YouTube, ESPN, Google and AddictingGames remain the most visited sites for tween boys. Tween girls favor YouTube, Disney, Yahoo and Facebook.

Where the tweens are
Well, over 60 percent of tweens said they viewed at least one video on YouTube during the past month. Hulu is also catching on too… about one in six tweens said they watched a TV show or movie on Hulu. Over the past two years, tweens have become the heaviest consumers of movies and TV shows online

Game on
For tweens gaming is increasingly popular in social media. Nearly nine out of ten tweens participate in regular (monthly) online gaming for either casual online play, multi-player games or console-based games. Today online gaming is fairly gender neutral. Things don’t start to be male-oriented until the early teen years.

Born to shop
E-commerce is also gaining as Tweens have become loyal online shoppers, with more than a third shopping (and buying) online at least once during the past month, as compared to only 25 percent just a year ago.

We all know that kids need to be at least 13 years old to register for social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Tweens who really want in just need to fudge their birth date to register. And the research confirms that the “fudging” becomes all the more common as kids approach their thirteenth birthday.

In an age where college applications are mainly accepted online, some universities and colleges now accept videos instead of essays. Our educational concept of literacy is evolving and so is the definition of “writing.”

Schools are beginning to recognize that students are writing in new ways. Our culture is no longer about pen and paper so writing teachers are seeking new ways to teach writing in the digital age.

Collaboration is a key component in digital writing, defined as a combination of words, images, audio, and website links. Students are collaborating in different ways. Often they create a text jointly, through shared documents or wikis. Other projects may involve taking turns posting on a collective blog. Teaching this type of collaborative writing is new to most classrooms.

In tech-savvy elementary and middle school classrooms the students are required to include digital content in their oral presentations. They may show a word cloud created with Wordle or an interactive poster made on
Glogster.

Digital Content Tools
Students are using many different websites and apps to add digital content to their writing projects.

Animoto
Using photos, video clips, text, and music, students can produce a short video. The finished product can be uploaded to YouTube, Facebook, and other sharing sites.

Glogster
Combine text, audio, video, animation, data, and other multimedia elements to make interactive posters and collages. Facilitates online collaboration on projects.

Google Docs
This free document-sharing program allows users to create, store, and share documents, spreadsheets, and presentations online. Multiple users can work on the same piece at once.

Puppet Pals
This iPad application allows users to create and record their own animated story. The author(s) can select characters, a setting, and a title and narrate the story into the microphone while moving the cartoon “puppets” manually.

Wikispaces
Students create wikis, or collaborative websites that are managed and edited by groups of people, through Wikispaces.

Wallwisher
Users can create a “wall” or Web page, where others can add their own messages to this “online notice board.” Each new message looks like a post-it note. Videos and images can also be added.

According to the Pew Study on Teen Gaming and Civic Engagement, teens spend about half of their screen time playing games. Some of the most popular games have to do with racing, puzzles, sports, action, adventure and learning.

The new wave of gaming is highly social. Teens (and tweens) are becoming hooked on games that are a working model for online collaboration and problem solving. Some games even incorporate aspects of civic and political life.

My favorite interns from Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society created a video on this topic that covers this topic very well.

I have seen some of this social gaming first hand since my son participates in Future Cities competitions through his middle school. The participants start out by creating cities using Sim City software. The students work in groups to develop the infrastructure of their future city. Sometimes they go online to consult with teams in other parts of the country. Eventually each team builds a model of the city and develops working prototypes of their infrastructure projects. My son’s team went to a regional competition where they won an award for their transportation system.

What is interesting about the future cities program is that the kids learn how to build models to represent their virtual cities. They learn how to adapt their designs to real-world conditions, much like an architect or engineer must do. Then they meet with other kids and the engineers that judge each entry at the Future Cities competition.

Harvard social media researchers ask the question: Do t(w)een digital natives use Twitter?

Their answers are revealing about how many t(w)een social media users use various social media platforms and adapt their messages to the medium. They theorize that teens and tweens are developing code to avoid parents from spying on their conversations.

According to Harvard researcher, Dana Boyd, “Teens turn to private messages or texting or other forms of communication for intimate interactions, but they don’t care enough about certain information to put the effort into locking it down.”

