By Denise Tejada

We’ve heard several times that youth who spend a lot of hours online could become socially isolated, but according to a recent study by the MacArthur Foundation and the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning, the opposite is true. The new study found that youth who spend more time online are more likely to be more engaged in civic and political issues.

The study surveyed more than 2,500 youth and more than 400 youth were followed for 3.5 years. The study focuses on three types of behavior: politically-driven online participation, online exposure to diverse perspectives, and interest-driven online participation.  The study concludes:

“Youth engagement in interest-driven online communities was associated with increased volunteer and charity work and increased work with others on community issues. The Internet can serve as a gateway to online and offline civic and political engagement, including volunteerism, community problem-solving, and protest activity.”

The study looked at how youth used blogs or social networking sites to share or discuss perspectives on social and political issues, how youth use the Internet to get information about political or social issues, and how email is used to communicate with others who are working on political or social issues.

The study also found that youth who are exposed to media literacy are more likely to be exposed to diverse perspectives.

Read more about the survey here.

Sexts are blowin' up teens' mobiles it would seem. One-sixth of students have received nude or semi-nude pictures on their cell phone from someone they know according to a new study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project. The results of a telephone survey show that 15 percent of teens ages 12 to 17 who own a cell phone engage in the illict practice.

The survey was conducted on 800 people and also revealed that four percent of teens admitted sending sexuality explicit photos or videos of themselves. The survey results say that age plays a huge factor on the way teens engage in sexting:

“Older teens were more likely to send sexual images through text messages than younger teens. Four percent of 12-year-olds reported sending sexually suggestive images by text message, while 8 percent of 17-year-olds reported texting nude or partially nude photos.”

(via CNN)

Teens that pay their cell phone bills and have unlimited text messages are more likely to engage in sexting than those whose parents pay for their phones or are restricted on how often they text.

Do teens send sexual text messages because it is much easier than to actually have sex? At least one teen said yes, at a focus group conducted by Pew.
 

A National Survey on Latino youth was released Friday by the Pew Hispanic Center. The study found that many Latinos have attitudes that contradict their behavior. For example, Latino youth care about education, hard work, career success, and are optimistic about their futures. However, they are also more likely to drop out of school, live in poverty, and become teen parents than other American youths. They also have high levels of exposure to gangs.

The survey was conducted on Aug 5 through Sept 16, 2009 and questioned 2,012 young people, ages 16-25. The study found that Latinos are not only the largest minority population in the U.S, but also the youngest. One-in-five school children in the U.S. are Latino and one-in-four newborns is Latino. These numbers alone, show that young Latinos will shape the kind of society American becomes in the 21st century.

The survey compared Latino youth of different backgrounds. It compared foreign born with native born, and first generation to later generations (second, third and higher).

98 percent of native-born Latino youth are twice as more proficient in English and 59 percent of them are enrolled in high school or college. Native born youth are also twice as likely as foreign born youth to have ties to a gang or to have gotten into a fight or carried a weapon in the past year.