My Day

If you've been scared of teens getting addicted to the Internet, of the pedophiles stalking them in social networking spaces like MySpace... then you are not alone.  We who are not "digital natives" gravitate toward these sorts of stories because it's hard to understand what's really going on...

 

Take a look at the Digital Youth Project (http://digitalyouth.ischool.berkeley.edu), a MacArthur-funded three year, 22 case study, $3.3 million ethnographic study of what kids are doing online. The project led by sociologist Mimi Ito is the largest and most comprehensive study of young peoples' internet use ever undertaken in the US. The conclusions are that the "serious" work we all hope kids will do online (e.g., reading email from their academic advisors, researching papers, etc.) are only possible within a framework of "hanging out" (undirected, social activities), "messing around" (tinkering with media, networks and technologies) and "geeking out" (delving deep into subjects based on global communities of interest). Ito's research results show that all the "time-wasting" social activities kids do online are key to their explorations and education online.

 

Check out their website - and you will find the full report (http://digitalyouth.ischool.berkeley.edu/report) that describes the successful and unsuccessful techniques deployed by parents and educators to direct kids' activities.

 

See also the newly released UC Berkeley dissertation by Danah Boyd (member of the research team), available for free download on her personal website (http://www.danah.org/papers/TakenOutOfContext.pdf ): "Taken Out of Context: American Teen Sociality in Networked Publics."