A Parents’ and Guardians’ Guide to Scratch
Scratch is the world’s largest coding community for kids, with more than 100 million accounts created and 100 million projects shared. If the young coder in your life is among the millions of children worldwide using Scratch, you might be curious about what Scratch is all about — what does it look like for young people to collaborate, build community, learn from each other, and share with one another? And how can you get involved?
With this primer, you’ll understand the basics of the Scratch community and get helpful tips on engaging in Scratch with your child.
What is Scratch?
First developed in 2003 at the MIT Media Lab, Scratch was designed by founder Mitch Resnick as a block-based coding language that introduced children to the language of code through creating their own stories, games, and animations. Scratch is based on a philosophy called the 4 P’s of Creative Learning: people learn best when they’re working on creative projects, collaborating with peers, engaging with topics they’re passionate about, and exploring creative ideas through tinkering and play. In 2007, we launched the Scratch coding language and our online community. Today, Scratch is developed and operated by the Scratch Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing young people with digital tools and opportunities to imagine, create, share, and learn. In 2023, more than 100 million children around the world imagine, create, and share on Scratch inside and outside of classrooms — we refer to these children as Scratchers!
Why do we have an online community?
The Scratch online community is a safe and supportive space for Scratchers to share their projects online, connect with their peers, and learn from and remix projects from around the world. With the online community, Scratchers get the opportunity to share their projects with an audience, which enables them to get feedback and suggestions from others in the community. It also serves as inspiration — every project you see on Scratch is completely open, so you can explore how it works and remix it to make it your own. This leads to amazing global collaboration: multi-animator projects bring artists together to make animations or music videos, while other projects include audio clips, art, or snippets of code created by Scratchers’ peers.
The online community has grown into an incredible space for self-expression, joyful collaboration, and peer-to-peer learning. We have seen communities develop for all kinds of hobbies and passions — including soccer, astronomy, fashion, and anything else you can imagine! We have also seen communities develop for the LGBTQ+ community to support one another, for young people on the autism spectrum to connect with each other and educate their peers, and for children to spread kindness to young people in the Ukraine. We love to see the many ways Scratchers explore their passions and identity in the community, and are always guided by their unique and surprising creations.
How do we keep kids safe on Scratch?
Safety is a top priority for us here at Scratch. We take a multifaceted approach to ensuring the Scratch site stays a safe, caring, and respectful space, while also helping young people develop digital citizenship skills that will encourage them to engage in healthy and positive behavior on Scratch and in their future interactions across the internet.
We use a combination of an automated filter system and a team of human moderators to prevent inappropriate content from reaching the site and to review every user report of inappropriate content. While our developers continually innovate new safety tools, moderators spend time across the Scratch site ensuring that content and interactions follow our Community Guidelines, which open with:
Scratch is a friendly and welcoming community for everyone, where people create, share, and learn together. We welcome people of all ages, races, ethnicities, religions, abilities, sexual orientations, and gender identities. Help keep Scratch a welcoming, supportive, and creative space for all by following these Community Guidelines.
The Scratch Community Guidelines are a set of guiding principles that all Scratchers agree to follow, and they double as great advice no matter where kids are on the internet. Scratchers are encouraged to leave constructive feedback rather than disparaging remarks, asked to keep their personal information private from others, and guided to be honest and friendly, for example.
By reminding Scratchers that they play a key role in keeping the site safe, we empower them to take extra care in creating the community they wish to see.
Scratchers can often be seen reinforcing the Community Guidelines to new community members and acting as great role models by modeling kind and welcoming behaviors. If they do come across inappropriate behavior on the site, they’re encouraged to use the Report button to alert the Scratch Team, or reach out to us directly via our Contact Us page. In both cases, Scratch Team members will review reports and messages and investigate the issues accordingly.
We’re also always working on new ways to provide positive and timely intervention and feedback to the millions of young people that spend time on Scratch. A recent project that upgraded our automated content filters added an exciting new possibility to automated moderating: now, Scratchers get real-time, tailored feedback on commonly seen inappropriate behavior. For instance, a Scratcher trying to comment “this is bad” on a project shared in our community used to receive a broad message asking them to remember to follow the Community Guidelines. Now, the same Scratcher will receive a personalized message reminding them why it’s important to be constructive and supportive.
Of course, moderating isn’t limited to automated interactions — our team of moderators also engages in dialogue with young people who are struggling with the Community Guidelines. When needed, we connect with Scratchers’ parents, guardians, or educators to ensure that they have the support they need to exercise good digital citizenship skills.
We’re constantly imagining and implementing new ways to keep our community safe, and will continue to improve our systems and policies to adapt to the ever-evolving landscape of online safety.
Is Scratch only for kids who are interested in Computer Science?
While Scratch can be a great entry point into a lifelong love of Computer Science, we designed Scratch with every kid in mind, not just those who are inherently curious about programming. In our increasingly technological world, it’s critically important that every child understands how technology works and feels empowered to understand and create, not just consume, the content and technology they interact with each day. Scratch is a powerful tool for self-expression, whether your child is interested in art, music, animation, science, mathematics, storytelling, or anything else they can imagine.
As children explore with Scratch, they begin to develop skills like persistence, collaboration, self-reliance, and problem solving — essential skills for everyone in today’s society. Best of all, because Scratch is designed to be fun and not frustrating, they may not even realize how much they’re learning.
How can parents and guardians get involved in Scratch?
The best way that families can get involved in Scratch is by sitting down with their Scratcher and exploring together. Let your child’s interests and passions be your guide, ask lots of questions, and encourage them to walk you through the different ways they participate in the community. Here are a few activities you can engage your child with:
- Ask your child to show you some projects they have made and explain how they work.
- Ask your child to show you some of their friends’ profiles, their favorite studios, or creators on Scratch they admire. Practice leaving kind and helpful comments together.
- Find a fun project that engages you both (use the Search bar, explore the front page of Scratch, or explore your child’s favorite studios for inspiration), then remix it together! You can find out more about how it works and imagine how you both could make it your own.
- Explore project tutorials together — try designing a holiday card for a relative, imagining a fantastical story about a day in the life of your family pet, or creating a new family theme song. If your child is a beginner, you can learn alongside them. If your child is an expert, ask them to teach you some Scratch basics!
There are endless ways that you can explore Scratch with your child and support their development into engaged digital citizens. To stay up-to-date with the latest resources and product news, you’re invited to join our mailing list. If you’re interested in supporting the nonprofit Scratch Foundation, consider making a donation. And if you ever have a question or concern to share with the Scratch Team, we encourage you to send a message to Contact Us. We’re here to support you and your Scratcher every step of the way.
