Chat Room: The Wisdom of Goofing Off

Young people want to goof around on the Internet. They want to play games and visit Web sites that don't have any redeeming educational or social value. Kids need opportunities to explore the Web in a way that isn't tied to a curriculum or homework assignment. They need time to fool around online to grasp the Internet's potential and to evaluate what they find there—just like they need to read Dav Pilkey's The Adventures of Super Diaper Baby and the Nancy Drew mysteries to understand everything books can offer.

For slightly more than half of America's children, getting that time is no big deal: they can easily access the Net at home or at a friend's house. But for the remainder of the kid population, the public library is the only place they can access the Internet apart from the limited time they get to work with it at school.

A recent report by the Colorado State Library's Library Research Service (LRS) called "Kids & Computers: Selected Results from 'Colorado Public Libraries and the Digital Divide, 2002'" (www.lrs.org) confirms that for many teens the public library is the only show in town for after-school Internet access. Education researchers Tammi Moe and Keith Curry Lance surveyed 1,900 public library users, and of that number, 175 were under the age of 18. Forty-eight percent of those young library visitors indicated that the public library provided them with their only access to the Internet.

Lance and Moe also discovered that more than a quarter of those young computer users were playing games, half were accessing or sending e-mail, and 70 percent were surfing the Web for fun. In other words, a lot of kids weren't using the computers for homework.

Unfortunately, public library staff often feel awkward dealing with a lot of these kids—especially when some seem only interested in fooling around on the computers. And since this is the era of high-stakes federal and statewide testing in schools, public librarians, as well as library media specialists, feel constrained to keep young people "on task." That's why Net stations in children's and young adult areas are frequently designated for "homework only" or solely for "serious research." It also explains why public librarians often ask kids who are signing up for a half hour of computer time if they really have homework to do—and then keep an eye on their screens to make sure they don't surreptitiously slip off to a Beyonce fan site.

Public librarians need to lighten up. Being a guardian of Internet access isn't a good role to play. It simply reinforces the public's perception that librarians are stuffy people, a stereotype that we're trying to free ourselves from. As kid-friendly professionals, we need to encourage children to visit the library, and to feel comfortable there. After all, don't kids who just want to play games have as much right to use library computers as those who are doing school research on the occupations practiced in colonial America? I think they do.

Is there an answer to this dilemma? One solution is to establish a policy that recognizes everyone's needs—a clear and fair policy that all library staff members enforce fairly and consistently. There's nothing wrong with having "homework only" computers—making sure that kids have access to a computer to do their assignments is an important part of what public libraries provide. But homework isn't inherently a higher order of activity than game playing. Every public library should also have several Net stations that young people can use for whatever they want to do—e-mail, play games, follow personal interests, or even do homework. We should be promoting the library as a place of inclusiveness.

Then comes the real challenge—persuading those same game-playing kids that they might actually enjoy reading a good book.