Online social networking benefits youth, study says
Nicole Frail
Issue date: 11/18/07 Section: News
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In the most recent volume of the Journal of Adolescent Research, Dr. Brendesha M. Tynes' article "Internet Safety Gone Wild? Sacrificing the Educational and Psychosocial Benefits of Online Social Environments" indicates that online socialization through networks like Facebook and programs such as AIM are more beneficial to the development of adolescents than they are harmful or dangerous.
"Many internet safety and parenting experts suggest that parents prohibit their teens from social networking sites and other online spaces where predators may lurk… [But] banning adolescents from social networking sites - if this were even feasible - as well as monitoring too closely might close off avenues for beneficial cognitive and psychosocial development that are available to young people in the online social world," claims Tynes, Assistant Professor of African American Studies and Educational Psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
According to Tynes, while socializing in chatrooms with other teenagers located all over the world, adolescents learn valuable perspective-taking, argumentative, decision-making and critical thinking skills. Playing online games may also help adolescents "develop cognitive skills such as spatial visualization, analog representation - the ability to read images - and divided visual attention, that is, being able to manage multiple components in a visual field at once."
"I would like to see more research… [But] I think that it does provide those opportunities and unfortunately today, the education that we give teenagers does not allow many opportunities for critical thinking, because it's so based on testing and memorization of answers for standardized tests that they really need opportunities to develop these critical thinking skills because it is at this age that they are able to do this. A huge problem with school is that it often sacrifices that in the name of mass testing," said Dr. Jennifer Thomas, assistant professor of psychology at Wilkes University.
"Many internet safety and parenting experts suggest that parents prohibit their teens from social networking sites and other online spaces where predators may lurk… [But] banning adolescents from social networking sites - if this were even feasible - as well as monitoring too closely might close off avenues for beneficial cognitive and psychosocial development that are available to young people in the online social world," claims Tynes, Assistant Professor of African American Studies and Educational Psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
According to Tynes, while socializing in chatrooms with other teenagers located all over the world, adolescents learn valuable perspective-taking, argumentative, decision-making and critical thinking skills. Playing online games may also help adolescents "develop cognitive skills such as spatial visualization, analog representation - the ability to read images - and divided visual attention, that is, being able to manage multiple components in a visual field at once."
"I would like to see more research… [But] I think that it does provide those opportunities and unfortunately today, the education that we give teenagers does not allow many opportunities for critical thinking, because it's so based on testing and memorization of answers for standardized tests that they really need opportunities to develop these critical thinking skills because it is at this age that they are able to do this. A huge problem with school is that it often sacrifices that in the name of mass testing," said Dr. Jennifer Thomas, assistant professor of psychology at Wilkes University.
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