Volume 18, Number 1, Fall 2007

Rural Youth Use Technology to Get Connected

Wanda Repke

Grand Traverse and Ottawa County 4-H Youth Development are working with MSU’s Department of Telecommunication, Information Studies & Media on a project funded by the Kellogg Foundation. The study is looking at how the use of social networking technologies by rural youth affects relational and informational aspects of life in rural communities.

The objective of the project is to create an online community tool built on the capabilities of “cool” technologies currently used by teenagers in rural Michigan—such as Facebook, instant messaging, blogs and chat rooms—that make it easier for youth organizations, families and young people to get to know each other, share ideas, coordinate activities and acquire job skills. The research project design begins with conducting a focus group—talking with rural teens about their lives and how technology plays a role.

“We have done a focus group with teens in each of the two counties and will be having kids that attend Exploration Days participate in another focus group with the MSU professors while we are at MSU,” said Wanda Repke, 4-H educator in Grand Traverse County. “It’s an 18-month project funded by Kellogg.”

Research suggests that rural youth have Internet access, that social network tools are popular with young people and that rural communities experience problems that could be positively addressed through online networking services. This project will provide the understanding, tools and training to exploit the capacity of new communication technologies to address a major problem in rural communities: the fact that when young people leave rural areas and do not maintain connections with the community, it loses the social and economic capital they represent.

The bottom line is to improve the lives of rural youth by expanding their ability to access resources and information and by providing a conduit through which they can share expertise and knowledge with their communities as they enter the next phase of their lives. Ultimately, the hope is to improve the quality of life for youth in rural American and to make rural communities more attractive to them.