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Media Ecologies 47cams and stuff like that, just because I’ve never been exposed to that.”Ryan was able to share his reactions to these extreme videos with a friendat an opportune moment when they returned to their rooms for the nightafter a school-sanctioned outing. In effect, access to rich, networked mediaenables youth to engage in social activity around video in the diverse settingsof their everyday lives. This ready availability of multiple forms ofmedia in diverse contexts of daily life means that media content is increasinglycentral to everyday communication and identity construction.Work-Arounds, Back Channels, and Multitasking Unlike other genresof participation we discuss in which individuals justify that the activitiesare “productive” and/or possess the potential for secondary skills, thepractice of hanging out is usually not seen by parents and teachers assupporting productive learning. Many parents, teachers, and other adultswe interviewed described kids’ and teenagers’ inclination toward hangingout as “a waste of time,” a stance that seemed to be heightened whenhanging out was supported by new media. Not surprisingly, teenagersreported considerable restrictions and regulations tied to hanging out inand through new media. Sites such as MySpace, which are central tohanging out genres of participation, are often restricted by parents andblocked in schools. In their examination of schools in Southern California(Los Angeles Middle Schools), Lisa Tripp and Becky Herr-Stephenson findthat schools generally provide students with the opportunity to log on tothe Internet in a school library before school, during lunch or other freeperiods, or after school. While students in schools with media andtechnology resources frequently obtain access to the Internet in classroomsusing mobile laptop labs or small centers with three or four desktops in anarea of the classroom, gaining access to the library is a more complexprocess of obtaining passes and working in strict silence, and students tendto use the library infrequently aside from class periods during which theentire class would visit the library to do research. Moreover, teachers andschools attempt to determine appropriate use of those resources. The desireto restrict hanging-out practices at school in favor of keeping students “ontask” while using media and technology for production or research,combined with concerns about which media and websites are suitable forcitation (e.g., Wikipedia and .edu sites), can prompt teachers and principalsto develop rules about the appropriate use of media structures.