What do we know about social networks for kids?:

For all the warnings, concerns and advice people about the potential risks and dangers for children who are online for an average of two hours a day, there’s also some benefits.

You may have noticed it for yourself if your child has the game called Little Big Planet. It’s a game where a child can discover, collect, create, customise two and three dimensional art objects and then share them with fellow players/creators and also create their own level of play. From an educational perspective, that’s a great set of linkages and processes for a child to learn, and it also gives them social literacy by learning about sharing, liking, reviewing and collaborating.

This game is one of many highlighted in a fascinating study from the Joan Ganz Cooney Center in New York entitled Kids Online, a new research agenda for understanding social networking forums (SNF).

The study’s authors (Dr Sara Grimes and Dr Deborah Fields) write that “many important new literacies are necessary for participating deeply in some of the best practices available in SNF,” as the description of what happens in and around Little Big Planet shows.

“Research also suggests that SNF can also promote some forms of social and identity development. Emerging SNF that sponsor sharing creative designs may provide unique opportunities for children to develop these kinds of new literacies and social practices, sometimes also called 'citizenship'.”

In other words, not every online experience and not every social network is a poor or negative experience.

The study was conducted because so little is known about the use of digital and social media, particularly in the age group from when children start embracing digital technology in a significant way: 9-12 years. The report calls for more child-focussed research into online habits of children because they are different developmentally from teenagers and have very different interests.

In doing so, it puts online safety in the context of children’s development, education, participation, and rights, calling for a new, balanced and evidence-based approach to the discussion of children and media.

“Misrepresentation is common in media coverage of kids and SNF, especially various examples of moral panic-style reports of young people’s online practices,” the Grimes and Fields write. “In addition to perpetuating harmful myths about kids and online social networking, such media classification also obscures important findings and compelling arguments about the roles that these activities can play in kids’ lives.”

As well as Little Big Planet, Grimes and Fields profiled the following games.

• Disney’s Club Penguin, with some 150 million largely 6-to-14-year-old worldwide registered users, who play in 5 languages
• Cisco’s Networking Academy on Facebook, hosting knowledge-sharing by teens and young adults in 20 countries about designing, building, troubleshooting and securing computer networks (15,575 weekly active users)
• The very design-oriented educational virtual world Whyville.net with 6.9 million members (median ages 8-15)
• The very social computer-programming and media project-sharing site Scratch.mit.edu (median age 12), with 1.1+ million members working in 44 languages around the world.

The study also looks at a group which represents 22% of all students in the US – “hackers and nonconformists” who, they say, should be guided rather than restricted and who demonstrate an “extraordinary set of traditional and 21^st century skills.” 

The study is not everyone's idea of a good read, but if you're interested in your child's online social world, and how he or she can get the most out of it, then it's worth taking a quick look even if it's only the case studies.