Online Communities & Youth Behavioral Development Abril Vela 

Moving Online Who? How? When? Where? Why? What’s Happening? 

Youth Online 

Mobile Devices 

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Desire to Engage Publicly 

Social Validation 

“I have had some really bad experiences but the experiences I gained and the self-esteem I got made up for that! I do believe that youth can experience more, with fewer boundaries, when online, since you are judged by your brain online and not your looks.“ - Female, 15 (Michikyan, Subrahmanyam, & Dennis, 2014) 

Create 

Source: https://scratch.mit.edu/statistics/ 

Source: https://scratch.mit.edu/statistics/ 

What’s happening offline? 

Cognitive Development Involvement in online communities has a positive effect on youth cognitive development. Computers combine auditory and visual features to enhance youth cognitive development in the following areas (Phuoc & Subrahmanyam, 2013) : ● Emergent Literacy ● Reading ● Problem-solving skills 

Academic Development ● Participatory communities online allow youth to enhance academic achievement offline through increased cognitive development in the following areas: ○ Problem solving ○ Decision making 

Academic Development ● Participatory communities online allow youth to enhance academic achievement offline through increased cognitive development in the following areas: ○ Problem solving ○ Decision making ● The ability to both create and remix content in these types of communities also spurs the learning of skills such as (Monroy-Hernandez & Resnick, 2008): ○ Effective communication ○ Critical analysis ○ Systematic experimentation ○ Iterative design ○ Continual learning 

Academic Development ● Knowledge is transferred through the online community/platform not through the use of the technology medium (Ahn, 2011) ○ Technology is a medium for teaching digital literacy ○ Online communities are a medium for teaching media literacy 

Academic Development Given that youth involvement in online spaces has the potential to impact academic development, skills in these topic areas have opportunity for growth (Subrahmanyam, 2009): ● Science ● Reading and writing ● Spelling and literacy ● Citizenship ● Consumerism 

Socialization ● Fostering an individual identity (Turkle, 2005) ● Social networking sites allow youth to understand their position relative to their peers, allowing an enhanced sense of self to develop (Livingstone, 2008) ● Youth are able to takes steps towards understanding social cues through impression management (Boyd, 2008) 

Are youth becoming disengaged? 

Is it safe? 

Implications for Educators ● Monitoring use of technology in the classroom ○ Type of technology ○ Quantity of use ○ Integration into curriculum ● Promoting and teaching safe use of SNS 

Implications for Designers ● Designing to the device (mobile, desktop, etc.) ● Youth motivations to go online are not necessarily the same as adult motivations ● Encourage independent usage vs. dependence on an authority figure ● Creating platforms that foster social development vs. hinder it ○ Moderation and other safety features ○ Account/user type differentiation 

References 1. Ahn, J. (2011). The effect of social network sites on adolescents' social and academic development: Current theories and controversies. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology,62(8), 1435-1445. doi:10.1002/asi.21540 2. Boyd, Danah. (2007) “Why Youth (Heart) Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life.” MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Learning – Youth, Identity, and Digital Media Volume (ed. David Buckingham). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 3. Livingstone, S. (2008). Taking risky opportunities in youthful content creation: teenagers' use of social networking sites for intimacy, privacy and self-expression. New Media & Society,10(3), 393-411. doi:10.1177/1461444808089415 4. Michikyan, M., Subrahmanyam, K., & Dennis, J. (2014). Can you tell who I am? Neuroticism, extraversion, and online self-presentation among young adults. Computers in Human Behavior,33, 179-183. 5. Monroy-Hernández, A., & Resnick, M. (2008). FEATUREEmpowering kids to create and share programmable media. Interactions, 15(2), 50. doi:10.1145/1340961.1340974 6. Phuoc Tran & Kaveri Subrahmanyam (2013) Evidence-based guidelines for the informal use of computers by children to promote the development of academic, cognitive and social skills, Ergonomics, 56:9, 1349-1362, DOI: 10.1080/00140139.2013.820843 7. Subrahmanyam, K. (2009). Developmental Implications of Children's Virtual Worlds. Washington and Lee Law Review;Washington and Lee Law Review, 1065-1083. 8. Turkle, S., & Turkle, S. (2005). 4 Adolescence and Identity: Finding Yourself in the Machine. In The Second self: computers and the human spirit (pp. 146-167). Cambridge: MIT Press. 

Thank you! [email protected] @abril_vela