More on the MacArthur report:

Some Internet safety experts have condemned this large-scale migration of teen lives from physical to digital spaces, saying their behaviour borders on addiction.

Ms. Boyd plays down those concerns.

“They are not drawn by the technology,” she said. “They are drawn by their friends. Are young people addicted to their friends? The answer is probably yes, and it always has been.”

The study, released late last week, is already making waves among Internet safety experts.

“It shows that parents of my generation have to let up,” said Paul Gillespie, president and CEO of the Kids Internet Safety Alliance and a father of two teens. “I think we really have caused more concern than necessary.”

Mr. Gillespie practises what he preaches. The teens in his household have unfettered Internet access, but not entirely free of spot checks.

Created by a team of researchers and media professionals at the Media Education Lab, located at Temple University’s School of Communication and Theater in the Department of Broadcast Telecommunication and Mass Media. Sherri Hope Culver and Renee Hobbs led the production team.

My Pop Studio is a creative play experience that strengthens critical thinking skills about television, music, magazines and online media directed at girls. Users select from four behind-the-scenes opportunities to learn more about mass media:

• In the Magazine Studio, users compose a magazine layout featuring themselves as celebrities. They write an advice column, explore the power of digital retouching, and reflect on the role of body image in today’s culture.
• In the TV Studio, users edit a TV show where the story keeps changing but the images remain the same. They examine their TV viewing choices, comment on teen celebrities, and compare their daily screen time with others.
• In the Music Studio, users create a pop star and compose her image and song. They explore the power of music in selling a product and search for truth in media gossip. The comment on the values messages in popular music.
• In the Digital Studio, users test their multi-tasking abilities. They share their experiences with the challenges of digital life online. They consider the “what if’s” of social networking sites and reflect on the power of media and technology in their social relationships.

On April 20th 1999, the United States was rocked by a horrific school shooting at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. In the years to follow, many forms of media began to sort out the events of that day. Books were published. Films were produced. Then in 2005, one Colorado man created an amateur videogame exploring the actions and possible motives of the two shooters. Offered as a free online computer game, it was downloaded over half a million times, became immensely controversial and brought a pressing question to the public discussion: we can read Columbine, we can watch Columbine, but can we play Columbine? Moreover, should we?

After being made on a shoestring budget with entry-level middleware, Super Columbine Massacre RPG! easily provoked more debate and discussion than one could imagine a 16-bit role-playing game ever would. In the documentary Playing Columbine: a true story of videogame controversy, the journey of the game is traced back to its inception, through the 2006 shooting at Dawson College in which the game was singled out by the media as a “murder simulator” that “trained” the shooter, and finally the game’s removal from the list of finalists at the Slamdance 2007 Guerrilla Gamemaker Competition – prompting half the entries and a sponsor to pull out of the festival in protest. Clearly the game has polarized audiences worldwide, giving way to ardent defenders as well as staunch critics. Beyond the controversial game itself, the film explores how controversial media is covered in the press, the school shooting phenomenon, and the future of games as an expressive medium.

http://media.atwaterlibrary.ca/

The first national survey of its kind finds that virtually all American teens play computer, console, or cell phone games and that the gaming experience is rich and varied, with a significant amount of social interaction and potential for civic engagement. The survey was conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, an initiative of the Pew Research Center and was supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The primary findings in the survey of 1,102 youth ages 12-17 include —

Game playing is universal, with almost all teens playing games and at least half playing games on a given day. Game playing experiences are diverse, with the most popular games falling into the racing, puzzle, sports, action and adventure categories.

Game playing is also social, with most teens playing games with others at least some of the time and can incorporate many aspects of civic and political life.

Another major finding is that game playing sometimes involves exposure to mature content, with almost a third of teens playing games that are listed as appropriate only for people older than they are.

Teens and Social Media: The use of social media gains a greater foothold in teen life as they embrace the conversational nature of interactive online media (12/19/07)
http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/230/report_display.asp

Content creation by teenagers continues to grow, with 64% of online teenagers ages 12 to 17 engaging in at least one type of content creation, up from 57% of online teens in 2004.

