Scratch Community: Why Your Child Should Be Involved

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If you have heard of Scratch Coding, you most likely see the benefit of having your child involved in this great computer programming language and community. And while it is a lot of fun for kids to learn to code Scratch projects, at Coder Kids we find that it is even more important for kids to be involved in the online Scratch community. There, they can make friends in a safe and kid-friendly environment, interacting with people all over the world.

Scratch Community Guidelines - Is Scratch really safe for kids?

Having spent a lot of time on Scratch, and also interacting with some members of the MIT Scratch Team, I can safely say that every effort is made to keep the Scratch community kid-safe, or as they call it, “friendly”. What exactly is kid-safe will of course vary from parent to parent, but Scratch Community Guidelines offer some insight, along with Section 3 (Rules of Usage) in the Terms of Use. The guidelines emphasize keeping information private (not sharing real names, addresses, etc), being respectful, and reporting projects that are mean or insulting. While freedom of expression is valued on Scratch, there are certainly limits on what is appropriate.

In my experience, language filters for comments are strong on Scratch, so from a strictly language perspective, your child should be safe. There is also no direct-messaging functionality on Scratch, so no one can send private messages to other kids - everything is public. So the chances of private bullying is very slim as long as your child doesn’t share any additional information about themselves. Plus, if a user decides to bully your child, your child can easily block them or report them. It is a type of social media, but it is so public that I would feel very comfortable having my children use it. It also teaches them relevant lessons about when to block people who are being rude or harmful in some way.

One thing to be careful of on Scratch is violent or mildly inappropriate content. While something extremely inappropriate would certainly be picked up by the Scratch filters, things that some parents might consider inappropriate might be appropriate by Scratch standards. I have seen projects with guns or blood (they are not the norm), or just obnoxious “child yelling into microphone” projects. So even though it may not be a 100% “safe space” for kids, it is safer than probably anywhere else kids can go online, and the benefits (see below) majorly outweigh the potential for harm. When compared with an online community like Roblox, Scratch is significantly safer (even though Roblox is making great efforts to be more kid-friendly).

Benefits of being involved in the Scratch Community

There are three main benefits to your child being involved in the Scratch Community:

1) Increased Investment in Coding

At Coder Kids, we have noticed over time that students who become passionate about the Scratch Community are much more likely to keep coding over time. When I first met one of our students here in Houston, he was a 2nd grader and a pretty low-level coder. I have met many of these kids over the years. But what got this student hooked was his passion for the community. He became curator for studios and really used Scratch as a social media platform. Now this student is in 5th grade, is still involved with his Scratch community, and has actually become a pretty great Scratch coder because his friendship and community requires it! On the other hand, many people who start out with coding might try it for a little while and give up, missing out on some awesome future opportunities for projects and friendship!

2) Opportunities for Collaboration

In Scratch, usually we think about one individual student creating a project they are proud of. But the reality is, a lot of the very best Scratch projects that make it to the featured section of the main site, are collaborations! A collaboration is basically when two or more members of Scratch join together to make a project that puts together multiple skill-sets or creates a larger project than one person would be capable of by themselves. For example, you could have 50 people each contribute a part of a story - creating a project that would’ve taken one person 50x the time and energy! All they have to do once all 50 sections are submitted is piece them together.

Other times, if one child is very strong in art and creative, and another is very strong in coding, they can work together to build something that separately they could not have done alone.

Scratchers find each other through the community, and communicate through projects or by commenting on the other person’s profile page. Typically, I recommend to students that they spend some time commenting on other people’s projects so that they can develop some relationships with other Scratchers, then they can start moving into collaboration of one kind or another. You can read more about Scratch collaborations here and get some tips for collaborating in this video.

3) Learning to Communicate with Others

Maybe I am biased as the owner of a coding for kids company, but one thing I really want for my child is to not fear the web, but instead to conquer the web. Kids need to know that they are in control of their actions. They do not have to be trolls, they do not have to be rude, and most importantly they do not have to be someone else in their online behavior. On Scratch, you can be yourself, expressing yourself both through your comments and also through your projects. There should be no judgment, kids should be who they are and not feel any shame or fear of being bullied.

To me, Scratch is the perfect primer for social media. It teaches kids how to be friendly with others, how we should treat and communicate with online-only friends, and it has elements of social media without some of the dangers of social media, such as private messaging.