Today’s tech-savvy kids and young adults spend more text messages everyday than there are people on the planet. They grew up tethered to multiple electronic devices while juggling text messages, surfing the Net and listening to iPods – all while doing their homework. They mix learning, communicating and playing.

By age 21 years of age, it is estimated that the average child will have:
– Spent 10,000 hours playing video games
– Sent 200,000 emails
– Spent 20,000 hours watching TV
– Spent 10,000 hours on their cell phone
– Spent under 5,000 hours reading

As more and more adults worry that children are wasting time online, texting, or playing video games, social network and video sharing sites, online games, and gadgets such as iPods and mobile phones are becoming more mainstream fixtures of youth culture. Is our next generation of workers frittering their lives away – or is it just possible that resistant parents and employers are the ones becoming more out of touch with reality. New research just released by the MacArthur foundation might serve as a wake-up call…or at least force adults to pause before they pull the plug on their kids.

According to findings published in the study Living and Learning with New Media, this digital world is not sending our youth back to the age of caves and dinosaurs but creating new opportunities for youth to grapple with social norms, explore interests, develop technical skills, and experiment with new forms of self-expression.

Today’s youth are almost always “on,” in constant contact with their friends through private communications like MySpace and Facebook. But contrary to popular opinion that complete strangers are stalking and dominating these relationships, most youth are almost always associating with people they already know in their offline lives. The majority of youth use new media to “hang out” and extend existing friendships in these new ways just like generations before did with pen pals and tree houses.

A smaller number of youth do use the online world to explore interests and find information that goes beyond what they have access to at school or in their community. They form online groups, driven by common interests, to network with peers outside the boundaries of their local community. They can also find opportunities to publicize and distribute their work to online audiences, and to gain new forms of visibility and reputation. By exploring new interests, tinkering and “messing around” with new forms of media, they acquire various forms of technical and media literacy.

And to a lesser degree, some youth “geek out.” They dive into a topic or talent. But contrary to popular images, geeking out is highly social and engaged. Geeks tend to be highly specialized and seek the knowledge of both teens and adults from around the country or world. But in the digital world, experts aren’t automatically recognized by age. In many respects, geeking out erases the traditional markers of status and authority. In the digital world, expertise is what demands respect and they are more motivated to learn from their peers than from adults.

Again contrary to adult perceptions, youth who are hanging out online are picking up basic social and technical skills they need to participate in contemporary society. New media forms are altering how youth socialize and learn and if adults don’t choose to keep up with today’s new media, it is very likely that they will be the ones left disconnected and out of tune with reality.

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