เข้าใจโลกใหม่ของวัยรุ่นยุควุ่นเน็ต

by Danah Boyd, ลลิตา ผลผลา (Translator)

ขอต้อนรับสู่โลกโซเชียลมีเดีย ดินแดนมหัศจรรย์ที่เป็นดั่งประตูวิเศษสำหรับวัยรุ่นยุคดิจิทัล ขณะเดียวกันก็เปรียบเหมือนหลุมพรางอันตรายในสายตาผู้ใหญ่จำนวนมาก

ดานาห์ บอยด์ ผู้เชี่ยวชาญด้านเทคโนโลยีและวัฒนธรรมวัยรุ่น ได้ค้นคว้าวิจัยกรณีศึกษาและบทสัมภาษณ์วัยรุ่นหลากเพศหลายเชื้อชาติ กลั่นกรองเป็นหนังสือที่ตีแผ่ “ชีวิตโซเชียล” ของวัยรุ่นได้อย่างถึงแก่น ไม่ว่าจะเป็นประเด็นการค้นหาตัวตน ความเป็นส่วนตัว ภัยอันตราย รวมถึงทักษะและการรู้เท่าทัน นอกจากนี้ยังไขสารพัดข้อข้องใจเกี่ยวกับการใช้โซเชียลมีเดียของวัยรุ่น เช่น ทำไมวัยรุ่นจึงนิยมแชร์ทุกสิ่ง โซเชียลมีเดียมีส่วนผลักดันความรุนแรงจริงหรือไม่ และอะไรทำให้วัยรุ่นหมกมุ่นในโซเชียลมีเดียถึงเพียงนี้

หนังสือเล่มนี้คือคู่มือชั้นดีสำหรับพ่อแม่ ครู ผู้กำหนดนโยบาย รวมถึงตัววัยรุ่นเอง ที่ต้องการทำความเข้าใจและรับมือกับความซับซ้อนในโลกเครือข่ายอย่างมีประสิทธิภาพ เพื่อสร้าง “พื้นที่” แห่งใหม่ที่เปิดโอกาสให้วัยรุ่นเรียนรู้ เติบโต และก้าวเดินไปบนหนทางของตนเองได้อย่างมั่นคง

Genres: Nonfiction, Technology, Parenting, Sociology, Education, Psychology, Adult

400 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2014

About the author

Dr. Danah Boyd is a Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research, a Research Assistant Professor in Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University, and a Fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society. Her research examines the intersection of technology, society, and youth culture. Currently, she's focused on research questions related to 'big data', privacy and publicity, youth meanness and cruelty, and human trafficking.

Reviews

[Pawarut Jongsirirag · Rating 5 out of 5]

เป็นหนังสือผลการวิจัยทางสังคมวิทยาที่ดีมากกกกๆเล่มหนึ่ง ว่าด้วยความสัมพันธ์ของวัยรุ่นกับโซเชียลมีเดีย โดยตัวละครหลักๆของหนังสือเล่มนี้มีอยู่ 3 ตัวละครด้วยกันคือ วัยรุ่น ผู้ปกครองเเละสังคมที่รายล้อมอยู่รอบตัว โดยตัวละครทั้ง 3 เปรียบเสมือนเหลี่ยมมุมคนละด้านของ 3 เหลี่ยมที่ไม่ได้เเนบชิดติดกัน โดยมีวงกลมตรงกลางคือโซเชียลมีเดีย

ตัวละครทั้ง 3 ต่างส่งผลกระทบต่อกันเเละกัน โดยขึ้นอยู่กับมุมมองต่อโซเชียลมีเดียที่พวกเขามองเห็น ซึ่งต่างคนต่างมองในมุมที่พวกเขาอยากมองหรือถูกหล่อหลอมให้มอง เเละเมื่อต่างมีอิทธิพลต่อกันเเละกัน เเต่มองเรื่องราวเเตกต่างกัน การปะทะทางความคิดจึงเกิดขึ้นอย่างหลีกเลี่ยงไม่ได้ ผลของการปะทะไม่ได้มีใครเป็นผู้ชนะหรือเเพ้ มีเพียงเเต่การช่วงชิงความได้เปรียบในช่วงเวลาใดเวลาหนึ่งเท่านั้น

โดยเเต่ละบทของหนังสือจะเเสดงถึงการปะทะกันทางความคิดของตัวละครทั้ง 3 ในประเด็นที่สำคัญๆอยู่ตลอดเวลา เช่น การสร้างตัวตนของวัยรุ่น การเสพติดโซเชี่ยล อันตรายเเละการรังเเกกัน ความเหลื่อมล้ำถูกลดไปเมื่อมีโซเชียลมีเดียจริงหรือไม่อะไรคือทักษะที่จำเป็นเมื่อเราก้าวเข้าสู่โลกโซเชียลมีเดียเเละจริงหรือไม่ที่วัยรุ่นคือชาวดิจิตัลโดยกำเนิด

เเม้หนังสือจะค่อนข้างชัดว่า เป็นเหมือนกระบอกเสียงให้กับวัยรุ่นเกี่ยวกับความเข้าใจผิดๆที่ผู้ใหญ่หรือสังคมมองพวกเขา เเต่ในทางกลับกัน มุมมองของผู้ใหญ่เเละสังคมก็ไม่ใช่เรื่องผิดเสมอไป (เเม้บางเรื่องจะเหมือนมายาคติก็ตาม)

ฉะนั้นบทสรุปจึงอาจไม่ใช่การพยายามหาคำตอบว่าฝั่งไหนถูกหรือผิด เเต่คือการประนีประนอมเเละทำความเข้าใจอีกฝ่ายอย่างเเท้จริง เพราะเราทุกคนต่างเป็นทารกหัดเดินในโลกของเครือข่ายเเห่งนี้อยู่เสมอ เเละการหาคำตอบที่ถูกต้องน่าจะเป็นการร่วมกันพัฒนาทักษะเเละภูมิต้านทานในการอยู่ในโลกโซเชียลมีเดียเเห่งนี้ที่ความเปลี่ยนเเปลงเกิดขึ้นอยู่ตลอดเวลา

[Joe Sabado · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a must-read book for anyone interested in understanding how teens and young adults use social media. Based on years of research and interviews. Dr boyd cuts through the extreme views (dystopian/utopian) and provides a sensible perspective based on her conversations from teens who actually use these applications and not from theories. I like how Dr boyd interweaves the teens interviews, her personal experience and other research.

[Kevin Hodgson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am going to check in here now and then as I read this book by the fabulous researcher, danah boyd. Her extensive research and background in social media and the lives of teenagers should make for an interesting read. As a father, and a teacher, and someone who tries to harness technology for storytelling and writing and composing, I am always intrigued by what kids are doing, or not doing, or doing without thinking of what they are doing. I am hopeful that boyd's work will shed some light for me and for others.

[Julie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wasn't expecting much from this book. Published 4 years ago and the interviews of teens are 8-11 years old, hmmmm. I went into it thinking I'd have to put it down for irrelevancy. Boyd apparently had this same concern and in her introduction states several times that although the specific apps/websites and cultural references she uses (Miley, Justin, etc) will change, the concepts and ideas she will be discussing remain pertinent. That was a good point to remember.

She divides her book into several sections, with varying results. With some topics, I felt she was spot on and her take on a subject was worthwhile and helped me clarify my own views that I'd never really thought about before. With other topics, I felt she was dismissive and/or chose to focus on a very narrow angle. Still, I think the book is worth checking out, even if you aren't a parent of a teen or a teen. She explores topics such as online privacy and media literacy, that are relevant to anyone who goes online.

Her chapter on using social media sites was my favorite. I am on several - Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and Goodreads(obviously) - but I've never sat back and really analyzed what is going on, especially in terms of FB activity. There are several layers to consider when posting. Who CAN see your post? Friends, friends of friends, public? Who DOES see your posts? Not all your friends see all your posts. How is your post INTERPRETED? Sure, you have an intended audience but who is your actual audience? Remember that anyone can take a screen shot of your post and share it with anyone. How many different social contexts(groups) are intermingling on your FB posts? Who is watching but not commenting? Think about your presentation of self, not only what we consciously share but what are we unintentionally revealing.

Her privacy and bullying chapters are also good. It's her chapters on addition and danger/predators that fell short of the mark. She completely dismisses the fact that people can become addicted/obsessed with games and being online. She states that online addiction is simply a manifestation of depression, anxiety or another mental disorder and then leaves it at that. Oh, and that it can be a problem for those with poor impulse control. Then she spends the rest of the article reiterating over and over that most people don't have an issue with it. Uh, ok. I accept that. Then let's spend this time talking about those who ARE struggling with balance and are letting their online lives negatively impact their lives off line. It seemed like such a cop out, ignoring this issue.

An even more egregious omission is her total avoidance of discussing either porn or sexting in her chapter on internet danger/predators. WTH. Those are the main issues, not the fear that some 40 year old pedophile in his mother's basement is going to kidnap your teen. What is really at stake is your teen being arrested for child pornography and having to register as a sex offender because they foolishly sent a nude photo of themselves to their boyfriend/girlfriend. Or the whole nightmare of revenge porn, when your ex sends what were consensual nudes to all your friends or your parent s or boss. Or even when they upload them to a porn site. THAT is an actual danger. I can see her not wanting to get into the whole porn issue - that is a book unto itself. Still, it's impacting how people view themselves and others sexually and certainly falls under the category of potential danger. Boyd really drops the ball here.

She redeems herself at the end, discussing media literacy and the various inequalities between groups of people in terms of their huge variations in tech knowledge. Technology serves to reinforce existing social divisions in society and maybe even makes them worse. It's a serious problem that needs to be explored and discussed more than it is. Equally serious is the lack of media literacy in the population. Many people, not just teens, don't know how to interpret information, how to look for information, how to critically evaluate messages surrounding us, how to spot biases or how to control their personal information. It's worrisome. I fear the movie Idiocracy is looking more and more like a documentary.