Photo courtesy of Media Shift

Twitter is becoming a preferred platform for private communication among tech-savvy teens in affluent communities. Boyd has found that these teens keep their their Twitter accounts under wraps, sharing only with their inner circle of friends. They find that Twitter offers better crowd control (aka privacy) than Facebook. “Facebook is like shouting in a crowd, Twitter is like talking in a room,” stated one teen she studied.

The Harvard research indicates that teenagers have adapted to social media by developing their own private language which is based on song lyrics, personal jokes, na’vi etc. They communicate in code so that only insiders and close friends will understand the true meaning of their messages. There is even an online decoder to help parents understand what their t(w)eens are chatting/tweeting about.

Socrates offered up this critique on the youth of his day: “children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise… They contradict their parents, chatter before company… tyrannize their teachers.” Sound familiar?

Working with the Center’s digital media producer, each intern created a video to illustrate each chapter of Born Digital by John Palfrey and Urs Gasser.

About the interns

About Born Digital

Based on extensive original research, including interviews with Digital Natives around the world, Born Digital explores a broad range of issues, from the highly philosophical to the purely practical: What does identity mean for young people who have dozens of online profiles and avatars? Should we worry about privacy issues – or is privacy even a relevant concern for Digital Natives? How does the concept of safety translate into an increasingly virtual world? Are online games addictive, and how do we need to worry about violent video games? What is the Internet’s impact on creativity and learning? What lies ahead – socially, professionally, and psychologically – for this generation?

Videos and About Born Digital description:
©The President and Fellows of Harvard College

According to The Daily Telegraph, about 20,000 members are removed from Facebook every day for lying about their age. Last week Facebook’s chief privacy adviser Mozelle Thompson admitted to Australia’s cyber-safety committee that underage users were taking advantage of the site.

Video courtesy of WKRG

The Pew Internet and American Life Project finds that nearly half of all 12-year-old kids in the U.S. are using social network sites, despite not meeting the minimum age requirements for sites like Facebook.

Clearly, the honors system does not seem to be an effective way of checking a user’s age when they register. Do any of you have/know kids that are under thirteen on Facebook? Is thirteen the appropriate age to start engaging in social networking? What age is appropriate?

During the past week I have read at least five articles that talk about “Facebook depression.” Apparently this happens when kids (or adults) becoming obsessed with the social networking website and feel they are not getting as much attention as they would like.

Pediatricians and psychologists warn that Facebook puts vulnerable children at risk for depression. Being shunned on a social networking website may even be more serious than if a child is ignored by their friends in real life, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.

For the first time, the AAP has published a set of social media guidelines. They believe that that cyber-harassment “can cause profound psycho-social outcomes.” Sometimes these cases can lead to suicide.

The AAP guidelines state that teenagers need to be monitored when using Facebook. And it goes without saying that children under thirteen should not have a profile on Facebook at all.

Parents should not think that the Facebook site causes depression. They just need to realize that some dramas that used to play out in the cafeteria or the locker room are now taking place in social media.

Learn more:
Pediatricians Should Discuss ‘Facebook Depression’ with Kids, Time
TechBytes: Facebook Depression, ABC News Technology
Aren’t We All Suffering From ‘Facebook Depression?’, PCWorld

And the saga continues…

According to Mashable, “Friday” is now the most hated video on the YouTube. Rebecca Black’s “Friday” surpassed Justin Bieber’s “Baby” by around 27,000 dislikes this week.

Rebecca Black’s music video “Friday” was a rising star with 64 million YouTube views since last month. Now “Friday” has over 1.19 million dislikes. Only Justin Bieber’s “Baby” comes close with  nearly 1.2 million dislikes. (Word on the street is all the Bieber haters are boys.)

Since Bieber’s vieo has over 501 million views, he can take a million haters in stride. But Rebecca Black’s video has inspired “dislike” from nearly 2% of the viewers who saw the video. “Baby” has a hate-rate of just under .25%.

Not to worry. Rebecca still has some loyal followers. I read on Facebook how they were consoling her about the recent YouTube hate wave. Yes, she really writes in ALLCAPS ALL THE TIME!

Rebecca Black

OMG NO FRIDAY WAS TAKEN DOWN!!

Madison Holman
no way that sucks I love that song

Rebecca Black

HEY FRIDAY IS BACK UP WOOHOO!

Is “Friday” really so bad? You be the judge.