To loaf is to learn. The countless hours teens spend lazing in front of computer screens and video-game consoles are vital to their development into well-adjusted adults, according to a new multiyear, multimillion-dollar study by the MacArthur Foundation.
The report paints an unprecedented anthropological portrait of how teens use digital media. Dozens of researchers spent three years, $3.3-million (U.S.) and 5,000 hours interviewing more than 800 teens in the United States about their iPods, cellphones and computers.
The findings are somewhat counterintuitive - the more time kids spend in isolation online, the better socialized they become - and provide a compelling rebuttal to arguments about the corrupting influence of video games, grammar-challenged text messages and other realms of new media.
"When technology is involved it brings out all these anxieties for parents," said Danah Boyd, one of the researchers. "It shouldn't. The Internet is where teens learn how the social world works."
The report comes at a time when Canadians are on high alert for the Internet's corrupting influence on kids.
The digital afflictions of today's teens were underscored by the disappearance and death last month of 15-year-old Brandon Crisp, who ran away from his Barrie, Ont., home after his parents barred him from playing a favourite online game.
The MacArthur researchers urge parents to avoid a backlash against digital media.
"We are witnessing the biggest leap in adolescent freedom since the invention of the car," said C. J. Pascoe, another Digital Youth Project researcher. "Teens can escape their parents' control. And that makes adults a little bit scared. But they should know that kids are doing online what they've done offline for decades."
Online communities such as Facebook, MySpace and YouTube serve the same organizing function as mall parking lots a decade ago or soda shops during the 1950s, according to the researchers.
Now, as then, parents are trying to keep kids away from those hubs. Web filters and nanny-ware have been touted as a way of limiting where and when children can navigate online.
But just as teens of yore ducked out the back window, they are today stepping around digital barriers.
"Students are always a few steps ahead of parents and school administrations," Dr. Pascoe said. "At schools or homes that blocked MySpace or Facebook, the kids still manage to log on through proxy sites. Restricting information doesn't do anyone any good."
That liberates teens to explore any online content - from schoolyard beatings on YouTube to nudity on YouPorn - but the researchers found that peers soon rein in any out-of-the-ordinary behaviour.
"They pretty quickly figure out anyone with bad intentions," Ms. Boyd said.
They also don't recommend that parents spy on their children by signing up for MySpace or Facebook.
"Snooping only furthers a lack of trusting engagement," Ms. Boyd said.
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.
"I will unexpectedly wander in the odd time they're using the computer to check up, to chat and look at who's on their buddy list," he said. "I try to have positive conversations with them about what they're doing online, but to tell you the truth, they usually end up educating me more than I do them. It takes a while for parents to get their head around that."
