Creating vs. Consuming

“So I want to persuade you to spend time in the classroom, talking and showing young people what it is that your work can mean, and what it means to you. I want to encourage you to participate in programs to allow students to get a degree in science fields and a teaching certificate at the same time. I want us all to think about new and creative ways to engage young people in science and engineering, whether it's science festivals, robotics competitions, fairs that encourage young people to create and build and invent -- to be makers of things, not just consumers of things,” Obama said in a speech yesterday at the National Academy of Sciences.

But do young people actually need to be encouraged to "be makers of things, not just consumers of things"? On the web, young people are leading the way in creating content, and that increased time is coming at the expense of passive consumption such as television watching. It's not a new phenomenon, either. Pew Research reported on Teen Content Creators in 2007, even finding that girls dominated in content creation. The trend isn't just continuing, either, it's accelerating as the ranks of "digital natives: grow and grow up.

Look closer, and you'll see that Obama isn't actually encouraging young people to do anything differently, he's encouraging old people (that's the "you" he's speaking to!) to get in step with today's reality. It certainly isn't the first time that kids taught adults how to use technology, and no doubt it won't be the last.