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Home > Blogs > Springfield Schools News and Issues > Archives > 2008 > November > 25
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Is MySpace an educational experience?
Parents who worry about their kids’ time spent goofing off on the Web may have some good news - a new study suggests that time is actually educating today’s youth.
In fact, the media and technology literacy lessons students pick up during their time on the Internet actually rivals the ones they get in a formal education setting, according to a three-year study called DigitalYouth out of the University of Southern California and the University of California, Berkeley.
Nearly 90 percent of teens use the Internet and the average student spends 7 to 8 hours a week on the Web, according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project.
The DigitalYouth project found that students gain these lessons regardless of their online activities, whether they are participating in “interest-driven” activities (looking into subjects they want to know more about) or “socially-driven” activities (MySpace and Facebook).
A 2006 Pew study found that most parents felt the Internet did not have an effect on their children. It also found an increase from 2004 of parents who felt the Internet was not a good thing for their kids.
The DigitalYouth research suggests that students are learning social and technical skills from any time spent on the Web. The study also suggests that cutting teens off from the Web will keep them from learning these skills that are necessary “to fully participate in contemporary society.”
And students may benefit more from time online during school if educators took a more relaxed approach to those sessions, according to the research.
Relaxed and the Web aren’t things we here often when it comes to minors online. And the study certainly isn’t suggesting we just let students run unchecked on the Internet. Most schools ban access to sites like MySpace from their networks anyway.
But the reason kids are taking the lessons away from their time on the Web is because those hours are driven by their own motivation and curiosity and students are more likely to learn these things from their peers than adults.
So instead of highly scheduled Web sessions, students might reap more benefit from sessions where they are allowed to explore the Web on their own, according to the study.
Do you think today’s youth benefits from their time spent online?
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