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Hayley graduated from Georgetown's School of Foreign Service in 2012 with a degree in Culture and Politics and a certificate in Religion, Ethics, and World Affairs. At the Berkley Center, she...
Where do young people come down on questions of faith, values, and public life? How do they relate their values to public policy issues including education, economic inequality, and the environment? These questions, critically important for the 2012 election, are at the center of a campus conversation being organized by the Berkley Center and Georgetown University. This blog features an ongoing conversation about these issues between students selected as Millennial Values Fellows through a national competition. You can read and comment on their blogs here.
To learn more about the project, visit the Campus Conversation on Values page.
OTHER POSTS
Millennials on Social Media and Politics
November 15, 2012
Millennials on Social Issues and Diversity
November 12, 2012
Hira Baig (Rice) on Why the Presidential Election Matters to Millennials
November 7, 2012
Millennials on Religion and Interfaith Work
November 7, 2012
Ryan Price (Drake) on E Pluribus Duo
November 6, 2012
Mohammad Usman (DePauw) on Unpredictable Millennials
November 5, 2012
Millennials on Affirmative Action Policy
November 3, 2012
Seth Warner (Vassar) on What Happens as the "God Gap" Widens
November 2, 2012
Josina De Raadt (Dordt) on How Social Media Is Like Wii Bowling
October 31, 2012
Zachary Yentzer (Arizona State) on the Next Greatest Generation
October 29, 2012
Brice Ezell (George Fox) on Post-Racial America? Race, Millennials, and the 2012 Election
October 25, 2012
Tyler Bishop (Vanderbilt) on a Future of Hashtags #whatitmeansforus
October 23, 2012
Brice Ezell (George Fox) on How the People Can Heal a “Divided,” Partisan Nation
October 4, 2012
Hira Baig (Rice) on Religion and American Democracy
October 4, 2012
Tyler Bishop (Vanderbilt) on How It’s All About Relatability: Voter Turnout
October 3, 2012
Josina De Raadt (Dordt) on Mistaking Politics for a Hollywood Blockbuster
October 2, 2012
Mohammad Usman (DePauw) on the Internet Solution
October 1, 2012
>> more
AT THE CENTER
EVENTS (5)
PUBLICATIONS (3)
Diverse, Disillusioned, and Divided: Millennial Values and Voter Engagement in the 2012 Election
October 4, 2012
October 4, 2012
LETTERS (2)
RELATED RESOURCES: MILLENNIAL
The Internet Generation on the Defensive: SOPA and PIPA
February 6, 2012
My generation loves the Internet. We have a well-established dependence on its ever-expanding resources. Ask any young American, across almost every socio-economic divide, where they most frequently access culture, news and entertainment, and their answer will be the World Wide Web. Our professional and social lives are tied to its networks, and more and more we seek truth, practical and existential, in its great depths of information.
Our deep appreciation for the Internet is no doubt intertwined with our identity as a cohort, and how we separate ourselves from those that came before us. Though our parents’ generation has caught on to the idea of Facebook and Twitter, it is clear that despite her best effort Aunt Jill will never quite understand the social function of the poke button. In the same way, Uncle Murry will never fully grasp the cultural marker of an @aol.com email address. As young Americans, negotiating the social nuances of the Internet is second nature, and our mastery of new technology defines part of our collective identity. Though the whole world is continually increasing its online presence, grounded deep in millennial culture is the belief that we claim social ownership of online space.
The generational divide became evident this January as Congress drafted legislation to increase the regulation of the Internet to curb, among other things, flagrant copyright infringement. According to Wikipedia, which led the online protest of the bills on Janurary 18, SOPA and PIPA “would be devastating to the free and open web.” For Millennials, the Internet is free space for the free exchange of ideas and innovation. It is our place to engage in questions of identity, morals, and purpose with limited oversight from the older demographic. We have seen Twitter and Facebook as tools of revolution and YouTube as a messenger for the oppressed. SOPA and PIPA represent a dramatic invasion of the networks of information that young people cultivated. The dramatic reaction to bills, plastered across Facebook newsfeeds, gives us great insight into the values of young people today. Government efforts to protect copyrights online fall on dead ears because young Americans have grown to see ideas differently.
In an age where information is instant, we are choosing access over ownership. We would rather see a video open to everyone than a corporation expand their bottom line. SOPA and PIPA struck us so deeply because it threatened our growing commitment to the spread of knowledge in a space we have grown to see as ours. I acknowledge I risk romanticizing the Internet; I am certainly not naïve to the Internet as tool for abuse and exploitation. However, its greatest asset is the platform it provides for the free exchange of ideas, an idea young Americans have incorporated into their identity. As the government takes steps to regulate this vast network, it must expect protest from the Millennial generation, online and elsewhere.
Our deep appreciation for the Internet is no doubt intertwined with our identity as a cohort, and how we separate ourselves from those that came before us. Though our parents’ generation has caught on to the idea of Facebook and Twitter, it is clear that despite her best effort Aunt Jill will never quite understand the social function of the poke button. In the same way, Uncle Murry will never fully grasp the cultural marker of an @aol.com email address. As young Americans, negotiating the social nuances of the Internet is second nature, and our mastery of new technology defines part of our collective identity. Though the whole world is continually increasing its online presence, grounded deep in millennial culture is the belief that we claim social ownership of online space.
The generational divide became evident this January as Congress drafted legislation to increase the regulation of the Internet to curb, among other things, flagrant copyright infringement. According to Wikipedia, which led the online protest of the bills on Janurary 18, SOPA and PIPA “would be devastating to the free and open web.” For Millennials, the Internet is free space for the free exchange of ideas and innovation. It is our place to engage in questions of identity, morals, and purpose with limited oversight from the older demographic. We have seen Twitter and Facebook as tools of revolution and YouTube as a messenger for the oppressed. SOPA and PIPA represent a dramatic invasion of the networks of information that young people cultivated. The dramatic reaction to bills, plastered across Facebook newsfeeds, gives us great insight into the values of young people today. Government efforts to protect copyrights online fall on dead ears because young Americans have grown to see ideas differently.
In an age where information is instant, we are choosing access over ownership. We would rather see a video open to everyone than a corporation expand their bottom line. SOPA and PIPA struck us so deeply because it threatened our growing commitment to the spread of knowledge in a space we have grown to see as ours. I acknowledge I risk romanticizing the Internet; I am certainly not naïve to the Internet as tool for abuse and exploitation. However, its greatest asset is the platform it provides for the free exchange of ideas, an idea young Americans have incorporated into their identity. As the government takes steps to regulate this vast network, it must expect protest from the Millennial generation, online and elsewhere.