[Gary Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

The ways teens use social media spawn a lot of myths. Here are a few:

• Using social media makes teens vulnerable to bullies and sexual predators.
• Many teens are addicted to technology.
• The “digital native” generation has intuitive expertise in using technology.
• The Internet is an equalizer for disenfranchised social groups.
• Google is a more reliable source of information than Wikipedia.

Using research, interviews, and common sense to tackle these misperceptions, Danah Boyd’s It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens provides thorough, relevant, and fascinating insights into how adolescents actually engage with social media.

Guess what?

• Teens are no more vulnerable to bullies and sexual predators online than they are offline.
• “Addiction” isn’t an accurate way to describe most adolescent tech usage, and if kids are addicted to anything, it’s their friends, not their phones.
• Those described as “digital natives” may have more familiarity with technology, but they do not understand how to use it critically and productively. They need help with that from adults who do know how to make technology work for us.
• The Internet doesn’t do a good job of pulling in disenfranchised social groups. (For example, Siri struggles with some Middle Eastern accents and others, and most facial recognition software is less accurate with dark skin tones.)
• Wikipedia’s parameters and protocols for posting accurate information far exceed those of Google.

As Boyd writes, “[T]he mere existence of new technology neither creates nor magically solves cultural problems. In fact, their construction typically reinforces existing social divisions.” Because adults tend to use technology differently from teens, we blame the phones for causing problems and the kids for being screen-based time-wasters. But maybe the problem isn’t the technology; maybe it’s us.

As parents, we put the phones in kids’ hands so that we can communicate with them, but we are also more reluctant these days to let kids wander and play outside, and many kids are scheduled to the nth degree. So with restricted time and roaming ability, how do kids hang out? Online. At night.

Many teachers tend to believe the Internet is full of junk information while textbooks and encyclopedias are full of valuable information. So, we restrict the ways students can learn online and require them to use print material, which is no more or less likely to be accurate than online information. Some educators are also less comfortable with asynchronous or “crowdsourced” learning than they are with teacher-centered learning. So, again, the technology is restricted, causing students to go online without the guidance of teachers. That’s a missed opportunity, folks.

To be fair, Boyd recognizes that some teens do not handle things well: “Not all youth are doing all right, just as not all adults are. Technology makes the struggles youth face visible, but it neither creates nor prevents harmful things from happening even if it can be a tool for both. It simply mirrors and magnifies many aspects of everyday life, good and bad.”

It’s Complicated clarified my thinking on many issues, and I highly recommend it for teachers and parents, especially those in a quandary about how young people interact with social media.

The entire book is available online here.

Cross-posted on What's Not Wrong?

[Kin · Rating 5 out of 5]

ละเอีย��ลออและเต็มไปด้วยข้อมูล

อ่านไม่ง่ายเท่าไหร่เพราะตัวเล่มออกจะเป็นงานวิชาการซะมาก แต่ก็ไม่ได้ยากเกินความเข้าใจถ้าข้ามๆ พวกเทคนิคั่ลเทอมไปบ้าง

แนะนำมากๆ ครับ เหมาะทั้งสำหรับผู้ใหญ่และเด็กๆ ที่สงสัยว่าจริงๆ ท่าทีที่ดีของเราแต่ละคนแต่ละวัยต่อโลกออนไลน์ควรจะเป็นยังไง

[Lauren · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted more from this book. And I wanted less “teenagers have it tough” analysis. And I say this as someone who thinks that teenagers have it tough.

I found both Sherry Turkle’s Alone Together (which focuses on society as a whole) and Mark Bauerlein’s The Dumbest Generation (which is a more pessimistic but also a more academically-rooted analysis) more thought provoking than It’s Complicated. It’s Complicated reads more as an apologist tract than a meaningful analysis. I agreed with some of Ms. boyd’s points and thought she had some interesting insight, but her use of her opinions – rather than fact – to guide the narrative undercut the book. Quasi-recommended.

Note: A few weeks after finishing It’s Complicated, I caught Frontline’s report on teens and social media, Generation Like. While taking a different approach than It’s Complicated and covering a different segment of teenage life, Generation Like presented a more insightful and, excuse the pun, complicated view of teenage life.

[SundayAtDusk · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dana Boyd works for Microsoft Research. She also turned to the internet in the mid-1990s, as a teenager, because she "felt ostracized and misunderstood at school". She did not specify why, but according to her Wikipedia page, she identifies herself as "queer", so possibly her sexual orientation was the main issue. Both of these matters makes Ms. Boyd more financially and personally beholden to the internet and social media than the average person. Hence, don't expect this book to be objective about the internet or social media.

The first sign that the author is strongly tilting in one direction over the other is her views on parents. She portrays parents of teenagers as being intrusive, overprotective, uninformed, etc. It wouldn't have been surprising if she had eventually come right out and stated: "Parents need to shut up, back off, buy their kids the best cell phones and tablets and laptops they can afford, and never be late paying the internet or phone bills." One can only guess Ms. Boyd's childhood has deeply influenced her decision to still think and talk like a teenager at times, even though she is now in her thirties. One should also note that the author had her first child last year, and, thus, has never been morally or legally responsible for a teenager.

Another sign is the way Ms. Boyd would look at a problem with social media in the present and state it is really no different from something in the past. This viewpoint of hers became downright bizarre in the chapter on bullying. Anyone who is not an absolute idiot knows how social media has drastically changed the world of bullying, and created a whole new world of drama never seen before in the past with teenagers. Her own chapter on the matter even proves it. But what does Ms. Boyd say in the final paragraph in that chapter? She states: "Although new forms of drama find a home through social media, teens' behaviors have not significantly changed. Social media has not radically altered the dynamics of bullying, but it has made these dynamics more visible to more people." She goes on: "Blaming technology or assuming that conflict will disappear if technology usage is minimized is naive."

In Dana Boyd's mind, social media is never to blame for anything bad. People are just looking at it in the wrong way. She spends a great deal of the book trying to tell readers how they should look at the matter of social media. They need to look at it as she looks at it, as she needs to look at it. Her final paragraph in the book is a most revealing one as to how she sees it all. She states: "Networked publics are here to stay. Rather than resisting technology or fearing what might happen if youth embrace social media, adults should help youth develop the skills and perspective to productively navigate the complications brought about by living in networked publics. Collaboratively, adults and youth can help create a networked world that we all want to live in."

Live in? Now, that's the key to if a reader is more likely to agree with Ms. Boyd, or more likely to disagree. If the reader feels teenagers should be spending more time living in an online world, instead of an offline world, then that reader will probably love this book. However, if the reader feels teenagers should not be living in an online world, but need to concentrate all or most of their time and energy living in the offline world, this book is not going to seem like one offering sensible advice on how to raise a teenager.

For those in the latter group, don't expect any discussions in this book about social media device etiquette, such as not using one's cell phone as a means of escaping from present company. Also, don't expect any thoughts about the negative effects of teenagers never spending much time alone with their own thoughts, since they are constantly wired to the thoughts of others. Moreover, don't expect any concerns about teenagers never living for the moment, but always needing to record or report the moment, and always living in a constant state of anticipation of the next text or tweet. Dana Boyd doesn't go there. To her, the networked world is one to live in, not one to visit.

(Note: I received an ARC of this book from Amazon Vine.)

[Artur Coelho · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fiquei surpreendido pelo tom crítico, límpido e certeiro, deste livro. Habitualmente, quando o assunto é tecnologia e adolescentes, e especialmente se for internet, redes sociais, tecnologias móveis, crianças e adolescentes, o tom é catastrofista. A invocação do perigo de crianças alienadas, presas aos seus dispositivos, presas fáceis de predadores ou viciadas nas recompensas emocionais das redes sociais é constante. E, muitas vezes, partilhada e discutida em tom alarmista nas redes sociais pelos seus utilizadores, o que para mim é uma daquelas finas ironias da vida digital.

Boyd segue outro caminho. Em vez de alarmismo perante perceções de fundamentos duvidosos, investigou e fez essa outra coisa rara quando se fala de crianças e adolescentes nestes contextos: escutou-os, analisando padrões de uso e comportamentos online face ao que pensavam. O que emerge, das entrevistas e análises da autora, é um padrão consistente de ideias que desmonta as visões catastrofistas, e também as otimistas, quando de fala de crianças e tecnologia.

Desmonta a ideia dos nativos digitais, apontando que usar tecnologias em si não implica fluência, sentido crítico ou verdadeira capacidade de apropriação da tecnologia. Cruza a perceção que temos dos adolescentes como viciados nos telemóveis demonstrando que de fato, mensagens e redes tornam-se cada vez mais os únicos espaços onde os jovens podem interagir livremente, sem mediação pela sobrecarga de atividades estruturadas na escola e extra-curriculares. Sempre ocupados com isto ou com aquilo, com o pouco tempo livre mediado pelos pais protetores, usam as redes para fazer aquilo que todos precisamos de fazer para crescer: interagir com os pares em ambientes livres.

Os padrões de uso são também interessantes. Os meios privilegiados são muito privados, que colocam os utilizadores em contato com grupos de amizades com diferentes níveis de proximidade, mas que têm em comum a localização geográfica. São os colegas e amigos com que se cruzam no seu dia a dia. Quando usam redes mais alargadas, fazem-no de forma consciente para gerir as perceções dos adultos. Traduzindo: ao colocarem mensagens numa rede como o facebook, sabem que vão ser lidos pelos pais, família ou professores, e ajustam a mensagem nesse sentido, enquanto as interações livres seguem via chat. O uso de imagem, ao contrário da ideia de exibicionismo perigoso propalada pelos media, é também feito com intenções claras, com restrições ao que é acessível a todos (bate certo: ao visitar o perfil dos meus alunos que me seguem no instagram, ele é invariavelmente definido como privado, só os que lhes pedirem amizade, e aceitarem, poderão ver o que publicam), enquanto que nalguns há uma intenção clara de criar imagens públicas.

