The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation has a message for parents worried about their children's use of the Internet: Chill out. A new study to be released today found that most teenagers steer clear of dangerous sites and use the Web only for research or to communicate with friends.
It's just that, as usual, parents don't understand.
"One of the main things we found is that it is highly motivating for kids to learn from peers, whether it's the everyday social stuff or learning about new technology or making videos or doing creative writing," said Mizuko Ito, a UC Irvine researcher and the report's lead author. "They're learning a lot of the basic social and technical skills they need to participate in contemporary society. If kids are excluded from participating, they're not learning to engage with media and technology in the way that their peers are."
Over three years, researchers interviewed more than 800 children and parents and spent thousands of hours observing how teenagers engage with social networking sites. They discovered that the Internet has become an integral and necessary component of a child's education and maturation.
Tell that to Daniel Ramirez.
Every night, when his 13-year-old daughter, Amanda, hops online, Ramirez is there to monitor the mouse clicks.
"I actually log her in just to make sure she goes to the right sites," said Ramirez, 48, who lives in Orange County. Because he worries about child predators and inappropriate Web content, he checks everything Amanda prints out and has a house rule that the Internet is only to be used for homework or to visit the free online math tutor.
"She comes home and tells me a lot of her friends want her to get on MySpace and Facebook," Ramirez said. "I tell her she doesn't need any of that."
Parents, the study said, are tough critics of the notion that updating your Facebook wall or posting a video to YouTube is as necessary as looking up information for a history paper.
"I have Internet only because she needs information for her homework," said Delmy Leiva of her daughter Elizabeth, 12. "I don't want her to find friends on the Internet. You never know who's on the other side."
Leiva, 38, said she doesn't allow Elizabeth to use an e-mail account and last year installed a program on their laptop that blocks MySpace. The seventh-grader at John H. Liechty Middle School near downtown thinks the restriction has kept her out of the loop with classmates.
