In every generation.....Findings of the most extensive U.S. study of youth media use

Almost weekly for so many years, I have had friends, parents of clients, family members, colleagues, and neighbors ask me various questions about their own social networking pages. It seems that as much as we have concerns about our children being online, we have to admit that we are playing "catch-up" to our kids. They are so savvy about how to use computers and navigate online compared to many of us adults. So many of us had no clue as to how we were supposed to set up our accounts or join certain sites or what was cool or not cool when we were first starting out.

Our kids cannot remember a time that social networking, texting, video gaming, Ipods, and all these media gadgets did not exist...we can.

We remember having to write our friends real letters, with real stamps!

We remember having to use the telephone that was attached to the wall! Privacy sometimes meant having to sit in a closet or beg everyone to leave a public room, like the kitchen, while we were on the phone.

We remember having to carry change to use a pay phone to call home when we needed to be picked up.

We remember our first typing classes, our first papers that we had to type (with correction tape). The excitement when we could buy and use White-Out.

But just like our generation could not remember a time without telephones and televisions, many of our parent's generations could recall a time when they were growing up that they didn't have telephones or televisions. Don't you recall when some of your parents would complain that they would have to go visit their friends and that we were spoiled children, ruining our lives by talking to our friends on the telephone!

We remember our first computers, and our first email accounts. We remember when it was common not to have email accounts. When cell phones were huge...I mean HUGE, not able to be carried around in a purse, or pocket.

Not this generation. They do not remember a time without Myspace, Facebook, Ipods, Iphones, Blogs, Video Games and some of the fastest thumbs for quickest texting imagineable. This is a generation that communicates in a different digital way than we did. It is time that our generation accepts that like our parents generation, new communication is not bad, it is just different. Different can actually be very good. The telephone did not alienate families and friends like our parents first thought; it actually brought them closer. It is time for us to pay attention to the research.

For over three years, UCI researcher Mizuko Ito and her team interviewed over 800 youth and young adults and conducted over 5,000 hours of online observations as part of the most extensive U.S. study of youth media use sponsored by the MacArthur Foundation (2008). I will write more about this incredible undertaking and study at a later time, however, there are a few major findings I would like to share with you today.

1.Youth use online media to extend friendships and interests:
The study found that teens use their online time to extend their face-to-face friendships from school, religious groups, sports, and other local activities. A majority of youth use this new media to "hang out" and extend existing friendships.

2. Youth are acquiring various forms of technical and media literacy:
Through trial and error, youth are adding new media skills to their skill-set each time they are online. They gain these skills from trial and error, feedback from their peers, creations they share, from the immediacy and vastness of the information, and the digital world which creates a perfect setting for self-directed learning.

3. Online media allows for a degree of freedom and autonomy for youth that is less apparent in a classroom setting:
It seems as if youth are able to respect learning from their peers more than from learning from adults. So by having their efforts being mainly self-directed online, the outcome of their learning emerges through self-exploration and trial and error. This is opposite from the classroom which has a predefined set of goals and curriculum which is provided for the student.

Overall, many of us might have been thinking years ago, "I am not sure that I want to have all of this 'technology' in my house, or to ruin my children's childhood." Studies are showing us that at the very least, social networking is encouraging technical thinking and literacy, and that it is going to be a critical skill for all of our children to have in this digital generation.

(For more information about the Study see The Digital Youth Project)