Os contextos não estão isentos de problemas. O bullying e sexting são os mais notórios, mas a autora também aponta para estratificações sociais e étnicas (há um caso especialmente notável, de um miúdo de bairros sociais, que tem dois perfis: um público, de mauzão gangsta, que precisa para sobreviver no ambiente problemático onde vive, enquanto que em privado aprofunda o que realmente lhe interessa, interesses académicos). Boyd aponta para, na generalidade, uma gestão cuidada feita pelos adolescentes para evitar problemas na vida digital. Talvez os mais comuns sejam os da perceção que os adultos, que não partilham dos mesmos códigos culturais e sociais, têm do que os adolescentes publicam. Finalmente, nota que estes meios digitais são a forma que os adolescentes têm de fazer engajamento social e cívico.

Boyd traça um retrato positivo da interação entre adolescentes e tecnologias. O estudo começa nos tempos do MySpace e acaba nos do Facebook, mas a autora está mais interessada em falar de padrões de comportamento constantes do que formas de usar determinadas aplicações. É um relato sóbrio, alicerçado na realidade, que desmistifica mitos e conclui, ironicamente logo no prefácio, que the kids are allright, e que os adultos têm de ter a consciência de os guiar na fluência digital e apropriação tecnológica, deixando-os evoluir as suas próprias formas de estar sociais.

[Nelson Zagalo · Rating 5 out of 5]

O livro de Danah Boyd, "It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens", teve grande impacto quando saiu. Na altura marquei-o para ler, mas fui adiando porque do que fui lendo, dizia pouco que me surpreende-se. Agora que o li, e continuando a dizer que não traz nada novo, se visto como livro de divulgação de ciência, acho que traz algo novo, mas mais importante que isso, algo imensamente relevante para a sociedade geral. O discurso sobre as tecnologias e os adolescentes nos media e numa grande parte da cultura que se vai produzindo está completamente desfasado da realidade.

Aliás esse desfasamento é tão grande que se alguém parasse para tentar lê-lo com sentido, veria a sua esquizofrenia, já que por um lado diz que os adolescente são muito precoces com as tecnologias, mas por outro lado são muito ingénuos com a sua privacidade e com os perigos que correm. E é exatamente este discurso feito de mitos que Dana Boyd desmonta ao longo de todo o livro. Boyd não é apenas uma professora universitária, fechada na redoma da academia, o facto de trabalhar numa das mais relevantes empresas de tecnologia, a Microsoft, como investigadora social principal, dá-lhe uma experiência ímpar ao juntar os dois lados: a academia e suas metodologias; e a indústria e suas tecnologias. Boyd conhece os adolescentes, porque os estudou de modo metódico ao longo de anos, mas conhece também todas as tecnologias que esses adolescentes usam, por dentro.

A metodologia seguida por Boyd:

“To get at teens’ practices, I crisscrossed the United States from 2005 to 2012, talking with and observing teens from eighteen states and a wide array of socioeconomic and ethnic communities. I spent countless hours observing teens through the traces they left online via social network sites, blogs, and other genres of social media. I hung out with teens in physical spaces like schools, public parks, malls, churches, and fast food restaurants.
To dive deeper into particular issues, I conducted 166 formal, semistructured interviews with teens during the period 2007–2010.2 I interviewed teens in their homes, at school, and in various public settings. In addition, I talked with parents, teachers, librarians, youth ministers, and others who worked directly with youth. I became an expert on youth culture. In addition, my technical background and experience working with and for technology companies building social media tools gave me firsthand knowledge about how social media was designed, implemented, and introduced to the public. ”

O que nos diz Boyd sobre os Nativos Digitais

“As sociologist Eszter Hargittai has quipped, many “teens are more likely to be digital naives than digital natives.” Eszter Hargittai
“Media narratives often suggest that kids today — those who have grown up with digital technology — are equipped with marvelous new superpowers. Their multitasking skills supposedly astound adults almost as much as their three thousand text messages per month. Meanwhile, the same breathless media reports also warn the public that these kids are vulnerable to unprecedented new dangers: sexual predators, cyberbullying, and myriad forms of intellectual and moral decline, including internet addiction, shrinking attentions spans, decreased literacy, reckless over-sharing, and so on. As with most fears, these anxieties are not without precedent even if they are often overblown and misconstrued. The key to understanding how youth navigate social media is to step away from the headlines—both good and bad—and dive into the more nuanced realities of young people.”

E sobre a Identidade e os “contextos colapsados”

“Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, is quoted as having said, “Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity.”
“Even when teens have a coherent sense of what they deem to be appropriate in a particular setting, their friends and peers do not necessarily share their sense of decorum and norms.”
“What makes this especially tricky for teens is that people who hold power over them often believe that they have the right to look, judge, and share, even when their interpretations may be constructed wholly out of context.”
“A context collapse occurs when people are forced to grapple simultaneously with otherwise unrelated social contexts that are rooted in different norms and seemingly demand different social responses. For example, some people might find it quite awkward to run into their former high school teacher while drinking with their friends at a bar. These context collapses happen much more frequently in networked publics.”
“In Iowa, I ended up casually chatting with a teen girl who was working through her sexuality. She had found a community of other queer girls in a chatroom, and even though she believed that some of them weren’t who they said they were, she found their anonymous advice to be helpful. They gave her pointers to useful websites about coming out, offered stories from their own experiences, and gave her the number of an LGBT-oriented hotline if she ran into any difficulty coming out to her conservative parents. Although she relished the support and validation these strangers gave her, she wasn’t ready to come out yet, and she was petrified that her parents might come across her online chats. She was also concerned that some of her friends from school might find out and tell her parents. She had learned that her computer recorded her browser history in middle school when her parents had used her digital traces to punish her for visiting inappropriate sites. Thus, she carefully erased her history after each visit to the chatroom. She didn’t understand how Facebook seemed to follow her around the web, but she was afraid that somehow the company would find out and post the sites she visited to her Facebook page. In an attempt to deal with this, she used Internet Explorer to visit the chatroom or anything that was LGBT-related while turning to the Chrome browser for maintaining her straight, school-friendly persona. But still, she was afraid that she’d mess up and collapse her different social contexts, accidentally coming out before she was ready. She wanted to maintain discrete contexts but found it extraordinarily difficult to do so. This tension comes up over and over again, particularly with youth who are struggling to make sense of who they are and how they fit into the broader world.”

E ainda sobre privacidade:

“Just because teenagers use internet sites to connect to other people doesn’t mean they don’t care about their privacy. We don’t tell everybody every single thing about our lives.... So to go ahead and say that teenagers don’t like privacy is pretty ignorant and inconsiderate honestly, I believe, on the adults’ part.”

Deixo também algumas conclusões gerais que me parecem sintetizar muito bem todo o espírito do livro:

“It is easy to make technology the target of our hopes and anxieties. Newness makes it the perfect punching bag. But one of the hardest—and yet most important—things we as a society must think about in the face of technological change is what has really changed, and what has not (..) “It is much harder to examine broad systemic changes with a critical lens and to place them in historical context than to focus on what is new and disruptive.”
“teens are as they have always been, resilient and creative in repurposing technology to fulfill their desires and goals. When they embrace technology, they are imagining new possibilities, asserting control over their lives, and finding ways to be a part of public life. This can be terrifying for those who are intimidated by youth or nervous for them, but it also reveals that, far from being a distraction, social media is providing a vehicle for teens to take ownership over their lives.”

O livro está editado em Portugal pela Relógio d’Agua sob o título “É Complicado. As Vidas Sociais dos Adolescentes em Rede” (2015).

Publicado no VI
https://virtual-illusion.blogspot.pt/...

[Aaron Maurer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Coming from a background where I am a huge advocate of student voice and working with students to help them establish a positive digital footprint on social media, I just had to read this book from Danah Boyd. This book was a must read for me to learn more about teens and the implications of social media. I come from the standpoint that social media is here to say no matter what you think about it. The apps and tools will change as things evolve, but the premise of having an online network of friends and people to collaborate with is somethings that many of us cannot fathom not having in our lives.


I flagged many passages in this book(if you folllow on Twitter or Instagram you would have seen all the tabs). In the end I think she hits on a key point that as society has evolved from the days where we fended for ourselves and created our own networks of play that adults feared when we hung out on playgrounds, the mall, and other public places to the world of today where every moment is scripted and we would not dare leave our kids out of our sight they have no choice but to create new ways to connect. Social media has filled that void. It gives them a place to be connected. One sentence really stood out to me when she wrote that youth are not addicted to technology, but they are addicted to each other. They just want the same things we wanted as kids, but it is provided in a new way.

As an educator I really believe that it is our job as educators and parents to teach the youth. This means that adults need to learn. We need to stop complaining and get over our fears to learn. We need to learn the ins and outs. Youth are digital natives they are digital naive. They can post and like, but they don't understand all the parameters. We need to teach them and provide them a safe place in schools to work through this process. It is one more element that we need to consider.

This is a great read. You may not agree with it all. You may agree with many points. The stories of youth worked well. I was more interested in their voices as well as all the chapters. I have a massive note typed up in Evernote and will be working through this book again. This is book to read twice. I will be also moving to having conversations on this book online and connecting with others about this book. It is an important book to read to either confirm your ideas, make you think different, or just to expose you to a world that we as adults need to understand. They are not doing bad things. They just want to connect and feel part of something. It is the same thing we wanted when we were young. Don't forget what it is like to grow up and if you do this, then this book makes complete sense.

You can buy the book here and check out here website http://www.danah.org/


If you have read the book reach out to me as I want to connect with others.

[Tim Pollock · Rating 1 out of 5]

What a letdown. What a major, raging letdown this book was.

Published in 2014 by the too-cool-for-capital-letters "danah boyd," this book hammers away at Facebook while making barely any mention of Twitter. Instagram appears a handful of times. Snapchat is not mentioned once. I don't even recall a Tumblr reference. There is even an entire section called "Facebook vs. MySpace." It's 2014, people.

The major premise that I think is simply irresponsible is this notion that parents need to allow "privacy" and "space" for their online teenagers. boyd essentially dismisses the idea of online predators as a "myth" we have created through "scare tactic" shows like "To Catch a Predator." She urges us to reconsider the leash we give our teenagers, insisting that parents misunderstand the online lives of our young adults.

