It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens - Hardcover

Boyd, Danah

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0300166311 ISBN 13: 9780300166316

Verlag: Yale University Press, 2014

Inhaltsangabe

“boyd’s new book is layered and smart . . . It’s Complicated will update your mind.”—Alissa Quart, New York Times Book Review
 
“A fascinating, well-researched and (mostly) reassuring look at how today's tech-savvy teenagers are using social media.”—People
 
“The briefest possible summary? The kids are all right, but society isn’t.”—Andrew Leonard, Salon
 
What is new about how teenagers communicate through services such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram? Do social media affect the quality of teens’ lives? In this eye-opening book, youth culture and technology expert danah boyd uncovers some of the major myths regarding teens' use of social media. She explores tropes about identity, privacy, safety, danger, and bullying. Ultimately, boyd argues that society fails young people when paternalism and protectionism hinder teenagers’ ability to become informed, thoughtful, and engaged citizens through their online interactions. Yet despite an environment of rampant fear-mongering, boyd finds that teens often find ways to engage and to develop a sense of identity.

Boyd’s conclusions are essential reading not only for parents, teachers, and others who work with teens but also for anyone interested in the impact of emerging technologies on society, culture, and commerce in years to come. Offering insights gleaned from more than a decade of original fieldwork interviewing teenagers across the United States, boyd concludes reassuringly that the kids are all right. At the same time, she acknowledges that coming to terms with life in a networked era is not easy or obvious. In a technologically mediated world, life is bound to be complicated.

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Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

danah boyd is Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research, Research Assistant Professor at New York University, and Fellow at Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society. She lives in New York City.

danah boyd is Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research, Research Assistant Professor at New York University, and Fellow at Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet and Society. She lives in New York City.

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it's complicated

the social lives of networked teens

By danah boyd

Yale UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2014 danah boyd
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-300-16631-6

Contents

preface, ix, 
introduction, 1, 
1 identity why do teens seem strange online?, 29, 
2 privacy why do youth share so publicly?, 54, 
3 addiction what makes teens obsessed with social media?, 77, 
4 danger are sexual predators lurking everywhere?, 100, 
5 bullying is social media amplifying meanness and cruelty?, 128, 
6 inequality can social media resolve social divisions?, 153, 
7 literacy are today's youth digital natives?, 176, 
8 searching for a public of their own, 199, 
appendix: teen demographics, 215, 
notes, 221, 
bibliography, 245, 
acknowledgments, 267, 
index, 273, 

CHAPTER 1

identity

why do teens seemstrange online?

In 2005, an Ivy League university was considering the application ofa young black man from South Central Los Angeles. The applicanthad written a phenomenal essay about how he wanted to walk awayfrom the gangs in his community and attend the esteemed institution.The admissions officers were impressed: a student who overcomessuch hurdles is exactly what they like seeing. In an effort tolearn more about him, the committee members Googled him. Theyfound his MySpace profile. It was filled with gang symbolism, crasslanguage, and references to gang activities. They recoiled.

I heard this story when a representative from the admissions officecontacted me. The representative opened the conversation with asimple question: Why would a student lie to an admissions committeewhen the committee could easily find the truth online? I askedfor context and learned about the candidate. Stunned by the question,my initial response was filled with nervous laughter. I had hungout with and interviewed teens from South Central. I was alwaysstruck by the challenges they faced, given the gang dynamics in theirneighborhood. Awkwardly, I offered an alternative interpretation:perhaps this young man is simply including gang signals on hisMySpace profile as a survival technique.

