Connected Youth Young Students’ Extensibility and Use of the Internet to Search for Information

Abstract

The present article investigates how young people use the Internet to gain information about distant events that can be used in their schoolwork. The aim is to better understand the process behind youngsters’ construction of what is distant, which in turn may help us to understand how people construct knowledge and act in relation to such realities. Empirical sources originate from qualitative interviews and observations of Norwegian secondary school students using computers to search for information about tropical rainforests and climate change. A network approach has been used to frame this topic, in which extensibil - ity and flow are the main analytical perspectives. The findings reveal that students tend to not connect directly to distant sources when looking for information about distant realities. Rather, they relate to the global flow of information by using national nodes of information flow that indirectly relate them to what is happening at a distance.