My Space Meets Games.com

Posted by Beth Lynne Jun 27, 2007

When I let students go on the computer, for very rare free time (which is a great reinforcer to extract positive behaviors, by the way), they invariably gravitate to the same websites. I feel it is important to keep an eye on the average seventh grader without appearing intrusive, so I decided to ask them what websites they like the best and why.

Female students tend to choose Myspace over any others. This is not surprising, since this site allows teens a certain amount of free expression (Note: Although the homepage is accessible in my district, the rest is firewalled). They are at an age when socialization is the most important thing in their lives, and as one student put it, it is a “way to communicate to the world how you feel and no one can say anything about it because it is yours.” I asked students if they knew of the dangers of chatting with people that they might not know, but it seems that they mostly chat with people they already know. However, one student informed me that if she gets a friend request, she checks it by going to the profile and accepting or denying the request. It is important to caution students to never place pictures or personal identifiers on their homepages, since predators are rampant.

Male middle school students choose safer pursuits. They are inclined to choose gaming sites, such as games.com, which is lauded as having “addicting, free, fun games.” Apparently the addiction is viewed as a positive one by my student, but I have witnessed grouchiness in my own ten year-old as a by-product of lengthy video game sessions. Other male students chose pokemoncrater.com (“fun, and shows Pokemon”) as a favorite, but I personally found it confusing (I did not understand what all the numbers meant, but then, I am not a Pokemon fanatic).

The upshot is that educators who allow free computer time should communicate with their students and find out how they use that free time.