Girls continue to dominate most elements of content creation. Some 35% of all teen girls blog, compared with 20% of online boys, and 54% of wired girls post photos online compared with 40% of online boys. Boys, however, do dominate one area – posting of video content online. Online teen boys are nearly twice as likely as online girls (19% vs. 10%) to have posted a video online somewhere where someone else could see it.

The survey found that content creation is not just about sharing creative output; it is also about participating in conversations fueled by that content. Nearly half (47%) of online teens have posted photos where others can see them, and 89% of those teens who post photos say that people comment on the images at least “some of the time.”

Teens, Privacy and Online Social Networks: How teens manage their online identities and personal information in the age of MySpace (4/18/07)
http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/211/report_display.asp

The majority of teens actively manage their online profiles to keep the information they believe is most sensitive away from the unwanted gaze of strangers, parents and other adults. While many teens post their first name and photos on their profiles, they rarely post information on public profiles they believe would help strangers actually locate them such as their full name, home phone number or cell phone number.

Some 55% of online teens have profiles and most of them restrict access to their profile in some way. Of those with profiles, 66% say their profile is not visible to all internet users. Of those whose profile can be accessed by anyone online, nearly half (46%) say they give at least some false information. Teens post fake information to protect themselves and also to be playful or silly.

AND MANY OTHER REPORTS…

http://www.cbc.ca/nextprimeminister/candidates/gabrielbranlopez.htm

This report found that the educational quality of children’s educational/informational programs on commercial broadcast television is at its lowest level since it was first measured in the 1990s.

And, as reported in the Globe and Mail, November 18, 2008:
Tralee Pearce, Hannah Montana schools Curious George.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20081118.LEDUCATIONAL18/TPStory/TPEntertainment/Television/

When it comes to children’s TV that educates, Sesame Street remains the gold standard, Degrassi: The Next Generation is a pretty good choice and Curious George is scraping the bottom of the barrel, according to a new study assessing the educational claims broadcasters make about the shows they air.

Even shows that you may have thought had no educational value – Hannah Montana, anyone? – may teach a lesson or two after all.

Researchers at the University of Illinois found that only 13 per cent of 40 popular kids’ shows are “highly educational.” About 23 per cent are “minimally educational.” And a handful of shows included disturbing levels of aggression.

“There are a lot of programs that are not reaching the high bar we might hope would be there,” says lead author Barbara Wilson, a communication professor who presented the paper at a news conference in Washington last Thursday. The paper was financed by Children Now, a U.S. non-profit research and advocacy group.

Social network sites, online games, video-sharing sites, and gadgets such as iPods and mobile phones are now fixtures of youth culture. They have so permeated young lives that it is hard to believe that less than a decade ago these technologies barely existed. Today’s youth may be coming of age and struggling for autonomy and identity as did their predecessors, but they are doing so amid new worlds for communication, friendship, play, and self-expression.

We include here the findings of three years of research on kids’ informal learning with digital media. The two page summary incorporates a short, accessible version of our findings. The White Paper is a 30-page document prepared for the MacArthur Foundation’s Digital Media and Learning Series. The book is an online version of our forthcoming book with MIT Press and incorporates the insights from 800 youth and young adults and over 5000 hours of online observations.

And, reported in The New York Times by Tamar Lewin, November 19, 2008:  Study Finds Teenagers’ Internet Socializing Isn’t Such a Bad Thing…

Good news for worried parents: All those hours their teenagers spend socializing on the Internet are not a bad thing, according to a new study by the MacArthur Foundation.

“It may look as though kids are wasting a lot of time hanging out with new media, whether it’s on MySpace or sending instant messages,” said Mizuko Ito, lead researcher on the study, “Living and Learning With New Media.” “But their participation is giving them the technological skills and literacy they need to succeed in the contemporary world. They’re learning how to get along with others, how to manage a public identity, how to create a home page.”

The study, conducted from 2005 to last summer, describes new-media usage but does not measure its effects.

“It certainly rings true that new media are inextricably woven into young people’s lives,” said Vicki Rideout, vice president of the Kaiser Family Foundation and director of its program for the study of media and health. “Ethnographic studies like this are good at describing how young people fit social media into their lives. What they can’t do is document effects. This highlights the need for larger, nationally representative studies.”