Designed for Good: Community Well-Being Oriented Online Databases for Youth - Community-Built Databases: Research and Development - page 293

There are increasing calls for young people to participate in the debates and
decisions made concerning their well-being, their education and their communities.
These calls are fuelled partly by a growing recognition of children's rights to
express themselves, participate and be heard in general and partly by the decline
in civic and political participation both generally [ 54 ] and especially among young
people [ 47 , 67 ]. The Internet can be seen as a means of increasing young people's
participation in a community environment [ 34 ].
It is important to establish environments in which youth have opportunities to be
heard within meaningful, caring and supportive relationships which enhance their
sense of themselves in positive ways [ 35 ]. The Internet provides individual spaces
(websites and e-zines2) and communities (chats, special interest groups) that allow
youth to participate within parameters (anonymity, connectivity and simultaneity)
[ 24 ] different from those in their on-ground communities.
These community-based web spaces promote a feeling of higher contribution
and closeness both to society in general and to their own group/community; they
experience a growing sense of actualisation; they perceive higher levels of coher-
ence and understanding with respect to what is happening in the world. However,
on the whole, they have less trust in people at large and tend to resort to their own
group/community for comfort and certainty [ 22 ].
12.2.3 Collaboration
Collaboration amongst youth and between them and legislators and decision
makers is a vital part of ensuring that their voice is heard. Calvert [ 11 ] asserts
that collaborative and group-based activities can promote pro-social behaviour, or
positive social interaction skills such as cooperation, sharing, kindness, helping,
showing affection and verbalising feelings [ 11 , p. 209]. Some scholars see digital
technologies as a way of enabling children to have more control and navigation in
their learning, mostly through direct exploration of the world around them, ways to
design and express their own ideas and ways to communicate and collaborate on a
global level [ 42 ]. This type of collaboration will improve decision-making pro-
cesses at national, regional and international levels and, more importantly, will help
frame future discussions around issues that youth and children consider most
important for themselves and their wellbeing.
12.3 Youth Developmental Needs
Adolescence may be defined as the period within the life span when most of a
person's biological, cognitive, psychological and social characteristics are chang-
ing from what is typically considered childlike to what is considered adultlike [ 52 ].