Marketed as a "must read" for teachers, boyd devotes exactly 0% of her research to the opinions of educators, despite the fact that students spend an insane amount of time during the school day engaging in social media and that maybe, just maybe, teachers are actually paying attention to this stuff.

What absolutely blew my mind, however, is how a book like this makes not one mention of porn. A "leading expert" on "everyday practices" of online teenagers somehow skips the most disturbing trend of the internet--how it is bombarding and preying on every single male, particularly teenage males.

I recommend this book to no one.

[Luke Meehan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Really excellent research, sadly ruined by the artificial requirements of academic sociology. Boyd knows her field and has gathered a wonderful wealth of qualitative data. Her conclusions are tight and important. But modern sociology requires any work have an anti-capitalist and cultural-equivalence slant, and only be expressed in stupidly verbose, meandering terms. Boyd wanted this book to be a handbook for parents and policymakers. It should have been. Instead, it is very close to being just another sociology circle-jerk.

[Zuzana Struháriková · Rating 3 out of 5]

Okej, toto bolo celkom zaujímavé čítanie a nedá sa povedať, že by som ho považovala za stratu času.

Na druhej strane - bolo naozaj nutné, aby autorka takmer akýkoľvek problém tínedžerov na internete (či už sa bavíme o závislosti alebo množstve informácií, ktoré o sebe dennodenne zverejňujú) bagatelizovala, a tým prakticky ospravedlňovala?

Ale to je asi len tá moja záľuba v textoch plných kritiky a pre niekoho možno až prehnaného negativizmu. :)

Móže byť!

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

You know all those media tropes about teeneagers and the internet or teenagers and social media or teenagers and electronic devices?

Don't believe them.

Yes, the internet is changing the world. However, it isn't really changing kids.

Kids are not magically "digital natives" who know all this stuff by instinct. They learn just like everyone else. Kids aren't becoming separated from the real world or becoming internet addicts. They are using social media to talk and hang out with friends same as my generation used phones and cars and older generations used horse-and-buggy. The internet is not full of uber-scary cyberpredators any more than your local park is (which is way less than you think as well). Cyberbullying is bullying with a transcript, not a radical new threat.

I mostly knew this or would have agreed but hadn't quite gotten my head that far. Now for the stuff that hits me at home.

The internet is not fostering equality and cosmopolitanism - no utopia. Not all access is equal and even if you have good internet access, people bring their social networks with them into cyberspace. If you have a better network, you get more benefits from the internet. If you only have a smart-phone and your network hasn't been taught how to use internet resources, you will continue to fall behind. If you hang-out with one race/class/ethnicity/language group in the physical world (and yes, you do and so do your kids and your neighbors etc.), your internet world will also be segregated by those factors as well.

As a librarian/records manager that one hits home and hurts.

As a parent of a kid in a diverse city and school system, that hurts.

So what's really different? What Boyd calls collapsing contexts. Everything we do is done with an intended audience, whether you think about it or not. A context collapse happens when you get an unintended audience (i.e. Mom walks in on you talking sweet nothings to your significant other). The power of the internet to spread information and maintain access to information increases the chance of context collapse. Much of social media assumes you want to share and you can only limit your context through effort - the opposite of real life where making private conversations public takes effort.

What do kids or parents do about it? Damned if I know. Limiting kids' access to internet or social tools because of the chance of context collapse is short-sighted, dangerous, and ultimately futile (just lock your kid in their bedroom until their 18 - except that won't work either).

So, parents have to do the hard work we've always had to do. Help teens navigate a social world that is new to them and a bit foriegn to us as well. Be there to help but also stay out of the way. Be scared of the chances they take and failures they'll have and yet be amazed at the chances they take and victories they achieve. It's what we signed-up for by having a kid.

[Ying · Rating 4 out of 5]