Trying to step into that young man's shoes, I shared with the collegeadmissions officer some of the dynamics that I had seen in LosAngeles. My hunch was that this teen was probably very conscious ofthe relationship between gangs and others in his hometown. Perhapshe felt as though he needed to position himself within the localcontext in a way that wouldn't make him a target. If he was anythinglike other teens I had met, perhaps he imagined the audience of hisMySpace profile to be his classmates, family, and community—notthe college admissions committee. Without knowing the teen, myguess was that he was genuine in his college essay. At the same time,I also suspected that he would never dare talk about his desire to goto a prestigious institution in his neighborhood because doing sowould cause him to be ostracized socially, if not physically attacked.As British sociologist Paul Willis argued in the 1980s, when youthattempt to change their socioeconomic standing, they often riskalienating their home community. This dynamic was often acutelypresent in the communities that I observed.

The admissions officer was startled by my analysis, and we had along conversation about the challenges of self-representationin a networked era. I'll never know if that teen was accepted into that prestigiousschool, but this encounter stayed with me as I watched otheradults misinterpret teens' online self-expressions. I came to realizethat, taken out of context, what teens appear to do and say on socialmedia seems peculiar if not outright problematic.

The intended audience matters, regardless of the actual audience.Unfortunately, adults sometimes believe that they understand whatthey see online without considering how teens imagined the contextwhen they originally posted a particular photograph or comment.The ability to understand how context, audience, and identity intersectis one of the central challenges people face in learning how tonavigate social media. And, for all of the mistakes that they can anddo make, teens are often leading the way at figuring out how to navigatea networked world in which collapsed contexts and imaginedaudiences are par for the course.

Taken Out of Context

In his 1985 book No Sense of Place, media scholar Joshua Meyrowitzdescribes the story of Stokely Carmichael, an American civil rightsactivist. In the 1960s, Carmichael regularly gave different talks todifferent audiences. He used a different style of speaking when headdressed white political leaders than when he addressed southernblack congregations. When Carmichael started presenting his ideason television and radio, he faced a difficult decision: which audienceshould he address? No matter which style of speaking he chose, heknew he'd alienate some. He was right. By using a rolling pastoralvoice in broadcast media, Carmichael ingratiated himself with blackactivists while alienating white elites.

Meyrowitz argues that electronic media like radio and televisioneasily collapse seemingly disconnected contexts. Public figures, journalists,and anyone in the limelight must regularly navigate disconnectedsocial contexts simultaneously, balancing what they say withhow their diverse audiences might interpret their actions. A contextcollapse occurs when people are forced to grapple simultaneously withotherwise unrelated social contexts that are rooted in different normsand seemingly demand different social responses. For example, somepeople might find it quite awkward to run into their former highschool teacher while drinking with their friends at a bar. These contextcollapses happen much more frequently in networked publics.

The dynamics that Meyrowitz describes are no longer simply thedomain of high-profile people who have access to broadcast media.When teens interact with social media, they must regularly contendwith collapsed contexts and invisible audiences as a part of everydaylife. Their teachers might read what they post online for their friends,and when their friends from school start debating their friendsfrom summer camp, they might be excited that their friend groupsare combining—or they might find it discomforting. In order to stabilizethe context in their own minds, teens do what others beforethem have done: just like journalists and politicians, teens imaginethe audience they're trying to reach. In speaking to an unknown orinvisible audience, it is impossible and unproductive to account forthe full range of plausible interpretations. Instead, public speakersconsistently imagine a specific subset of potential readers or viewersand focus on how those intended viewers are likely to respond toa particular statement. As a result, the imagined audience definesthe social context. In choosing how to present themselves before disconnectedand invisible audiences, people must attempt to resolvecontext collapses or actively define the context in which they'reoperating.

Teens often imagine their audience to be those that they've chosento "friend" or "follow," regardless of who might actually see theirprofile. In theory, privacy settings allow teens to limit their expressionsto the people they intend to reach by restricting who can seewhat. On MySpace and Twitter—where privacy settings are relativelysimple—using settings to limit who can access what contentcan be quite doable. Yet, on Facebook, this has proven to be intractableand confusing, given the complex and constantly...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Yale University Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2014
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0300166311
• ISBN 13: 9780300166316
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Auflage: 1
• Anzahl der Seiten: 281
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar