Feeling like most of the Island’s young people are disrespectful, unmotivated and apathetic? Well you’d be wrong.According to Harvard University advanced doctorate student, Katie Davis, many of the Island’s young people have a strong sense of self and want to make a positive contribution to society.She recently submitted a 200-page dissertation on the subject, looking at how young people’s identity development is impacted by social media.The 32-year-old surveyed nearly 2,000 students in seven of the Island’s secondary schools from March to June last year. This accounts for more than 80 percent of the secondary school population.She also completed 32 in-depth interviews, with four or five students from each school, between April and June 2010.“I came away from my research very optimistic about Bermuda’s students and very impressed by their civic identity. So many of them were speaking of contributing to Bermuda and making it a better Island and they were already doing it.“They were involved with their church community and volunteering in all different ways in sport, dance and arts and acting and really contributing to society.”She said media reporting about teenagers was often negative, but that was not always reflective of the majority of young people.“There might be a small percentage of kids that are not doing so well, and we certainly have to pay attention to them and make sure they are getting support and help because even a few people can do great damage.“But the young people covered in the news in a negative way are really not reflective of the majority of students,” she said.Her findings have even impressed respected psychologists and professors at Harvard Howard Gardener and Kurt Fischer.“One of their reactions is they couldn’t believe generally what a positive portrait we created of Bermuda kids.“By and large the story was very positive and teens I surveyed, which was over 80 percent, by and large they have strong relationship with their parents and strong friendships and a really well developed sense of self.”She said it was hard to compare her results directly with other countries because no researcher has done this study in the same way.But she added: “There seems to be a very well functioning system [in Bermuda]. There is a lot to be said about the way [young people] are developing.”Ms Davis surveyed a wide range of students, including different age groups and races. She also tried to keep it as gender balanced as possible.She was looking at the role of parent relationships, friendships and digital media in people’s identity development.“I was focused on a very narrow definition of identity just looking at whether or not a person or student has a sense of self that is clearly and confidently defined so it’s sort of a measure of well-being,” said Ms Davis.Through a detailed questionnaire distributed to the Island’s senior schools she found out what extent parents and friends played a role in identity development and what extent social media use played a role in their development and friendships.“Then I had to analyse everything and that took me a long time,” she said.“There is so much data that I will be analysing it for another year. I couldn’t fit it all into my dissertation.“I think a lot of teachers and parents, and anyone that has a lot of interaction with young people, are curious and maybe a little apprehensive about how social media is impacting young people’s academic and social development. But for the most part it’s good.”She learned that children who used digital media mostly to communicate with their friends, from groups like dance or sports, were positively impacted by the media.However, those who went online to explore different aspects of their identity tended to “experience diminished friendship quality and lower levels of self-concept quality”, she said. “They scored lower on my measure of identity.”Young people spent an average of 3.3 hours on the Internet each day, according to her research.Ms Davis, a former Saltus Grammar School teacher, first started studying the topic after joining a research group at Harvard.“I found it fascinating. I came to the [graduate] school in 2005 and that was right when Facebook was starting to take off and right when parents figured out their kids were on MySpace.”She said some parts of the study she carried out locally was also enlightening. “I asked them questions like who do you feel you can be most yourself around, and a lot of them named their friends and their parents. They also named their parents as role models, the girls tended to talk about their mothers as role models and the boys talked about their fathers.“There were a few fathers that were not there, but I haven’t looked too closely at those kids in particular.“I did notice the kids that stood out in terms of their self-confidence and general sense of optimism were the kids that had strong relationships with both parents, not necessarily married parents, but they had parents or at least one person that was a really positive role model to them.”She said the great part of the experience was speaking to some of the students themselves and hearing them talk about who they want to be when they are older.“They were so full of hope and optimism about the future. Some of the boys specifically said ‘I do not want to be associated with the gang members, I want to contribute to the Country’.“It made me very proud and very optimistic about Bermuda’s students.”