ก็มันซับซ้อนอ่ะ...
danah boyd. (2014). It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens. New Haven: Yale University Press.
danah boyd (ชื่อของเธอต้องสะกดด้วยตัวเล็กหมดเลย) เคยเป็นนักเขียนโปรแกรมคอมพิวเตอร์มาก่อน ตอนนี้เป็น digital anthropologist ทำงานวิจัยที่ไมโครซอฟต์ และเป็น fellow ของ Berkman Center for Internet and Society ที่ม.ฮาร์วาร์ด ตั้งแต่ปี 2007 จนถึงตอนนี้
บอยด์เก็บข้อมูลการใช้อินเทอร์เน็ตของนักเรียนมัธยม(วัยรุ่น) ในสหรัฐอเมริกาจำนวน 166 คน ตั้งแต่ 2003-2012 จากทุกรัฐ ด้วยการไปสังเกตในพื้นที่ต่างๆ ที่วัยรุ่นทำกิจกรรมและสัมภาษณ์ เช่น อัฒจรรย์ชมอเมริกันฟุตบอล ห้าง เข้าไปในโรงเรียน บ้าน รวมถึงการเก็บข้อมูลจากการใช้โซเชียลมีเดียตามเว็บไซต์ต่างๆ (ในภาคผนวก เขาบอกรายละเอียดว่า 166 คน เป็นใคร)
คำถามของบอยด์ คือ อยากรู้ว่าการเกิดขึ้นของโซเชียลมีเดียส่งผลอย่างไรต่อวัยรุ่นบ้าง มีอะไรใหม่ อะไรเหมือนเดิม โซเชียลมี���ดียช่วยเพิ่มคุณภาพชีวิตในด้านชีวิตทางสังคมของวัยรุ่นอเมริกันอย่างไรบ้าง
จากเนื้อหาทั้งหมดในหนังสือพอจะบอกได้ว่า บอยด์ต้องการสนทนากับผู้ใหญ่ พ่อแม่ ครูบาอาจารย์ ตลอดจนสื่อมวลชนทั้งหลายที่กังวลกับพฤติกรรมการใช้โซเชียลมีเดียของวัยรุ่นเหล่านี้ เธอบอกไว้แต่แรกเลยว่า นี่ไม่ใช่จดหมายรักถึงคนหนุ่มสาว แต่เป็นการส่งเสียงบอกผู้ใหญ่ให้รับรู้ เห็นได้ชัดคือ การแบ่งบทในหนังสือสรุปความกังวลของผู้ใหญ่ไว้ครบถ้วน ซึ่งได้แก่
identity: why do teens seem strange online?
privacy: why do youth share so publicly?
addiction: what makes teens obsessed with social media?
danger: are sexual predators lurking everywhere?
bullying: is social media amplifying meanness and cruelty?
inequality: can social media resolve social divisions?
literacy: are today’s youth digital natives?
searching: for a public of their own
ตอนต้น บอยด์เล่าว่า เธอไปสังเกตการณ์วัยรุ่นที่ไปดูการแข่งอเมริกันฟุตบอลระหว่างโรงเรียน เธอพบว่าวิธีการใช้สมาร์ตโฟนของเด็กกับผู้ใหญ่ไม่เหมือนกัน ขณะที่เด็กเปิดดูโทรศัพท์ ก็มักจะชวนเพื่อนที่นั่งข้างๆ มาดูหน้าจอด้วย หรือไม่ก็ถ่ายรูปเล่นกัน ส่วนผู้ใหญ่มักจะก้มหน้าก้มตาทำอะไรบางอย่างกับโทรศัพท์ตามลำพัง ขนาดถึงตอนได้คะแนน เขาก็ยังไม่เงยหน้าจากโทรศัพท์เลย หลังเลิกเกมเด็กบางคนไปเที่ยวต่อกับเพื่อนไม่ได้ก็กลับบ้าน ติดตามอยู่ที่บ้าน บางคนก็โพสต์รูปกิจกรรมที่ทำระหว่างชมกีฬา คุยกับเพื่อนที่อยู่ในปาร์ตี้
วัยรุ่นอเมริกันเกือบ 90% มีโทรศัพท์มือถือ รุ่นแตกต่างกันไปตามฐานะ ส่วนมากคนขาวชนชั้นกลางจะมีไอโฟน เด็กส่วนใหญ่ไม่ใช้มันในฐานะโทรศัพท์แต่ใช้ทำอย่างอื่น บอยด์สังเกตว่า เวลาที่โทรศัพท์ดัง เด็กก็รับสายแล้วก็พูดว่า "พ่อออ" หรือ "แม่"
ในหนังสือบอยด์พยายามสนทนากับความเป็นห่วงของผู้ใหญ่ อธิบายว่าวัยรุ่นเขาทำอะไรกับเรื่องเหล่านี้บ้าง หลายเรื่องเด็กก็มีวิธีจัดการของตัวเอง หลายเรื่องมันก็สะท้อนสภาพที่สังคมเป็น หลายเรื่องผู้ใหญ่ก็อาจแก้ปัญหาผิดจุด
ในบทที่ว่าด้วยอัตลักษณ์บอยด์บอกว่าวัยรุ่นใช้โซเชียลมีเดียของตัวเอง กำกับความสัมพันธ์และบริบทรอบตัวพวกเขา เช่น การใช้ชื่อที่แตกต่างกันไปในแต่ละเว็บไซต์ของเด็กผู้หญิงคนหนึ่ง เธอเลือกแล้วว่าจะนำเสนอตัวเองแบบไหนในที่ต่างๆ ในเฟซบุ๊กใช้ชื่อ jessica ในทวิตเตอร์ ใช้ชื่อ littelmonster หลายคนใช้เฟซบุ๊กสำหรับเพื่อนในโรงเรียน ส่วน tumblr แชร์กับคนที่มีความสนใจคล้ายกัน หรือ ทวิตเตอร์ใช้กับคนไม่รู้จัก เช่น เป็นกลุ่มแฟนคลับของดาราที่ชื่นชอบ มีเด็กผู้หญิงคนหนึ่งเป็นแฟนคลับของนักร้องวง one direction เพื่อนๆ ก็รู้ว่าเธอชอบ เวลาใช้เฟซบุ๊ก เธอก็คุยเรื่องนี้น้อย เพราะรู้ว่าเพื่อนไม่อินและรำคาญ แต่จะใช้ทวิตเตอร์คุยกับคนที่ชอบเหมือนกัน บางคนคุยกันจนเป็นเพื่อนกันทางเฟซบุ๊กต่อ
บางครั้งเด็กก็มองว่าการใช้โซเชียลมีเดียเป็นที่เล่นสนุก เป็นเรื่องขำๆ เขาก็เลยชอบใส่ประวัติส่วนตัวที่ไม่จริง เช่น มีรายได้ 250,000 เหรียญ หรือทำควิซนั่นนี่ที่ขำๆ แต่พ่อแม่ไม่เข้าใจ บอยด์บอกว่า การตกแต่งพื้นที่โซเชียลมีเดียของเหมือนกับการประดับประดาห้องนอนของวัยรุ่นชนชั้นกลาง และสะท้อนว่าอยากจะให้คนอื่นมองว่าตัวเองเป็นอย่างไร
ขณะที่มีเด็กบางคนโพสต์อะไรที่แปลกๆ ต่อต้านกฎ บางคนก็ใช้โซเชียลมีเดียเป็นพื้นที่แสดงออกอัตลักษณ์ของตนเอง มีเด็กหญิงคนหนึ่งเจอกลุ่มสนทนา LGBT ซึ่งเธอเลือกจะเป็น แต่ก็รู้ว่าให้ใครรู้ไม่ได้และไม่พร้อมจะเปิดเผย ไม่อยากให้คนในโรงเรียน พ่อแม่ เพื่อนรู้ ก็ต้องแอบเข้าเว็บที่เกี่ยวข้องกับเรื่องพวกนี้ แล้วก็รู้ว่าเบราวน์เซอร์ต่างๆ เก็บประวัติการเข้าชมเว็บ เธอก็เลยเลือกใช้เบราวน์เซอร์แตกต่างกันสำหรับเว็บหรือแอคเคานท์โซเชียลมีเดียแตกต่างกันไปด้วย
วัยรุ่นคิดถึงความเป็นส่วนตัว แต่อาจจะคนละแบบกับที่ผู้ใหญ่เข้าใจ
ขณะที่ผู้ใหญ่กังวลว่าวัยรุ่นแชร์ช้อมูลส่วนตัวของตนเองมากเกินไป วัยรุ่นก็กลัวว่า ผู้ใหญ่จะมาสอดส่อง สอดแนมพวกเขา วัยรุ่นพยายามหลายอย่างเพื่อให้พ้นจากการคุกคามของพ่อแม่ หลายคนเป็นเพื่อนกับพ่อแม่บนโซเชียลมีเดีย และให้รหัสผ่านแก่พวกเขาเผื่อกรณีฉุกเฉิน แต่จะไม่พอใจถ้าพ่อแม่มาแอบดู หรือมายุ่ง ส่วนพ่อแม่มักให้เหตุผลว่า เป็นสิทธิของพวกเขา
วัยรุ่นหลายคนควบคุมข้อมูลที่อาจจะถูกมองเห็นจากคนอื่นได้ ด้วยหลายวิธี บางคนใช้ภาษาเข้ารหัส บางคนโพสต์เพลงที่รู้กันเฉพาะเพื่อนสนิท เช่น เด็กหญิงคนหนึ่งรู้สึกแย่มากหลังจากอกหัก และอยากจะบอกเพื่อน แต่มีแม่เป็นเพื่อนทางเฟซบุ๊กด้วย ก็ไม่รู้จะทำไง เดี๋ยวแม่เป็นห่วง ก็เลยหาทางสื่อสารกับเพื่อนด้วยเพลง เธอเลือกเพลงจากในหนังเรื่องหนึ่งที่ไปดูกับเพื่อน เป็นตอนที่ตัวละครอกหัก เพลงนี้ขึ้นมาพอดี ซึ่งตอนหนังจบก็ได้คุยกับเพื่อนเรื่องนี้ เมื่อเธอโพสต์เพลงนี้ เพื่อนก็เข้ามากดไลก์ และส่งข้อความหาด้วยความเป็นห่วง ขณะที่แม่มาคอมเมนต์ว่า เพลงนี้ดีจัง ความหมายดี
วัยรุ่นอยู่กับการถูกสอดส่องอยู่ตลอดเวลาจากพ่อแม่ เช่น การยืนอยู่ข้างหลังดูว่าลูกคุยอะไร แอบซุ่มดูตามที่ต่างๆ เพราะคิดว่าเป็นสิทธิที่จะฟังและรับรู้ เด็กสาวอายุ 18 ปีคนหนึ่งกลัวว่าจะถูกใครมายุ่มยามกับเธอ ใช้วิธี deactivate เฟซบุ๊กเวลาที่ไม่ได้ออนไลน์ และกลับมา activate ใหม่เวลาที่อยู่หน้าจอ ทำแบบนี้ทำให้เธอรู้สึกว่าตนเองควบคุมสถานการณ์ได้
วัยรุ่นมีประสบการณ์ของการถูกสอดส่องตลอดเวลา และแตกต่างกันไปตามสถานะทางสังคมและเศรษฐกิจหรือเชื้อชาติของพวกเขา คนที่อยู่ชายขอบมักถูกสอดส่องจากรัฐ ขณะที่คนที่มีอภิสิทธิอาจถูกพ่อแม่สอดส่องมากกว่า
ขณะที่พ่อแม่รู้สึกว่า ตนเองกำลังทำตัวเป็นพ่อแม่ที่ดีอยู่ ลูกกลับรู้สึกว่าพวกเขาต้องการความไว้วางใจ
บอยด์บอกว่าข้อถกเถียงเรื่องไม่มีอะไรต้องซ่อนอาจไร้สาระ เพราะสำหรับวัยรุ่นแล้ว ความเป็นส่วนตัวเป็นเรื่องของการควบคุมการเข้าถึงความหมายมากกว่า การควบคุมช่องทางเข้าถึงเนื้อหานั้น
ประเด็นเรื่อง "ติดเน็ต" และ "อันตราย" ของวัยรุ่นมักอยู่ในหัวของผู้ใหญ่ พวกเขามองว่าวัยรุ่นใช้เวลาไปกับอินเทอร์เน็ตมากเกินไป บอยด์บอกว่าจากการคุยกับวัยรุ่นหลายคน เธอคิดว่าวัยรุ่นสมัยนี้มีอิสระน้อยกว่าสมัยของเธอมาก วัยรุ่นเดี๋ยวนี้ถูกสอนว่าให้ ทำอะไรก็ได้ที่อยากทำ แต่ทำที่บ้าน ก่อนหน้านี้เด็กๆ มักออกมาเล่นกับเพื่อนบ้านในละแวกเดียวกัน ขี่จักรยาน ไปเดินเล่น แต่ตอนนี้พวกเขาถูกสั่งห้ามไม่ให้ไปไหนนอกสายตาผู้ใหญ่ เพราะเกรงว่าจะเกิดอันตราย
ในความกลัวของพ่อแม่ทำให้เด็กบางคนมีตารางกิจกรรมแน่นเอี้ยดในช่วงเลิกเรียน และวันหยุด จนไม่มีเวลาสังสันทน์กับเพื่อนฝูง ลูกชนชั้นกลางและสูงใช้เวลาไปกับการเข้าสังคมแบบชนชั้นสูง เช่น สปอร์ตคลับ เรียนดนตรี ความเข้มงวดและความกลัวของพ่อแม่ทำให้เด็กหลายคนใช้โซเชียลมีเดียเป็นที่พูดคุยกับเพื่อน
วัยรุ่นใช้อินเทอร์เน็ตเพื่อติดต่อกับเพื่อน สำหรับคนภายนอกแล้ว อาจจะมองว่าพวกเขาติดเน็ต แต่จริงๆ แล้วพวกเขาโหยหาเวลาและพื้นที่ในการพบปะกับเพื่อนๆ ต่างหาก
บอยด์เข้าไปในโรงเรียนหนึ่งที่มีเด็กนักเรียนหลากหลายเชื้อชาติ เธอ��อกว่าเหมือนกับโฆษณาเบเนต็องเลย แต่พอถึงเวลาพักกลางวัน เด็กจะแยกเป็นกลุ่มๆ ตามสีผิว "พวกคนขาวอยู่ตรงดิสนีย์แลนด์ ตะวันออกกลางอยู่ตรงทางเดิน พวกลาตินอยู่ตรงโน้น" เด็กหญิงคนหนึ่งอธิบาย
ตอนอินเทอร์เน็ตเกิดใหม่ๆ ใครๆ ก็คิดว่ามันจะนำมาซึ่งความเท่าเทียมกันของมนุษยชาติ หรือมีการ์ตูนที่โด่งดังสุดๆ ว่า ในอินเทอร์เน็ตไม่มีใครรู้ว่าคุณคือหมา แต่เรื่องจริงกลับไม่ใช่อย่างนั้น โลกออนไลน์ของวัยร่นอเมริกันเต็มไปด้วยความเหลื่อมล้ำ การแบ่งแยกทางเชือชาติ สีผิว และฐานะ
เวลาที่วัยรุ่นออนไลน์ พวกเขาเอาอัตลักษณ์ เพื่อน และเครือข่ายของพวกเขาไปด้วย โลกมันไม่นิรนามอย่างที่คิด นอกจากการเหยียดกันในโซเชียลมีเดียต่างๆ แล้ว บอยด์ยังได้ยกตัวอย่างคำพูดจากการสัมภาษณ์เด็กสาวผิวขาวจากไอโอวาคนหนึ่งที่เล่าว่าเธอรู้สึกอย่างไรกับคนดำที่ไม่รู้ทำไมจึงสร้างปัญหาในโรงเรียนอยู่ได้
ครั้งหนึ่งบอยด์เจอลูกสาวของผู้เข้าร่วมสัมมนาในงานหนึ่ง บอยด์ไปคุยด้วยเพราะเบื่อการประชุม เลยเปิดเฟซบุ๊กของเด็กหญิงกัน แล้วเจอว่า แม้เธอจะมีเพื่อนทั้งโรงเรียนหลากหลาย แต่น่าสังเกตว่า ในรูปโปรไฟล์ มีแต่คนผิวขาวมาคอนเมนต์ในรูปคนขาว ในทางเดียวกับรูปของคนดำ
บอยด์ยังพบอีกว่า ในหมู่เด็กวัยรุ่นมีการแบ่งแยกสีผิวจากการใช้ Myspace กับ เฟซบุ๊กในช่วงของการเปลี่ยนผ่าน เฟซบุ๊กถูกมองว่าเป็นพื้นที่ของพวกคนขาว คนเก่ง คนฉลาด ในโรงเรียน ส่วนมายสเปซเป็นเหมือนสลัม เป็นที่รวมของพวกฮิปฮอป พวกชายขอบ เด็กหญิงวัย 14 ปีคนขาว ชนชั้นกลางคนหนึ่งบอกว่า มายสเปซคือพวกคนดำ ส่วนเฟซบุ๊กคือพวกคนขาว ขณะที่เฟซบุ๊กดูสะอาดสะอ้านเรียบง่าย มายสเปซกลับสกปรก เต็มไปด้วยการตกแต่งวับวาวจากพวกรูปกากเพชร การแบ่งแยกชนชั้นและสีผิวในโรงเรียน ปรากฎให้เห็นบนพื้นที่ออนไลน์ด้วย
มีช่องว่างอื่นๆ อีก เช่น เด็กหลายคนมีแต่โทรศัพท์มือถือที่ต่อเน็ตได้ ไม่มีคอมพิวเตอร์ที่บ้าน ฉะนั้นเวลาต้องค้นอะไร เข้าเว็บไซต์ ก็ไม่สะดวกเท่ากัน
ข้อเสนอที่เรามักพูดกันว่า วัยรุ่นเป็น digital native ส่วนผู้ใหญ่เป็น immigrant บอยด์บอกว่านี่นำมาซึ่งปัญหา เราคิดว่าวัยรุ่นมีความรู้ความเข้าใจและเท่าทันอินเทอร์เน็ต แต่ไม่ใช่อย่างนั้นหรอก บอยด์เจอทั้งเด็กที่เขียนโค้ดเป็น ไปจนถึงเด็กที่แยกไม่ออกระหว่างเบราว์เซอร์กับอินเทอร์เน็ต ความคิดแบบนี้ทำให้เราไม่หาทางทำให้วัยรุ่นป้องกันตัวเองเป็น
บอยด์ยังมองว่า การที่ผู้ใหญ่เชื่อว่า กูเกิลเป็นเว็บที่ดี พูดอะไรก็ถูก สิ่งที่ขึ้นมาบนสุดของกูเกิลแปลว่าน่าเชื่อถือมาก มากกว่าวิกิพีเดียเป็นเรื่องน่าขัน แปลว่าไม่เข้าใจการทำงานของอัลกอริทึ่ม และธุรกิจของกูเกิลเลย
โซเชียลมีเดียทำให้วัยรุ่นมีส่วนร่วม และสร้างสิ่งที่บอยด์เรียกว่า "networked publics" ผู้ใหญ่อาจจะใช้โลกออนไลน์เพื่อหนีอะไรบางอย่าง วัยรุ่นใช้มันเชื่อมโยงกับชุมชนของพวกเขา networked publics คือ พื้นที่สาธารณะที่เกิดจากการใช้เทคโนโลยีสร้างขึ้นมาใหม่ เป็นทั้งแง่ของพื้นที่ทางกายภาพและพื้นที่ใช้จินตนาการ
โซเชียลมีเดีย ก่อให้เกิดความท้าทายใหม่ๆ ต่อพื้นที่สาธารณะแบบเดิม คือ ความยืนยงของสิ่งที่แสดงออกและเนื้อหาออนไลน์ (ไม่หายไปไหน) การมองเห็นได้ (visibility) การแพร่กระจายได้ (spreadability) และการค้นได้ (searchability)
ในครึ่งแรกของหนังสือ พยายามชี้ให้เห็นว่าวัยรุ่นใช้โซเชียลมีเดียอย่างไรบ้าง ส่วนครึ่งหลัง (ที่น่าเบื่อ) บอยด์พยายามพร่ำบอกพ่อแม่ทั้งหลายว่าคิดผิดอย่างไร ควรทำอย่างไร และย้ำให้เห็นตลอดเวลาว่าสิ่งที่เกืดขึ้นในโลกออนไลน์และการปฏิบัติตัวของวัยรุ่นในโซเชียลมีเดีย มันก็คือโลกที่เขาอยู่นั่นแหละ และผู้ใหญ่ก็มีส่วนสำคัญในการสร้างมันขึ้น
ถ้าไม่อยากซื้อ ก็ดาวน์โหลดหนังสือได้ที่ www.danah.org/books/ItsComplicated.pdf
รู้จักผู้เขียนได้ที่ http://www.danah.org/
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ในหนังสือมีพูดถึงกอฟฟ์แมน บูดิเยอร์ ฟูโกต์ ฯลฯ
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ป.ล. 1 ขอบพระคุณผู้แนะนำให้รู้จักกับ danah boyd ที่บอกว่า "เขาอายุพอๆ กับหญิงเลยยย" รู้สึกว่าจะห่างกัน 6-7 ปีอยู่นะเคอะะะ
ป.ล. 2 พิมพ์แบบสรุปๆ ไว้ ก็เอาชนะความขี้เกียจมาได้เยอะมากกแล้วว ยังไม่ต้องคิดอารายต่อออ

