Teens picking up some skills with all that time on Internet

NEW YORK - Good news for worried parents: All those hours their teens spend socializing on the Internet aren't all wasted, according to a new study by the MacArthur Foundation.

"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."

The study, conducted from 2005 to last summer, describes new-media usage but does not measure its effects.

Vicki Rideout, vice president of the Kaiser Family Foundation, and director of its program for the study of media and health, said: "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."