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Authors
Mizuko Ito, Heather Horst, Matteo Bittanti, danah boyd,Becky Herr-Stephenson, Patricia G. Lange, C.J. Pascoe,and Laura Robinson with Sonja Baumer, Rachel Cody,Dilan Mahendran, Katynka Martínez, Dan Perkel, ChristoSims,and Lisa Tripp. The research was a joint project ofthe University of Southern California and the Universityof California, Berkeley.
Research Summary
Over three years, University of California, Irvineresearcher Mizuko Ito and her team interviewed over800 youth and young adults and conducted over 5000hours of online observations as part of the most exten-sive U.S. study of youth media use.They found that social network and video-sharing sites,online games, and gadgets such as iPods and mobilephones are now fixtures of youth culture. The researchshows that today’s youth may be coming of age andstruggling for autonomy and identity amid new worldsfor communication, friendship, play, and self-expression.Many adults worry that children are wasting time online,texting, or playing video games. The researchers explainwhy youth find these activities compelling and impor-tant. The digital world is creating new opportunities foryouth to grapple with social norms, explore interests,develop technical skills, and experiment with new formsof self-expression. These activities have captured teens’attention because they provide avenues for extendingsocial worlds, self-directed learning, and independence.
Major Findings
YOUTH
 
USE
 
ONLINE
 
MEDIA
 
TO
 
EXTEND
 
FRIENDSHIPS
 
AND
 
INTERESTS
.
Most youth use online networks to extend the friend-ships that they navigate in the familiar contexts ofschool, religious organizations, sports, and other localactivities. They can be “always on,” in constant contactwith their friends through private communications likeinstant messaging or mobile phones, as well as inpublic ways through social network sites such asMySpace and Facebook. With these “friendship-driven”practices, youth are almost always associating withpeople they already know in their offline lives. The ma-jority of youth use new media to “hang out” and extendexisting friendships in these ways.A smaller number of youth also use the online world toexplore interests and find information that goes beyondwhat they have access to at school or in their local com-munity. Online groups enable youth to connect to peerswho share specialized and niche interests of variouskinds, whether that is online gaming, creative writing,video editing, or other artistic endeavors. In these inter-est-driven networks, youth may find new peers outsidethe boundaries of their local community. They can alsofind opportunities to publicize and distribute their workto online audiences, and to gain new forms of visibilityand reputation.
YOUTH
 
ENGAGE
 
IN
 
PEER
-
BASED
,
SELF
-
DIRECTED
 
LEARNING
 
ONLINE
.
In both friendship-driven and interest-driven online activ-ity, youth create and navigate new forms of expression
November, 2008
www.macfound.org
Living and Learning with NewMedia: Summary of Findingsfrom the Digital Youth Project
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