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Most teen social Web users well-adjusted

May 20, 2010 By Anne 1 Comment

“Kids most likely to spend a lot of time texting and on Facebook, among other networking sites, may be more well-adjusted,” the Los Angeles Times reports, pointing to several new studies. The body of research on how kids use digital media is growing fast, and new articles in academic journals are confirming what we collectively already knew: that a child’s experience online is very much a reflection of the child’s real-life experience, not of the technology, which means that for most kids it’s a constructive experience. The Times tells of 14-year-old L.A. 8th-grader Megan, whose mom, Donna, made being “friends” on Facebook a condition of Megan’s having an account. Donna “says she’s seen little to fret about – and much to cheer – on her periodic visits to her daughter’s Facebook page. The teen, who has scaled back a once all-consuming commitment to gymnastics, keeps in touch with friends and coaches from that phase of her life, as well as with current friends that Mills knows well.” It’s the kids who take risks in real life about whom worry is warranted, and they tend to take those risks online in less public places than social network sites – places like chatrooms, where they are looking for support and validation secretly in exactly the wrong places. This was shown in the Internet Safety & Technical Task Force report of 2009, which presented a full review of the youth-online-risk literature up to that point. The ISTTF report also “concluded that on social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook and Friendster, strangers – let alone strangers seeking sex – are routinely locked out and readily rebuffed,” the Times reports.

Parents are an important part of the equation. The Times also cites the research of Sahara Byrne at Cornell University, who “has found that children who think they can go to a parent with a problem – any problem – are more willing to accept parental limits on their media use and appear to be less likely to seek out trouble online (for more on Byrne’s research, see “Soft power works better: Parenting social Web users”; also along those lines: “Parenting & the digital drama overload”).

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Filed Under: Parenting, Social Media, social networking Tagged With: ISTTF, Parenting, Sahara Byrne, social networking

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  1. OSTWG report: Why a ‘living Internet’? | NetFamilyNews.org says:
    June 7, 2010 at 11:59 pm

    […] “Most teen social Web users well-adjusted” // Share| Permalink Post a comment — Trackback URI RSS 2.0 feed for these comments This entry (permalink) was posted on Monday, June 7, 2010, at 11:55 pm by Anne. Filed in Internet safety task force, online safely, social media and tagged Adam Thierer, CDT, Emma Llanso, Hemanshu Nigam, Justin Patchin, Larry Magid, living Internet, Marian Merritt, NTIA, OSTWG. […]

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IMPORTANT RESOURCES

Our (DIGITAL) PARENTING BASICS: Safety + Social
NAMLE, the National Association for Media Literacy Education
CASEL.org & the 5 core social-emotional competencies of SEL
Center for Democracy & Technology
Center for Innovative Public Health Research
Childnet International
Committee for Children
Congressional Internet Caucus Academy
ConnectSafely.org
Control Shift: a pivotal book for Internet safety
Crimes Against Children Research Center
Crisis Textline
Cyber Civil Rights Initiative's Revenge Porn Crisis Line
Cyberwise.org
danah boyd's blog and book about networked youth
Disconnected, Carrie James's book on digital ethics
FOSI.org's Good Digital Parenting
The research of Global Kids Online
The Good Project at Harvard's School of Education
If you watch nothing else: "Parenting in a Digital Age" TED Talk by Prof. Sonia Livingstone
The International Bullying Prevention Association
Let Grow Foundation
Making Caring Common
Raising Digital Natives, author Devorah Heitner's site
Renee Hobbs at the Media Education Lab
MediaSmarts.ca
The New Media Literacies
Report of the Aspen Task Force on Learning & the Internet and our guide to Creating Trusted Learning Environments
The Ruler Approach to social-emotional learning (Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence)
Sources of Strength
"Young & Online: Perspectives on life in a digital age" from young people in 26 countries (via UNICEF)
"Youth Safety on a Living Internet": 2010 report of the Online Safety & Technology Working Group (and my post about it)

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