Learning From Teens: Digital Youth Project

Kids are learning new skills in online venues that they don’t get at school – and such activity is often frowned upon by established authoritative institutions. All the worry that parents and teachers have on the amount of time youth spend texting or online may be misplaced – or even create a barrier for children. Today’s youth must engage in the digital world in order to gain important technical and media literacy skills necessary to engage in public life. So conclude the authors of a large-scale, multi-million dollar ethnographic study sponsored by the MacArthur Foundation.

A recent white paper summarizes the major findings and a book is soon to follow, Hanging Out, Messing Around and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media.

The authors break down the digital activity in two broad ways:

• Friendship-driven activity – Youth are reproducing the same social connections they have in school or other organizations in an online venue via instant messaging, chat, personal Web pages, and photo and video sharing. It’s a modern version of hanging out, creating scrapbooks and slipping notes in school.

• Interest-based activity – Youth engage in online networks that extend beyond the social networks to specific groups, in effort to share creativity or know-how in specific skills, such as creating or participating in complex games, video editing, music production or fiction writing.

It’s worth a few minutes to listen to a conversation about the study facilitated by NPR’s “On Point” host, Tom Ashbrook. One question raised reflects a basic concern about technology: What might the consequences be of new media communication vs. face-to-face communication? Study co-author Mimi Ito notes that today’s kids have less free time as schedules become more structured. If kids had their choice they’d spend more time with friends; in the absence of getting together, technology meets an important social need.

Ito also points out that adults can both engage with and facilitate skill building for new media:  Show an interest in technology, respect teens privacy in their social networks, and understand the emerging social norms and online etiquette. Yet, there may be more questions raised by adults as many remain at a technical disadvantage.

A first step for parents might be to open up their own Facebook page. 

– Contributed by Tara Cousineau, PhD
An Adolescent at Heart