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Children are participating in growing numbers in online social sites like Facebook and Twitter at increasingly younger ages, says a study led by the University of Toronto's Sara Grimes.

And that’s not necessarily a bad thing, says Grimes, an assistant professor at U of T's Faculty of Information.

Results show that kids between the ages of five and 13 are largely enjoying their forays into networked games, virtual worlds like Whyville, and project sharing sites such as scratch.mit.edu —online forums that might not look like your typical social network, but essentially serve many of the same functions.

“Children express an enormous amount of creativity, self-expression, identity development, desire to connect with friends and family and eagerness to learn in their interactions with social technologies,” says Grimes, who conducts research on the regulatory and ethical dimensions of children's digital media, children’s play and creativity and digital games.

Grimes and Deborah Fields, an assistant professor at Utah State University, released Kids online: A new research agenda for understanding social networking forums, a report conducted for the , an independent, non-profit research center that fosters innovation in children's learning through digital media.

This paper is the first comprehensive study to identify and explain some of the most pressing questions about kids’ rapid adoption of online social media. It combines the results of an extensive review of the existing research and literature with a series of case studies of social networking forums that included some of those most popular among younger children.

Further research into the online lives of younger children is needed, say Grimes and Fields – and the years from seven to nine appear to be a critical time when children’s online activity deepens. They point to studies showing that, on a typical day, 60% of kids aged six to nine use the Internet, compared to only 30% of children between the ages of three and five.

While approximately 47% of six-year-olds use the Internet, that figure jumps to 67% for eight-year-olds.

“Our aim is to advance academic research and public understanding of the complexities involved in children’s engagement and learning through online social networking forums. That it contains really promising opportunities, as well as important challenges,” says Grimes, who is also associate director of the iSchool’s Semaphore Lab.

“But there’s also a lot we still don’t know about younger kids’ online social networking, so a key takeaway of our study is that we can’t simply assume that younger children engage in the same way older kids and teens do. For instance, they’re much more likely to communicate through play and make-believe.”

Grimes and Fields point to research that shows households with children are more likely than any other group to have Internet access – probably broadband. European researchers found  more than a third (38%) of children aged 9-12 years from various European countries had their own profile on a social networking site. And, of the 20 million minors who actively used Facebook, 7.5 million (a third) were younger than 13 and not supposed to be able to use the site. In fact, Facebook removes an average of 20,000 accounts by underage users every day.

This complex reality, currently under-studied and under-represented in large national surveys, showcases the critical need for this kind of research, the Cooney Center stated in a blog. The study also comes at a time of real concern over kids’ exposure to cyberbullying, privacy infringement, and stranger danger, as well as a general lack of awareness about how and why kids might benefit from social media.

“While many parents, educators, and children want to take advantage of the new opportunities presented by the latest digital technologies, they are also often concerned about the challenges children might face in social environments online,” the authors say.

But, their research shows, there’s a lot of potential for social media to benefit children’s learning and well-being.

Among the key issues the study considers are:

•The wide range of possible influences online social experiences can have on children’s learning, social and cognitive development and cultural and civic engagement—including benefits, as well as potential threats
•The kinds of research that are now needed to better understand who is going online and what they are doing there
•The need for awareness by designers, educators, and parents to help children navigate and make the most of these new environments
•The need to broaden our definition of “social networking sites” to include the types of forums and activities that younger children are most likely to engage in—including social networking on videogame consoles, engaging on fan sites, and bonding through play.

The study was produced with the support of Cisco Systems and the Digital Media and Learning Hub at University of California, Irvine, and a full copy is available for.

See a by the authors.