Digital media and online communication have become pervasive in the lives of youth in India network sites, online games, video-sharing sites, and gadgets such as iPods and mobile phones are now fixtures of youth culture. They have so permeated young lives that it is hard to believe that less than a decade ago these technologies had barely regis­tered in the lives of India children and teens. Today’s youth may be coming of age and struggling for autonomy and identity as did their predecessors, but they are doing so amid reconfigured contexts for communication, friendship, play, and self-expression.

Our values and norms in education, literacy, and public participation are being challenged by a shifting landscape of media and communications in which youth are central actors. Although complaints about “kids these days” have a familiar ring to them, the contemporary version is somewhat unusual in how strongly it equates generational identity with technology identity, an equation that is reinforced by telecommunications and digital media corporations that hope to capitalize on this close identification. Despite the widespread assumption that new media are tied to fundamental changes in how young people (Females) are engaging with culture and knowledge, there is still relatively little research that investigates how these dynamics operate on the ground.

KEYWORDS: Digital Media, communication, telecommunication, self-expression, shifting landscape