[Jess]

I read this for school.

The one good thing this book does is in essence says:

Most kids are going on the internet to socialize, not to be lazy or just play video games all day.

Aside from that, as this book states that it might be, it is out of date and irrelevant as far as I’m concerned. It mentions MySpace and Runescape and other non-relevant sites to the current time.

One thing that bothered me: This book devoted an ENTIRE chapter to bullying, then describes the Star Wars Kid as overweight. Totally and completely unnecessary. Did the author describe ANY other kids weight in this book out of all the kids she interviewed? No. As the book acknowledges, it was clearly very traumatic for this teenager and describing him by physical appearance in that way just perpetuates the bullying the author is trying to describe.

You can agree with me or not, but any negative comments made in regards to this on my review will be automatically deleted.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

danah boyd spent 10 years researching teen use of social media and has written a great book diving into themes and patterns. Similar to Sherry Turkle, boyd looked past the specifics of what teens were doing and focused on generalities and patterns of use across all social media.

As a teacher and parent, it was helpful to think through what developmental hurdles teenagers are tackling with social media as the outlet. I reflected on my teaching habits and how I model appropriate, safe, and purposeful use to my students. boyd also gave great insight on how, as a parent, I can engage in healthy ways with my kids as they form identity in a connected world.

[Richard]

Gretchen McCulloch was interviewed by Ezra Klein in his podcast episode Because Podcast and recommended this book (and two others).

[Degenerate Chemist · Rating 4 out of 5]

"It's Complicated" is what it says on the tin. It is a survey of existing data of how teens build their social lives online.

The short summary is- our internet spaces are a microcosm of the real world so the internet should be the least of your worries. Kids are navigating internet spaces with little guidance from adults because adults treat them terribly.

I agree with all of these points and I found the actual data compiled by social scientists in this book was of the 'water is wet' variety.

At the same time we need more books like this and more 'water is wet' studies because there is so much misinformation about how internet social networking actually works.

[Amit · Rating 4 out of 5]

Highly recommended read for the parents and well-wishers of the "social media" generation. Littered with insights about social media and what it means to the teen culture. Questioning many prevalent assumptions about the teen culture, and technology.

[Mr. Derek Dietz · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting, readable text that, despite its age, remains insightful on the role of technology in the lives of adolescents. If nothing else, the work reminded me that it's important to not to be too critical on the role technology plays today.

[Ross · Rating 3 out of 5]

L'ho letto per scuola però è scritto in modo molto semplice e per chi fosse interessato alla sociologia degli adolescenti in relazione ai new media può essere un'ottima lettura.

[Plamen Miltenoff]

Did Media Literacy Backfire?

Jan 5, 2017danah boyd

https://points.datasociety.net/did-me...

Understanding what sources to trust is a basic tenet of media literacy education.

Think about how this might play out in communities where the “liberal media” is viewed with disdain as an untrustworthy source of information…or in those where science is seen as contradicting the knowledge of religious people…or where degrees are viewed as a weapon of the elite to justify oppression of working people. Needless to say, not everyone agrees on what makes a trusted source.

Students are also encouraged to reflect on economic and political incentives that might bias reporting. Follow the money, they are told. Now watch what happens when they are given a list of names of major power players in the East Coast news media whose names are all clearly Jewish. Welcome to an opening for anti-Semitic ideology.

In the United States, we believe that worthy people lift themselves up by their bootstraps. This is our idea of freedom. To take away the power of individuals to control their own destiny is viewed as anti-American by so much of this country. You are your own master.

Children are indoctrinated into this cultural logic early, even as their parents restrict their mobility and limit their access to social situations. But when it comes to information, they are taught that they are the sole proprietors of knowledge. All they have to do is “do the research” for themselves and they will know better than anyone what is real.

Combine this with a deep distrust of media sources.

Many marginalized groups are justifiably angry about the ways in which their stories have been dismissed by mainstream media for decades.It took five days for major news outlets to cover Ferguson. It took months and a lot of celebrities for journalists to start discussing the Dakota Pipeline. But feeling marginalized from news media isn’t just about people of color.

Keep in mind that anti-vaxxers aren’t arguing that vaccinations definitively cause autism. They are arguing that we don’t know. They are arguing that experts are forcing children to be vaccinated against their will, which sounds like oppression. What they want is choice — the choice to not vaccinate. And they want information about the risks of vaccination, which they feel are not being given to them. In essence, they are doing what we taught them to do: questioning information sources and raising doubts about the incentives of those who are pushing a single message. Doubt has become tool.

