From the Los Angeles Times
Teenage social media butterflies may not be such a bad idea
By Melissa Healy
With his gaze fixed on a tiny screen, hearing plugged by earbuds and fingers flying, the average teenager may look like a disaster in the making: socially stunted, terminally distracted and looking for trouble. But look beyond the dizzying array of beeping, buzzing devices and the incessant multitasking, say psychologists, and today's digital kids may not be such a disaster after all.
Far from hampering adolescents' social skills or putting them in harm's way, as many parents have feared, electronics appear to be the path by which children today develop emotional bonds, their own identities, and an ability to communicate and work with others.
In fact, children most likely to spend lots of time on social media sites are not the least well-adjusted but the healthiest psychologically, suggests an early, but accumulating, body of research....
A three-year Digital Youth Project, undertaken by researchers from schools including USC and UC Berkeley [including School of Information faculty and students], urged adults to "facilitate young people's engagement with digital media" rather than block it, begrudge it or fear it.
"The digital world is creating new opportunities for youth to grapple with social norms, to explore interests, develop technical skills and experiment with new forms of self expression," the group's 2008 white paper concluded....