TEENAGERS playing games, hanging out on social networking sites, and chatting online are not wasting time as popularly believed, said a study on online use released last week in the United States.
Instead, they are learning how to get along with others, build a public identity, create Web pages and post links, said the report on Living And Learning With New Media.
Their participation is giving them the technological skills and literacy they need to succeed in the contemporary world, it added.
The study was part of a three-year ethnographic study sponsored by the MacArthur Foundation, a non-profit organisation.
It was part of a US$50 million (S$76 million) project on digital media and learning. For the project, researchers interviewed over 800 teenagers and their parents from diverse backgrounds across the US. They also observed the teenagers for more than 5,000 hours.
The report counters the stereotypical view that spending time online - playing games, watching videos, making friends at social networks and chatting - are not doing teenagers any good.
The researchers report that teenagers were using the Web to learn new skills like writing music and posting them on MySpace social network, composing poetry and posting them online or putting up home movies on YouTube.
They are also more likely to spend online time with their close group of friends rather than strangers.
In the report, parents and educators were encouraged to keep pace with the teenagers
so as to be able to guide their children on what experts call stranger danger - like sexual predators who lure children on the pretext of being their friend - to teenagers spending too much time online.
Parents in Singapore should also take note of the findings. Teenagers here behave no differently than their American counterparts where new media is concerned. iPods, mobile phones and computers have permeated their lives in the last few years. They are adept at multi-tasking. For instance, they may be talking on the phone and instant messaging several friends at the same time while hammering out their school essay to be submitted the next day.
Or they may be sending messages to each other on Facebook and getting together with their clan mates to hunt and kill the enemy in a computer game.
It is no wonder concerns about gaming and computer addiction, among other issues, ring loud among parents and educators.
The fear arises because they think new media equals meeting strangers online and Internet or gaming addiction.
Parents should modify their views about new media because those skills will be needed in the workplace.
Companies are now using social networks to reach their current and future customers. Instant messaging is a way of staying in touch with customers and business partners.
Computer gaming hones competitive skills. If you are playing games like World Of Warcraft (left) where you have to be a member of a guild to play, then you will learn how to convince people you have never met to act in tandem with you to reach an objective.
Restricting teenagers to just so many hours a day online is not a solution. Children are not under parental supervision every minute of the day. Plus, the online media is an always-on phenomena where time has no meaning.
It is better to fix the 'software' - that is instil the knowledge on the best ways to handle situations children are likely to experience in an online world.
However, like what the US study concluded, parents must first understand new media.
Immerse themselves in their children's world - play a few games and visit the websites their children go to. Learn what it is like to be on Facebook.
Only through the experience they get from doing the same things their kids do can they tune in to the youths' psyche and give relevant guidance.
chngkeg@sph.com.sg
This story was first published in the Straits Times Digital Life on 26 November 2008.
