Social Web: Picture less foggy

We digital immigrants have, I think, often mistaken the Internet for a single medium like television or film, even as our children the digital natives have been using it for so many things – communications, news, research, entertainment, self-expression, social activism, etc. To them it has long been multiple media in one convenient "package" and meant to be produced, mashed up, and socialized with as much as viewed. Of course we adults have used the term "multimedia," as in "multimedia Web site," but we've somehow seen all those Web sites as media we consume, like television. And "interactive" meant "click here" or "download this" more than using media to connect with the people behind the pages - that's what communications tools like phones and email were for.

Social networking is the biggest mash-up yet of all the media and creative and social tools the Internet represents to young people. Its huge popularity with kids has brought the participatory Web to life for us. But all the hype in the news has presented a largely negative picture of it. It's great to see a growing body of research on *all* that's happening on the social Net, reflecting the full reality – positive, negative, and neutral. We're just beginning to get a wider-angle and more granular picture not only of what the Internet is to youth but also of what means to them and all of us raising, educating, and supporting them. Pls click to this week's issue of my newsletter to see what I mean.