Addressing so-called fake news is going to require a lot more than labeling. It’s going to require a cultural change about how we make sense of information, whom we trust, and how we understand our own role in grappling with information. Quick and easy solutions may make the controversy go away, but they won’t address the underlying problems.

In the United States, we’re moving towards tribalism (see Fukuyama), and we’re undoing the social fabric of our country through polarization, distrust, and self-segregation.

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boyd, danah. (2014). It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens (1 edition). New Haven: Yale University Press.

p. 8 networked publics are publics that are reconstructed by networked technologies. they are both space and imagined community.
p. 11 affordances: persistence, visibility, spreadability, searchability.
p. technological determinism both utopian and dystopian
p. 30 adults misinterpret teens online self-expression.
p. 31 taken out of context. Joshua Meyrowitz about Stokely Charmichael.
p. 43 as teens have embraced a plethora of social environment and helped co-create the norms that underpin them, a wide range of practices has emerged. teens have grown sophisticated with how they manage contexts and present themselves in order to be read by their intended audience.
p. 54 privacy. p. 59 Privacy is a complex concept without a clear definition. Supreme Court Justice Brandeis: the right to be let alone, but also 'measure of th access others have to you through information, attention, and physical proximity.'
control over access and visibility
p. 65 social steganography. hiding messages in plain sight
p. 69 subtweeting. encoding content
p. 70 living with surveillance . Foucault Discipline and Punish
p. 77 addition. what makes teens obsessed w social media.
p. 81 Ivan Goldberg coined the term internet addiction disorder. jokingly
p. 89 the decision to introduce programmed activities and limit unstructured time is not unwarranted; research has shown a correlation between boredom and deviance.
My interview with Myra, a middle-class white fifteen-year-old from Iowa, turned funny and sad when "lack of time" became a verbal trick in response to every question. From learning Czech to trakc, from orchestra to work in a nursery, she told me that her mother organized "98%" of her daily routine. Myra did not like all of these activities, but her mother thought they were important.
Myra noted that her mother meant well, but she was exhausted and felt socially disconnected because she did not have time to connect with friends outside of class.
p. 100 danger
are sexual predators lurking everywhere
p. 128 bullying. is social media amplifying meanness and cruelty.
p. 131 defining bullying in a digital era. p. 131 Dan Olweus narrowed in the 70s bulling to three components: aggression, repetition and imbalance on power. p. 152 SM has not radically altered the dynamics of bullying, but it has made these dynamics more visible to more people. we must use this visibility not to justify increased punishment, but to help youth who are actually crying out for attention.
p. 153 inequality. can SM resolve social divisions?
p. 176 literacy. are today's youth digital natives? p. 178 Barlow and Rushkoff p. 179 Prensky. p. 180 youth need new literacies. p. 181 youth must become media literate. when they engage with media--either as consumers or producers--they need to have the skills to ask questions about the construction and dissemination of particular media artifacts. what biases are embedded in the artifact? how did the creator intend for an audience to interpret the artifact, and what are the consequences of that interpretation.
p. 183 the politics of algorithms (see also these IMS blog entries http://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=al...) Wikipedia and google are fundamentally different sites. p. 186 Eli Pariser, The Filter Bubble: the personalization algorithms produce social divisions that undermine any ability to crate an informed public. Harvard's Berkman Center have shown, search engines like Google shape the quality of information experienced by youth.
p. 192 digital inequality. p. 194 (bottom) 195 Eszter Hargittai: there are signifficant difference in media literacy and technical skills even within age cohorts. teens technological skills are strongly correlated with socio-economic status. Hargittai argues that many youth, far from being digital natives, are quite digitally naive.
p. 195 Dmitry Epstein: when society frames the digital divide as a problem of access, we see government and industry as the responsible party for the addressing the issue. If DD as skills issue, we place the onus on learning how to manage on individuals and families.

p. 196 beyond digital natives
Palfrey, J., & Gasser, U. (2008). Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives (1 edition). New York: Basic Books.

John Palfrey, Urs Gasser: Born Digital
Digital Natives share a common global culture that is defined not by age, strictly, but by certain attributes and experience related to how they interact with information technologies, information itself, one another, and other people and institutions. Those who were not "born digital' can be just as connected, if not more so, than their younger counterparts. And not everyone born since, say 1982, happens to be a digital native." (see also http://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2018...
p. 197. digital native rhetoric is worse than inaccurate: it is dangerous
many of the media literacy skills needed to be digitally savvy require a level of engagement that goes far beyond what the average teen pick up hanging out with friends on FB or Twitter. Technical skills, such as the ability to build online spaces requires active cultivation. Why some search queries return some content before others. Why social media push young people to learn how to to build their own systems, versus simply using a social media platforms. teens social status and position alone do not determine how fluent or informed they are via-a-vis technology.
p. 199 Searching for a public on their own
p. 201 networked publics serve as publics that both rely on networked technologies and also network people into meaningful imagined communities in new ways. Through engagement with publics, people develop a sense of others that ideally manifests as tolerance and respect. Although laws provide concrete rules for what is and is not acceptable in a particular jurisdiction, social norms shape most interactions. People develop a sense for what is normative by collectively adjusting their behavior based on what they see in the publics they inhabit and understand. This does not mean that the world is inherently safe or that people always respect their neightbors but that social processes underpinning publics buffer people from hatred by creating common cultural ground.
p. 203 To be public and to be in public
Baudelaire: flaneurs - neither fully and exhibitionist nor fully a voyeur at any moment. when teens turn to networked publics, they do so to hang out with friends and be recognized by peers. digital flaneurs are teens who share in order to see and be seen. They want to look respectable and interesting, while simultaneously warding off unwanted attention.
p. 206 When Networked Publics get political
p. 209 Anonymous is a moniker for a loosely coordinated group of people who share a commitment to challenging powerful entities anonymously.


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Daum, M. (2018, August 24). My Affair With the Intellectual Dark Web – Great Escape. Retrieved October 9, 2018, from https://medium.com/s/greatescape/nuan...

http://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2018...

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more on media literacy in this IMS blog
http://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=me...

fake news in this IMS blog
http://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=fa...

[Wesley Fryer · Rating 5 out of 5]

danah boyd's book, "It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens," should be required reading for every parent and educator today. Living as we do in a media-saturated society, many adults are prone to believe the hype and buy the overly-simplistic portrayal by mainstream media outlets of how technology is to blame for many ills which beset both teens and our society as a whole. dana has spent years interviewing hundreds of teens around the United States about their uses of social media. Her anecdotes as well as research conclusions paint an important picture (as her book title indicates) of a much more "complicated" landscape of teen social media use and social lives than many people perceive today.

Digital communication technologies, including social media, have definitely changed the landscape of adolescence and "coming of age" in the United States in the 21st century. danah persausively argues in her book, however, that many of the challenges faced by teens and our society which get blamed on technologies stem from other root causes. She observes "For some adults, nostalgia can get in the way of understanding teens real relationship to social technologies today." Reading her book, and following up that reading with personal discussions with teens you have contact with in your life, is one of the best ways to move beyond nostalgic, often overly-simplistic perceptions of teen feelings & desires about online privacy as well as social media use more generally.

danah observes that "persistence, visibility, spreadability & searchability are all unique characteristics of networked digital publics." Teens and young people in their 20s today are the first generation on our planet to grow up simultaneously in a face-to-face as well as virtual (or "mediated") world. It's a mistake to believe that because many teens are on social media websites like Facebook (which have default settings for a public profile) they don't care about privacy. Media articles and TV programs love to hype the slogan, "privacy is dead," but teen use of mobile applications like SnapChat demonstrates this is false. As adults, we are mistaken if we think teen desires to use apps like SnapChat are entirely rooted in a desire to share inappropriate photos and videos. Certainly inappropriate media sharing ("sexting") is a reality for many teens as well as adults, but we should not generalize all desires to use apps and web services offering privacy as automatically suspect and likely inappropriate. As danah states, "The Internet is NOT just a place where people engage in unhealthy interactions." danah explores issues of privacy and publicity in challenging ways in her book. She astutely observes, "Both privacy and publicity are blurred... Being able to achieve privacy is an expression of agency." These issues are not simple, and adults are well advised to consider these complicated contexts carefully rather than assume (falsely) these issues are black and white, or easily understood and navigated.

As a fan of metaphors, I've liked "amplifier" as a description of technology for many years. danah notes in her book, "The Internet mirrors,magnifies, & makes more visible the good, bad & ugly of everyday life." We commit a significant mistake if we perceive the Internet to primarily be a place where teens make and have the opportunity to make big mistakes, however. Among other things, danah's book is a call for adults everywhere to become better and more active listeners to teens and young people as they experience and share their struggles in life. She observes "Many adult anxieties over teen social media use derive from reluctance to let teens fully participate in public life." In many ways we are a fear-driven society today, and danah's book offers a helpful mirror to consider how mainstream media has fanned the flames of fear surrounding technology and how we can view our world with more balance than extremism.

I highly recommend "It's Complicated" to you, whether you listen to it on your commutes to work (as I did) or you read it in print or eBook form. It's a thought provoking, timely, and immensely practical book which will encourage you to have important conversations with others in your family and community about social media, technology, freedom, fear, and other important topics.

As I listened to the audio version of dana's book from Audible, I tweeted numerous ideas and quotations which resonated with me and struck me as particularly notable. You can check those out using the following search link to my Tweet Nest Twitter archive:
http://twitter.wesfryer.com/search?q=...

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book provides an interesting counterpoint to Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other, which emphasises the problematic aspects of technology. 'It’s Complicated', by contrast, seeks to reassure the reader that today’s American teenagers are not being ruined by the internet and smartphones. I found myself agreeing with both books to some extent, as they are really pursuing different points. Turkle focuses more on the elderly than youth and doesn’t engage with the ‘digital natives’ concept. Boyd (sorry, I’m a stickler for capitalisation) is seeking to counter media scare stories about teenage life, which she rightly insists say more about the media’s use of fear than about teenagers themselves. Both books use ethnographic methods, which explore nuances of experience appealingly. Boyd seems more will to back this up with data on overall trends, which I appreciated.

