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social acceptance depends on the ability to socialize with one’s peers at the “cool” place.
social media has become an important public space where teens can gather and socialize broadly with peers in an informal way.
Teens are passionate about finding their place in society. What is different as a result of social media is that teens’ perennial desire for social connection and autonomy is now being expressed in networked publics. Networked publics are publics that are restructured by networked technologies. As such, they are simultaneously (1) the space constructed through networked technologies and (2) the imagined community that emerges as a result of the intersection of people, technology, and practice.
social media services like Facebook and Twitter are providing teens with new opportunities to participate in public life, and this, more than anything else, is what concerns many anxious adults.
In networked publics, interactions are often public by default, private through effort.
Just because teens can and do manipulate social media to attract attention and increase visibility does not mean that they are equally experienced at doing so or that they automatically have the skills to navigate what unfolds. It simply means that teens are generally more comfortable with—and tend to be less skeptical of—social media than adults.
Most teens are not compelled by gadgetry as such—they are compelled by friendship. The gadgets are interesting to them primarily as a means to a social end.
Social media enables a type of youth-centric public space that is often otherwise inaccessible. But because that space is highly visible, it can often provoke concerns among adults who are watching teens as they try to find their way.
Just because teens are comfortable using social media to hang out does not mean that they’re fluent in or with technology. Many teens are not nearly as digitally adept as the often-used assumption that they are “digital natives” would suggest.
The internet mirrors, magnifies, and makes more visible the good, bad, and ugly of everyday life.
Just because the internet—and social media—is pervasive in American society does not mean that everyone will have access, will want access, or will experience access in the same way.
just like journalists and politicians, teens imagine the audience they’re trying to reach.
Teens often imagine their audience to be those that they’ve chosen to “friend” or “follow,” regardless of who might actually see their profile.
Many teens post information on social media that they think is funny or intended to give a particular impression to a narrow audience without considering how this same content might be read out of context.
teen girls who are the subject of “slut shaming” were significantly embarrassed and emotionally distraught after photos taken in the context of an intimate relationship were widely shared to shame them by using their sexuality as a weapon.
Parents are no longer simply worried about what their children wear out of the house but what they photograph themselves wearing in their bedroom to post online.
a media ecosystem designed to publicize every teen fad, moral panic, and new hyped technology.
Rather than viewing photographs as an archival production, they saw the creation and sharing of these digital images as akin to an ephemeral gesture. And they used Snapchat to signal this expectation.
teens subtweet to talk behind someone else’s back.
The overarching media narrative is that teens lack the capacity to maintain a healthy relationship with social media. It depicts passionate engagement with technology as an illness that society must address. It is easier for adults to blame technology for undesirable outcomes than to consider other social, cultural, and personal factors that may be at play.
what psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls “flow.”5 For Csikszentmihalyi, flow is the state of complete and utter absorption. It’s the same sense that’s colloquially described it as being “in the zone.” Time disappears, attention focuses, and people feel euphorically engaged. This is the ideal state for creativity and artistry; athletes, musicians, and actors try to harness this mindset before they perform. It is critical to leadership, writing, software development, and education. Yet people also experience this state when they gamble and play video games, two activities that society
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Most teens aren’t addicted to social media; if anything, they’re addicted to each other.
When teens interact with others, they engage in tremendous informal learning, developing a sense of who they are in relation to others while building a holistic understanding of the social world. Teens may clamor to get access to social media simply to hang out, but there they gain access to a rich learning environment.
When teens engage with networked media, they’re trying to take control of their lives and their relationship to society. In doing so, they begin to understand how people relate to one another and how information flows between people. They learn about the social world, and as Bianca points out, they develop social skills.
By imagining teens as balls of uncontrollable hormones, society has systematically taken agency away from youth over the past century.
many adults are uncomfortable with teens having access to unstructured time and unmanaged relationships.
Many adults put pressure on teens to devote more time toward adult-prioritized practices and less time socializing, failing to recognize the important types of learning that take place when teens do connect.
Although the internet may not be an inherently dangerous place, it’s certainly a place where we can see kids who are in danger, if we are willing to look.
aggression, repetition, and imbalance in power.5 He argued that youth aggression was bullying when the situation involved all three components.
some teens were engaging in acts of digital self-harm to attract attention, support, and validation.
Teen celebrity culture is created by and is a byproduct of attention seeking and visibility that can be both healthy and unhealthy.
When people become famous, they are often objectified, discussed, and ridiculed with little consideration for who they are as people.
“microcelebrity.”21 Teens who are famous among niche crowds get to face both the costs and the benefits of being on the receiving end of tremendous attention, but without the structural support that celebrities have—including the handlers, managers, and financial resources to cope with the onslaught of attention.
In a technological era defined by social media, where information flows through networks and where people curate information for their peers, who you know shapes what you know.
Just because teens can get access to a technology that can connect them to anyone anywhere does not mean that they have equal access to knowledge and opportunity.
The internet will not inherently make the world more equal, nor will it automatically usher today’s youth into a tolerant world. Instead, it lays bare existing and entrenched social divisions.
Because teens grew up in a world in which the internet has always existed, many adults assume that youth automatically understand new technologies. From this perspective, teens are “digital natives,” and adults, supposedly less knowledgeable about technology and less capable of developing these skills, are “digital immigrants.”
American techno-idealism.
Cf. Solutionism
Youth must become media literate.8 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 that artifact, and what are the consequences of that interpretation?
Propaganda, nieuws, reclame, hoax, linkbait, clickbait
Long before the internet, critical media literacy has never been considered essential in schools or communities. Instead, schools have relied on trustworthy publishers, information curators, and other reputable sources.
Because many adults assume that youth are digitally savvy—and because they themselves do not understand many online sources—they often end up giving teens misleading or inaccurate information about what they see online.
teens complained to me that they never had enough time, freedom, or ability to meet up with friends when and where they wanted. To make up for this, they turned to social media to create and inhabit networked publics.
They must negotiate invisible audiences and the collapsing of contexts.
Het onzichtbare publiek
the raucous adventures of celebrities. Teens often reference celebrities as individuals who achieve freedom and opportunities by being public. In this way, they blur the lines between being public and being in public.
