We've blogged and made numerous references to the splendid Digital Youth Project conducted by Mimi Ito's team and part of the MacArthur Foundation's ongoing effort "Building the Field of Digital Media and Learning." This reblog from the MacArthur Foundation's Spotlight Blog (http://spotlight.macfound.org/main/entry/digital_youth_research_coverage/) recaps the coverage this report has been receiving and the impact it is having in the world. My hope is that the study itself, and its reception, will reverse a decade of punditry that has gone in a seriously wrong direction.

In doing research for a chapter of my book on digital youth, I went back to dozens of studies from the 1980s and 1990s, the years of Pac Man and Space Invaders, and found study after study praising the benefits of video games for kids, on a cognitive level, a social level, a technological and learning level, and on an imaginative level. But after Columbine, not only were video games blamed for this tragedy but became the scapegoat for all the ills of digital youth today. The positive research on gaming was directed to adult training (simulations for everyone from airline pilots to brain surgeons) and to rejuvenative games (like Brain Age). Juveniles themselves were left out of the picture.

However, the two far-reaching studies funded by the MacArthur Foundation's Digital Media and Learning Initiative both underscore that digital media is widespread in our youth. 97% of kids in America, the Pew Study shows, play some form of digital game. And, as this Digital Youth Project ethnography shows, online texting and video game playing enhance imagination, strengthen social ties, and allow kids to explore social norms. It also allows for self-directed play, niche interests, new ares of learning, creativity, and technical skills, all as a part of social life, of growing up, of learning about the world and learning how to shape that world.

We have much to learn from both of these studies. And we are learning. The other day, I happened to have lunch with two colleagues in the business community. One of them surprised me by saying that, even in the hallways of traditional businesses such as IBM, which have been skeptical about online worlds and participatory learning, because of the MacArthur Foundation Initiative, because of our Competition, and because of the solid, methodologically serious, and beautifully presented research in the Pew and the Digital Youth Project reports, there is a sea-change even in the business world.

Thank you again to Mimi Ito and her team and the MacArthur Foundation for funding this remarkable, urgent, important research.

Reblogged from the MacArthur Foundation's Spotlight Blog on Digital Media and Learning, at: http://spotlight.macfound.org/main/entry/digital_youth_research_coverage/.

Tuesday 9th December 2008 8:00 am

We summarize the coverage of new findings from a three-year ethnographic study of young people?s digital media use, which was released by Mizuko Ito and her colleagues last month.

Contrary to popular myths, the study found that America?s youth are developing important social and technical skills online ? often in ways adults do not understand or value.

Living and Learning with New Media is available as an executive summary, a white paper, or a full research report, now available online and forthcoming as a book from MIT Press. Press release, video interviews, and additional information about the study can be found on MacArthur?s website.

See press coverage in The New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and many more results from google news.

From the blogosphere -

• Henry Jenkins has just posted a two-part interview with the book?s authors. Part One. Part Two.
• John Palfrey says the study is ?required reading? for those interested in the field.
• Cory Doctorow, in a post on Boing Boing, points out that this research is an important antidote to adult fears about the supposed dangers of teens spending too much time online.
• Rafi Santo, posting on the Global Kids? blog, highlights the researchers? attention to kids self-directed learning online.
• We also saw additional coverage on Smart Mobs, Connect with Your Teens Through Pop Culture and Technology on blogher, and Mike Gruss.

You can hear the book?s authors talk about their work in a forum we sponsored last spring, now on available youtube thanks to Global Kids. Part One. Part Two.

We?re also in the middle of running a Spotlight series from the book?s authors who detail findings from each chapter. Please check back on Spotlight or see Mimi Ito?s introduction and series index here.