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344 Conclusionand tinker. It is important to note that these kinds of engagements dorequire parents to invest in some basic learning about technology andmedia, and we believe issues of differential participation and access maybe just as important for parents as they are for kids.We also believe it is important to recognize the diverse genre conventionsof youth new media literacy before developing educational programsin this space. Particularly when addressing learning and literacy that growout of informal, peer-driven practices, we must realize that norms andstandards are deeply situated in investments and identities of kids’ owncultural and social worlds. Friendship-driven practices of hanging out andinterest-driven practices of geeking out mobilize very different genres ofnew media literacy. While it is possible to abstract some underlying skills,it is important to frame the cultural genre in a way appropriate to theparticular context. For example, authoring of online profiles is an importantliteracy skill on both the friendship- and interest-driven sides, but onemobilizes a genre of popularity and coolness and the other a genre of geekcred. Similarly, the elite-speak of committed gamers involves literacies thatare of little, and possibly negative, value for boys looking for a romanticpartner in their school peer networks. Following from this, it is problematicto develop a standardized set of benchmarks to measure kids’ levels of newmedia and technical literacy. Unlike academic knowledge, whose relevanceis often limited to classroom instruction and assessment, new media literacyis structured by the day-to-day practices of youth participation andstatus in diverse networked publics. This diversity in youth values meansthat kids will not fall in line behind a single set of literacy standards thatwe might come up with, even if those standards are based on the observationsof their own practices.We believe that if our efforts to shape new media literacy are keyed tothe meaningful contexts of youth participation, then there is an opportunityfor productive adult engagement. Many of the norms that we observedonline are very much up for negotiation, and there were often divergentperspectives among youth about what was appropriate, even within aparticular genre of practice. For example, as described in chapter 2, theissue of how to display social connections and hierarchies on social networksites is a source of social drama and tension, and the ongoing evolutionof technical design in this space makes it a challenge for youth to developshared social norms. Designers of these systems are central participants in