Over the past week I’ve been reading about teens and technology and about the media’s handling of major news events. A theme running through the reading I’ve been doing is that critical thinking is an important part of what adults and teens need to do in order to make good technology decisions. For example:

• I’m not sure why I didn’t start following @larrymagid (Larry Magid) on Twitter until a couple of weeks ago, but now that I am following him, I’ve discovered three recent articles by Magid that serve to highlight the important role critical thinking plays when it comes to teens and technology.

  On June 22 Magid wrote on his blog about the need to give students a chance to use technology as a critical thinking tool and not simply outlaw devices because students might use them to cheat. (more…)

  

I attended the rollout of Best Buy’s @15 TeenVoice 2009 study on Monday, July [correction: June] 8.  Best Buy built the @15 website as a place for teens to find each other and express themselves and their concerns for the world, as well as suggest where Best Buy should donate its money to truly make a difference.  Best Buy tapped experts from around the country to mentor the teens and study their feedback.

With the weather changing (and changing again, and changing back, etc.) and the adrenaline rush of finals starting to subside, it’s time to think about teen health.

Whether teens have been chronically ill all their life or are just starting to get that weird tingle in the back of their throat, there are reasons to make sure that they get the kind of health care they need. Unfortunately, there are some traps that can keep them from visiting a doctor:

• No health care - According to the 2007 Census, 11% of all minors are without health coverage. While many teens might take for granted that they can cheaply see a doctor for a stomach ache, it’s sadly not the case for everyone.
• Busyness and presenteeism - Even if teens have access to health care, they might feel like they don’t have the time — or inclination — to use it. Their parents might be too busy to take them to the doctor for “little things,” or their coaches might tell them to “be a man” and fight through sickness.

A number of great online resources exist to get teens through cold season, as well as any other health issues they might be battling. Of course, no online resource is a good substitute for a doctor, but it is a start. (more…)

The Pew Internet & American Life Project recently released the report, Generations Online in 2009. Data was gathered from over 2,000 people to show what different  generations do online. Probably not too many surprises, though I do wonder if they ever ask adults who state that they *always* use email more than teens, yes, but do you like it?’. (more…)

Many youth in the United States have fully integrated the Internet into their daily lives. For them, the Internet is a positive and powerful space for socializing, learning, and engaging in public life. Minors use the Internet and other digital technologies to communicate with friends and peers, to connect with religious leaders and mentors, to conduct research for school assignments, to follow the progress of favorite sports teams or political candidates and participate in communities around shared interests, to read the news and find health information, to learn about colleges and the military, and in countless other productive ways. Most minors do not differentiate between their lives off and online, in part because the majority of online social interactions involving minors do not involve people who are not part of their offline lives.

That quote is from the first paragraph of the Introduction to the just released report Enhancing Child Safety and Online Technologies: Final Report of the Internet Safety Technical Task Force to the Multi-State Working Group on Social Networking of State Attorneys General of the United States. If you work with teens, or with people who work with teens, you should stop what you are doing, download this report, and read it. (more…)

Every year, beginning sometime in December, media outlets, bloggers, and others publish articles on the best and worst of the past 12 months.  When I read these I automatically start to think about what’s been going on with teens and libraries over the past year. One way I find that out is to look at a year’s worth of YALSA blog posts. Here’s some of what I found when I did that:

• Over the past twelve months video production became a real-live possibility for librarians and the teens that they serve. (more…)
  

  

Two articles I read recently have me asking myself over and over again, “Where are the parents?” The first, Compulsive Gamers not Addicts, appeared on the BBC News web site in late November. The article discusses how young people being treated in in Britan for gaming addiction are actually not addicts at all.  The founder of a UK clinic to treat gaming addiction, Keith Bakker is quoted saying, “…the more we work with these kids the less I believe we can call this addiction. What many of these kids need is their parents and their school teachers - this is a social problem.”

That seems to say it all.  Many teens who game hours and hours on end aren’t necessarily doing it because they are addicted. They are constantly gaming because they don’t have anything else to do and don’t have anyone else helping them to figure out what to do with their time. (more…)

I’ve been fortunate to teach “Pain in the Brain,” a class on teen behavior, for YALSA several times, and am always on the lookout for new information on how biology influences (undesirable!) actions. Last week,  U.S. News and World Report followed up on their 1999 article “Inside the Teen Brain” with a feature titled “Deploying the Amazing Power of the Teen Brain” that reports on a  Duke University program designed to empower teens to use their brains. The article covers basic brain changes, other factors for teen behavior and a quiz you can take to see how much you know about the adolescent brain. (more…)

The MacArthur Foundation just released a new report titled Living and Learning with New Media: Findings from the Digital Youth Project. Every librarian working with teens should download a copy of this report and read it. Why? Because the data presented provides librarians with much needed information to help them, and others, understand why teen use of social media is key to successful youth development.  It’s clear from the findings and recommendations in the report that teen use of online social media has many benefits, and that as adults it is our responsibility to support teens in their use of this media. (more…)

A majority of adults say technology allows their family life today to be as close, or closer, than their families were when they grew up…. Indeed, 25% of our survey respondents feel that their family today is now closer than their family when they were growing up thanks to the use of the internet and cell phones, while just 11% say their family today is not as close as families in the past.

That data is from a new report titled Networked Families published by the Pew Internet in American Life Project. (more…)