[dmi] Meeting of Minds report reveals importance of adult involvment in teens' online activities
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Last Spring, we engaged in an experiment with Common Sense Media and Harvard's Goodplay Project in hopes that we could come to understand key questions of how youth and adults relate to life online through a series of cross-generational online dialogues. The Focus Dialogues, which had over 250 participants from around the world making over 2,500 posts, highlighted some important ways that the two groups are thinking about ethical dimensions of digitally mediated social participation. We're now pleased to release Meeting of Minds [pdf], a report on the dialogues that shares key findings that emerged.
The findings of the report offer some important perspectives for parents and educators about how youth are thinking about these issues. For instance, teens often relate to ethically challenging situations online from a place of concern about repercussions for themselves, rather than from concern about the implications of their actions for larger communities. Adults, on the other hand, spoke more about responsibility to others and to communities when discussing digital dilemmas. Whereas a teen who makes a fake profile page about her teacher might think it’s funny, adults are more likely to urge consideration of how such an act might hurt or damage the teacher's reputation.
We're hoping that the report can serve to some degree as a call to action for adults to engage with teens and help guide them so that they think more about how their actions might positively or negatively affect others, not just themselves, in an online world where actions can have long lasting and far reaching effects.
