access to broadband, a crucial gateway to more capital-enriching forms of digital participation.
The New Geography of Inequality
A key dimension of the digital edge is the changing geography of inequality. Despite living in a hyperconnected world where physical distance is often characterized as immaterial, geography—or more precisely, where people live—still matters.6 The neighborhood that a person lives in and the resources (knowledge, schools, and people) available in that neighborhood profoundly shape his or her life chances and access to opportunity. Freeway students lived figuratively and literally on the edges of Austin and its rapidly evolving innovation and tech-driven economy.7
During our fieldwork and subsequent analysis, other insights underscored the significance of geography and its relationship to opportunity and social mobility in the United States. For example, the research of Raj Chetty and colleagues on geography and the dynamics of intergenerational mobility informed our work.8 In their analysis of administrative records on the incomes of more than forty million children and their parents, the researchers argue that specific geographic attributes, and not simply growing up in a poor neighborhood, shape the prospects for a child to rise out of poverty.
The geographical variation in intergenerational mobility detected by Chetty and his colleagues is correlated with factors such as segregation, school quality, and social capital. Upward income mobility, for example, is significantly lower in areas with large and segregated African American populations. Proxies for the quality of K–12 education include things such as test scores, dropout rates, and class sizes. Further, children growing up in communities that rank high in social capital—things like religious affiliation, greater participation in local civic organizations, low crime rates—tend to do better in terms of social mobility measures.9 Neighborhoods in which students perform well across these measures tend to have higher rates of upward mobility.10
Further, the geography of inequality in Austin reflects what Brookings Institution researchers Elizabeth Kneebone and Alan Berube identify as the “suburbanization of poverty.”11 Whereas living in a U.S. suburb was once synonymous with white flight, affluence, and upward social mobility, the story is more complex today. The trend toward greater suburban poverty accelerated during the 2000s. Between 2000 and 2010, suburbs in the nation’s largest metropolitan areas saw their poor population grow by 53 percent. Poverty in metro suburbs grew at a rate that was more than five times that of primary cities. According to Kneebone and Berube, “By 2010, the suburban poor population exceeded that in cities by 2.6 million residents.”12
Between 2000 and 2011 the suburban city that was home to Freeway tripled in size.13 In 2000, white residents made up 77 percent of the suburban population. By 2010 that percentage had decreased to 64 percent. Conversely, Latinos made up 16.7 percent of the population in 2000 compared with 27.7 percent in 2010. African Americans made up 9.5 percent of the population in 2000 and 15.5 percent in 2010. Whereas Asians were less than 1 percent (0.01 percent) of the population in 2000, that percentage climbed to 7.4 percent by 2010. The proportion of foreign-born residents living in this particular suburb increased substantially, too, growing from
