Growing up my parents forced me to play outside whenever the weather would permit it. I didn’t watch very much television (just Sesame Street and Star Trek really) and the internet wasn’t really around yet (and even when it was, my brother and I weren’t on it all that much).  This is something I will always be thankful for as I can’t help but think that having to go outside and having only my imagination to guide my childhood playtime has played a large role in who I am today (and I like who I am today!)

Today things are a bit different though and kids are spending increasing amounts of time on the internet and watching the 5 billion TV channels that exist.  In terms of the internet there is good and bad. The good being awesome new educational opportunities (research etc.) and the downside being the 5 billion ways one can fool around on the internet. Which is why a new report by The Digital Youth Project concerning what kid’s are doing online is so important. The report, funded by the MacArthur Foundation, comes from a 3 year, 3.3 million dollar study headed up by Mimi Ito. And while that may seem like a lot of money to study what kids are doing while they surf, the results are priceless:

(via Boing Boing)

The conclusions are sane, compassionate, and compelling: in a nutshell, the “serious” stuff we all hope kids will do online (researching papers and so on) are only possible within a framework of “hanging out, messing around and geeking out.” That is to say, all the “time-wasting” social stuff kids do online are key to their explorations and education online.

Ito and her team establish a taxonomy of social activity, dividing it first into “peer-driven” and “interest-driven” — the former being what kids do with their real-world friends, the latter being the niche interests that drive them to locate other people who are as fascinated as they are by whatever brand of esoterica they fancy.

Within these two categories, the researchers break things down further into “hanging out” (undirected, social activities), “messing around” (tinkering with media, networks and technologies) and “geeking out” (delving deep into subjects based on global communities of interest) and for each one, they describe the successful and unsuccessful techniques deployed by parents and educators to direct kids’ activities.

All this is explained in a crisp, 55-page white paper, a snappy two-pager, and a full-length book called (appropriately), “Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media.” All three are available as free downloads, naturally, and the book can also be purchased as a physical object in a year when it’s published. [boing boing]

takepart to learn what else the report had to say and to read it in it’s entirety.

*photo from machado17’s flickr stream (creative commons)