The two books, but this one especially, really emphasise to me how American society has major problems and use of technology is a symptom rather than a cause. A major theme of ‘It’s Complicated’ is the fact that teenagers use social media to communicate with their friends because it is much easier than meeting with them face-to-face. A mixture of fearful & stiflingly protective parents, bad transport, a hostile built environment, and lack of free time appear responsible for this. Reading this chapter, I felt very glad not to be an American teenager, as it sounds incredibly depressing. Likewise, in Turkle’s book there was much about robots being used as companions for the elderly - this is symptomatic of society dismissing the elderly, rather than being a cause of it. Technology is not some neutral force, even as it shapes society it was created and marketed in a particular context.

Given the focus on teenagers, do not expect this book to reflect on the adoption of social media by other demographics. Moreover, it doesn’t consider the impact of smartphones and their ethic of constant connectivity. On the other hand, it does make some very striking points on how social media spaces reproduce existing inequalities and prejudices, especially racism. Likewise notable was the concept of ‘civil inattention’ and privacy-in-public within the context of facebook; the idea that relatives should skim past updates intended to be read by friends. Given that social mores and norms of behaviour are uncertain and evolving in social media, the extent of civil inattention is hard to gauge. A post that seems to invite sympathy and comfort leads you wonder if it is inviting such from you, or from closer friends, perhaps someone specific? On facebook, there is the perennial question of whether to weigh into a discussion between people you barely know, on a topic you feel strongly about. As arguing on the internet seems astoundingly futile, I'd always answer no. (As an aside, I don't use facebook, which I dislike for its clutter and general stressfulness. The same situation can occur on twitter, though.)

‘It’s Complicated’ is not a long book. It covers the topics most commonly raised in scaremongering about teenagers and technology, such as addiction to social media, bullying, and privacy. I was left with other questions, though. How is technology changing teenagers attitudes and practises in relation to consumerism, to socialising (surely more than the book implies), and to their future priorities? Are smartphones seen as tools for a purpose, or as part of their identity? I’m sure plenty of other books cover these issues. Perhaps it says something about my own attitude to technology that I get books out of the library about it! During my own teenage years I didn’t have a mobile phone but had access to the internet at school and the library. That wasn’t necessarily a better or worse way to grow up than with a smartphone and internet connection, yet this book definitely makes it clear that such technologies aren’t going to magically fix all the problems that teenagers face. They might make some worse and some better, in certain circumstances. What they most definitely do, however, is make incredible amounts of money for the companies that produce the hardware, run the websites, and sell the services.

[Nicolas Lontel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Les réflexions sur le numérique, son utilisation et sa continuité de la simple expérience non-virtuelle sont des réflexions qui m'intéressent toujours énormément. Je n'ai pas souvenir de pourquoi j'avais noté ce livre là, probablement une vidéo qui l'évoquait en passant, mais je l'ai acheté et je ne le regrette pas une seule seconde.

À travers plusieurs enquêtes effectuées auprès des jeunes dans les dernières années (en parle d'avant 2014 alors que MySpace était beaucoup plus utilisé que Facebook, mais dont la migration commençait à se faire sentir très fortement et les deux plateformes étaient plutôt en concurrence), l'auteure explore l'utilisation du numérique et de ses plateformes chez les jeunes en démystifiant beaucoup BEAUCOUP d'idées reçues. "Même moi", je me suis surpris à reproduire quelques mythes (notamment que les jeunes qui seraient plus "native" au numérique que la génération dite "migrant" sur le numérique), mais aussi quand aux raisons qui poussent les jeunes à se tourner vers le numérique (l'interdiction des parents de sortir par peur de prédateurs, couvre-feu, etc. poussent souvent les jeunes à se retrouver sur les réseaux sociaux car, ne peuvent se retrouver en "vrai").

À travers plusieurs chapitres, elles couvrent de manière très intéressante les questions identitaires chez les jeunes face au numérique, au privé (autant en terme de connaissances des outils pour rendre sa présence plus privée, questions très discutées aujourd'hui que le manque d'outil et d'instruction quant à déceler certaines choses), la "dépendance" aux réseaux sociaux, les supposés danger de prédateurs en ligne (et ce qu'il en est réellement, et quelle sont les véritables menaces en ligne), mon chapitre préféré était définitivement sur l'intimidation, mais elle déconstruit aussi le mythe du numérique comme grand égalisateur entre les classes sociales et les ethnies et finalement, elle s'attarde à la question des "digital natives".

Bref, un très gros programme qu'elle attaque en se servant beaucoup des entrevues faites avec les jeunes pour réfléchir à l'impact très personnel, sans éviter toutefois de se référencer à la théorie et aux statistiques. Le chapitre sur les prédateurs est certainement très complet à cet égard et démontre l'importance pour son auteure de vouloir recentrer radicalement le débat pour éteindre les "paniques morales" et s'intéresser aux vrais problèmes, qui sont en fait des problèmes sociaux pas propres au numérique.

Il s'agit aussi bien d'un livre grand public qui peut démystifier énormément de préjugés et d'angoisse pour les parents (surtout) de jeunes et d'enfants, mais les fans d'essais en auront définitivement pour leur intérêt avec une panoplie de réflexions et témoignages intéressants qui sont amenés. Je pense sincèrement que tous les parents devraient lire ce livre, il est aussi très informatif pour soi.

[Jj Kwashnak · Rating 4 out of 5]

All the time we hear talk about “teenagers today just have their face in their phones all the time,” or more kindly talk about them being “digital natives.” But are they really all that different than teenagers from earlier generations? Danah Boyd seems to think not. Her insightful book opens with an observation of teenagers at a high school football game in Nashville, where all the students are using mobile devices at the game, and then putting them away to interact face to face – contrasted with the parents in the stands who are glued to their devices, with no difference if they were there or somewhere else. Basing her book on numerous interviews conducted over the past 5-7 years Boyd comes to a rather startling conclusion – teens want to socialize (no surprise there) and want to do it face to face, but they can’t whether due to highly structured time constraints or parental restrictions on movement and gathering. So they increasingly have turned to social media as an outlet. Falling ahead of the curve, teens use social media to negotiate interpersonal interactions and do so without the prying eyes of parents who understand and use more “mainstream” social media such as Facebook and instead using Twitter, Snapschat and other services. Their postings are often encoded, expressing their feelings for those who understand, knowing that their every utterance is being watched. As Boyd explains, Teens and Social Media are In a Relationship, and “It’s Complicated.” A heart there is an almost love/hate relationship with technology and social media – it’s a chance to interact with others, but it can also be the great boogie man with parents instilling fear in teens, and themselves, with stories of online sexual predators and bullying. But it does not keep the teens from using the Internet; rather it keeps many of them hiding it from their parents. If there is a negative in the book, it is that while the author deals with the issue of technology (which can change week to week), she is relying on interviews that were conducted mainly between 2007 and 2010 – a lifetime in Internet time. While the bulk of the research probably would bear out the same conclusions, many of the stories and references can seem dated, making the reader wonder what might have changed in the intervening years. Despite this lag time, the book is an interesting view into wired teens today and certainly adds to the complicated reality of their world.

[David Rickert · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book every teacher and parent should read, not because you'll agree with everything that Boyd writes but because she questions some widely held assumptions about teens' use of technology. Her basic premise is that teens are "addicted" to social media because parents have created a sheltered environment governed by fear in which teens don't have anywhere else to go but online to create a private environment to socialize. My favorite story is one where a mom had a group of her daughter's friends over but was afraid to leave them unsupervised. Her daughter began to text at the dinner table and when her mom said she was being rude, her daughter replied that she was actually texting the same friends at the table because she wanted to have a conversation without her mom listening in.

The way that teens use social media is quite a bit different than adults (and there's another great scene where the author is at a high school football game and observes that parents were tied to their phones much more than the kids were). Teens use it as an extension of their lives at school and a place to socialize because their over-programmed lives don't allow for them to create their own social environments. I disagree in part with the author here because it seems like sports and extracurriculars should provide the environment for such socialization, even if they are school sanctioned activities.

If there's a weakness to the author's argument it's that at times she's too sympathetic with teens who obviously aren't always the most reliable at reporting why they do what they do and often portray themselves as victims rather than having control over their circumstances. Teens may go to Facebook to socialize, but they also do it when they have nothing else better to do. Still, the author challenges a lot of the commonly held assumptions about teens' use of social media and whether or not you agree with her position, they are important questions that should be raised.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s complicated… or maybe not. This book provides cosy reassurance that teenagers are the same as they have always been and that the internet merely provides them with different ways to connect and communicate. The author dissects teenage online behaviour through a mixture of qualitative research and statistics that generally works well. Personal anecdotes make for an engaging read, but are supported by enough quantitative evidence to make the arguments convincing. Ironically, the first chapters suggest that teenagers are using social media primarily as a means of arranging real-life meetings and are in fact more socially engaged than their equally addicted parents. The tone of the book is consistently positive, providing a defence of the importance of outlets like Facebook for contemporary adolescents. The internet allows geographically challenged adolescents to have a social life and apparently decreases bullying rather than promoting it, by leaving lasting evidence of any victimisation. Was I convinced? No, not completely. It comes across as an apologia for teenage internet addiction and while some of the arguments are compelling, the lack of attention to opposing viewpoints seemed to leave a vacuum in the structure. Issues with sexting and privacy of all kinds have been an ongoing problem for students in the schools I have worked in and the glib explanation of how students are protecting themselves through codes and different identities didn't completely convince. Similarly, I felt that cyberbullying and its ramifications were not explored rigorously enough. So I would recommend this book with reservations – it’s a fairly interesting read without being riveting and while not comprehensive enough for my liking, it provides an alternative and well researched viewpoint to the media hysteria about adolescent online behaviour.