Yesterday the New York Times published an article detailing a recent study from the MacArthur Foundation that examined the role of the Internet in the lives of teenagers. According to the Times:

“It may look as though kids are wasting a lot of time hanging out with new media, whether it’s on MySpace or sending instant messages,” said Mizuko Ito, lead researcher on the study, “Living and Learning With New Media.” “But their participation is giving them the technological skills and literacy they need to succeed in the contemporary world. They’re learning how to get along with others, how to manage a public identity, how to create a home page.”

On the surface this looks like good news; the behavior that has become so ingrained in our high schools and middle schools is building actual skills. The open question however is the ultimate impact of this behavior. How this sort of socializing and identity creation impacts long-term development is poorly understood. The researchers themselves acknowledge the deficiency: “Ethnographic studies like this are good at describing how young people fit social media into their lives. What they can’t do is document effects. This highlights the need for larger, nationally representative studies.”

For our part, Forrester’s own research on teen behavior shows tremendous usage of social networking sites. In fact, we found in 2007 that nearly two-thirds of US online teens – those ages 15-17 – visit social networking sites at least monthly. A full 20% of online youth – ages 12-17 – visit social networking sites daily, and most update their profiles while there. We recently updated much of this survey work for 2008 and while I have yet to dig into the specifics for the youth market I would be shocked if it did not mirror the overall trend of greater participation and levels of engagement.

But is this participation and engagement a positive development? The MacArthur Foundation researchers suggest it is. Personally, I have some doubts. Granted, learning how to create a home page may be of some value, and I will be the first to admit that I never really learned to touch type until I got going with AOL instant messenger in high school. But these skills seem pretty superfluous.

Where the researchers start to talk real value is in the notion of getting along with others, and creating a personal identity. But any sociologist or psychologist in the world will tell you that the teenage years are when everyone learns to be social and create an identity, internet or not. So now the questions becomes not “are the kids creating an identity” but “are the kids creating an identity that is healthier than they would have created otherwise?”

At the risk of coming off as a Luddite I’m going to suggest that the answer is no. Ever since it was released nearly three years ago a study in the American Sociological Review by researchers at Duke University has been stuck in the back of my head (those of you who have spent much time with me are likely sick of hearing about it). At the time the researchers reported that:

“The evidence shows that Americans have fewer confidants and those ties are also more family-based than they used to be,” said Lynn Smith-Lovin, professor of sociology at Duke University.

“This change indicates something that’s not good for our society,” Smith-Lovin said. “Ties with a close network of people create a safety net. These ties also lead to civic engagement and local political action.”

Let me repeat that, just so we don’t miss it: this change indicates something that’s not good for our society. Despite the hordes of new technology – email, IM, social networking –at our disposal we are actually distancing ourselves from other people. And this is among adults who learned these behaviors over time. The kids are defining themselves in terms of this technology from day one.

Of course there is the chance that growing up with these tools will better equip you to manage your relationships through them. However if we look again to Forrester’s Consumer Technographics data the story is a lot more complex. We find that the kids are lying (only 53% even claim to tell the truth on their profiles), creating multiple identities (49% report creating multiple online identities), and hiding parts of their lives from others (58% of multi-identity teens have social networking profiles they only give to certain people). If we couple this with the notion that the kids are becoming self-obsessed, voyeuristic, and abusive to each other online I think there is reason for real concern.

I don’t (yet) have children, certainly don’t have teenagers, and am only an armchair sociologist. I am not, however, naïve enough to believe these behaviors are new behaviors. All kids lie, hide parts of their lives from others, and experiment with multiple personalities. But in the past it was much harder to hide this from parents, friends, teachers, and others who provide the proper guardrails for kids. The internet makes it too easy, in my view, for kids to grow up by themselves.

The MacArthur Foundation researchers are trying to calm parents fears about their kids online and in one sense they are right to do so. Fears of online predators are overblown, and kids need to be allowed to socialize, regardless of medium. Banning social sites or internet access outright is counter-productive. That message makes sense and needs to be repeated. But parents need to approach the Web with a skeptic’s eye. The fears many parents have may not be well founded, but I wonder if parents are missing a bigger problem developing right beneath their noses.

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