i Report Issue No. 3 2005 - Philippine Center for Investigative ...

T H E L O S T G E N E R A T I O N
lly
ours
wonderful time she had
(including perhaps meeting
some boys on the side) during
her stay in the province. Her
mood was even spelled out in
her online status in Yahoo!—
“Ibalik niyo ako sa Batangas
(Bring me back to Batangas!!!)”
Because he had to pick up
something from Margo’s place,
July had to momentarily excuse
himself from the sharing session
with Roch. Somehow he and
Margo got to talking about
Roch’s “problem.” So the next
thing July did was to create a
channel that for reasons only
known to him was named in
Roch’s honor. That night till
the wee hours of dawn the
following day, he and the rest
of the boys would also listen
to each other’s thoughts and
feelings.
IT MAY seem odd that Roch
and company prefer the
Net over mobile phones,
the gadget of choice of
many Filipinos, young and
old alike. But the group
does use cellphones as a
secondary communication
tool. In fact, once they go
offline, they make the most
of their common telco’s offer
of unlimited call and texting
among its subscribers.
Anj Heruela, a 17-yearold
second year broadcast
communication student at the
University of the Philippines in
Diliman, has not exactly sworn
off the mobile phone either.
She still uses it but mainly for
the “practical uses” of calling
or sending SMS.
But when she was younger,
the cellphone was her lifeline.
Originally from Iloilo, Anj went
to the Philippine High School
for the Arts in Los Baños,
Laguna. During her freshman
year, she got a text message
from an anonymous texter,
who turned out to be a friend
of a grade school classmate’s
friend. Their relationship
began with the usual exchange
of forwarded “Hallmark”-
type messages, witty quotes,
and jokes. Much like what
sometimes happened between
phone pals in pre-digital times,
Anj and her textmate soon had
a romance going. At its most
intense, it had Anj consuming
P250 week with her prepaid
subscription. Yet Anj and her
cyberboyfriend never had a
chance to “eyeball” (meet), and
it was all over in eight months.
While it lasted, though, the
romance gave the homesick
Anj the attention and company
she craved.
Anj now has a real
boyfriend. But she also chats
on occasion, as well as blogs,
which she says is more about
“wanting people to read what
I write,” which is essentially
poetry and other stuff out
of spontaneous bursts of
creativity. So far, she has
authored four blogs.
The yearning for attention
and recognition is of course
inherent in the youth, who find
in the new media the venue
for exploring and defining their
own identities, and establishing
their independence. That is
why teeners have populated
the blogosphere in droves,
using blogs, being essentially
personal online diaries, as their
podium for self-expression.
At the same time, blogs
are also becoming hubs of
virtual communities of friends.
One Filipino collective blog
of adults is aptly named
blogkadahan. Teen blogs in
Live Journal, for instance, are
only accessible by bloggerfriends.
Members of the
Rochy gang are themselves
bloggers who make it a point
to visit and post comments
on each other’s blogs as a
way to maintain the flow of
communication.
WHAT MAKES information
and communication
technologies (ICTs) alluring
to children and teenagers,
says Kathryn Montgomery,
co-founder of the Washingtonbased
nonprofit group Center
for Media Education, are three
basic elements: interactivity,
convergence, and ubiquity.
Indeed, as a more interactive
medium, the Internet provides
several ways for young people
to communicate with each
other, interact with what is
on a site, and create their
own content. Combining new
technologies with existing
ones are also expanding the
scope of computer-mediated
communications to include
personal and professional
interactions. And the new
media are becoming more
pervasive, touching all aspects
of the lives of the younger
generation.
But the young are also using
ICTs far differently from the
ways they have interacted with
the old media of television,
radio, and newspapers. They
are likewise relating to the new
technologies in a manner that
their parents never did—keen
about the complexities and
challenges of the technologies,
as well as about being able
to learn them. This attitude
Idit Harel, a noted new media
expert formerly with the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology’s
Media Lab, has summed
up in the phrase “High tech is
now my tech.”
Since they themselves are
helping define the uses of the
new digital media, teenagers
like Roch, July, Margo, Jeric,
and Lei are really adept at—
and comfortable—conducting a
great deal of their lives online.
For most of them, computers
were already a fixture at home
PHILIPPINE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM
I REPORT
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