Photo courtesy of flickr:kalebdf 303875647

BoingBoing covered the release of Mimi Ito’s report called “Digital Youth Research”. For those who don’t know, Mimi recently moved into the department of Informatics here at UCI (perhaps soon to be an adjunct faculty member?). She may be eligible (individual circumstances vary), although perhaps not available, to serve on graduate student committees. (The most qualified blog post in history)

Digital Youth Project: If you care about kids and want to understand how they use technology and why, this is a must-read – Boing Boing

“The Digital Youth Project, a MacArthur-funded three year, 22 case study, $3.3 million ethnographic study of what kids are doing online, has wound up and published its results. The project was undertaken by the eminent sociologist Mimi Ito and her talented colleagues (including the incomparable danah boyd) and is the largest and most comprehensive study of young peoples’ internet use ever undertaken in the US.
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. “