It's Complicated Quotes

“Listening to teens talk about social media addiction reveals an interest not in features of their computers, smartphones, or even particular social media sites but in each other.”
― Danah Boyd, It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens

“Teen "addiction" to social media is a new extension of typical human engagement. Their use of social media as their primary site of sociality is most often a byproduct of cultural dynamics that have nothing to do with technology, including parental restrictions and highly scheduled lives. Teens turn to, and are obsessed with whichever environment allows them to connect to friends. most teens aren't addicted to social media; if anything, they're addicted to each other.”
― Danah Boyd, It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens

“In 1995, psychiatrist Ivan Goldberg coined the term internet addiction disorder. He wrote a satirical essay about “people abandoning their family obligations to sit gazing into their computer monitor as they surfed the Internet.” Intending to parody society’s obsession with pathologizing everyday behaviors, he inadvertently advanced the idea. Goldberg responded critically when academics began discussing internet addiction as a legitimate disorder: “I don’t think Internet addiction disorder exists any more than tennis addictive disorder, bingo addictive disorder, and TV addictive disorder exist. People can overdo anything. To call it a disorder is an error.”
― Danah Boyd, It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens

“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. They don’t try to analyze how things are different because of technology; they simply try to relate to a public world in which technology is a given.”
― Danah Boyd, It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens

“In a world where information is easily available, strong personal networks and access to helpful people often matter more than access to the information itself.30”
― Danah Boyd, It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens

“Privacy is not a static construct. It is not an inherent property of any particular information or setting. It is a process by which people seek to have control over a social situation by managing impressions, information flows, and context.”
― Danah Boyd, It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens

“for the teens that I interviewed, privacy isn’t necessarily something that they have; rather it is something they are actively and continuously trying to achieve in spite of structural or social barriers that make it difficult to do so. Achieving privacy requires more than simply having the levers to control information, access, or visibility. Instead, achieving privacy requires the ability to control the social situation by navigating complex contextual cues, technical affordances, and social dynamics. Achieving privacy is an ongoing process because social situations are never static.”
― Danah Boyd, It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens

“More often than not, what people put up online using social media is widely accessible because most systems are designed such that sharing with broader or more public audiences is the default. Many popular systems require users to take active steps to limit the visibility of any particular piece of shared content. This is quite different from physical spaces, where people must make a concerted effort to make content visible to sizable audiences.8 In networked publics, interactions are often public by default, private through effort.”
― Danah Boyd, It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens

“When people become famous, they are often objectified, discussed, and ridiculed with little consideration for who they are as people. Fans and critics feel as though they have the right to comment on everything celebrities do with little regard to the costs that those in the crosshairs of attention will bear. The cost that celebrities pay for the supposed benefits of being rich and famous is ongoing scrutiny and a lack of privacy. Most people do not understand or appreciate the pressure that results from fame, even though public meltdowns—such as the night that Britney Spears shaved her head in front of numerous photographers—are highly publicized. The public’s obsession with obtaining information about the famous puts serious pressure on those people’s lives, as the paparazzi’s role in Princess Diana’s death so brutally reminds us.20 Few people have sympathy for the kinds of stress that gossip places on public figures who have high status and wealth. At a distance, famous people seem invulnerable.”
― Danah Boyd, It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens

“When adults jump to fear and isolationism as their solution to managing risk, they often undermine their credibility and erode teens’ trust in the information that adults offer.”
― Danah Boyd, It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens

“A central challenge in addressing the sexual victimization of children is that the public is not comfortable facing the harrowing reality that strangers are unlikely perpetrators. Most acts of sexual violence against children occur in their own homes by people that those children trust.27”
― Danah Boyd, It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens

“the success of social media must be understood partly in relation to this shrinking social landscape. Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace are not only new public spaces: they are in many cases the only “public” spaces in which teens can easily congregate with large groups of their peers. More significantly, teens can gather in them while still physically stuck at home.”
― Danah Boyd, It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens

“A great deal of the fear and anxiety that surrounds young people’s use of social media stems from misunderstanding or dashed hopes.14 More often than not, what emerges out of people’s confusion takes the form of utopian and dystopian rhetoric.”
― Danah Boyd, It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens

“They don’t try to analyze how things are different because of technology; they simply try to relate to a public world in which technology is a given. Because of their social position, what’s novel for teens is not the technology but the public life that it enables. Teens are desperate to have access to and make sense of public life; understanding the technologies that enable publics is just par for the course.”
― Danah Boyd, It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens

“teens are generally more comfortable with—and tend to be less skeptical of—social media than adults. They don’t try to analyze how things are different because of technology; they simply try to relate to a public world in which technology is a given.”
― Danah Boyd, It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens

“the introduction of social media does alter the landscape. It enables youth to create a cool space without physically transporting themselves anywhere. And because of a variety of social and cultural factors, social media has become an important public space where teens can gather and socialize broadly with peers in an informal way. Teens are looking for a place of their own to make sense of the world beyond their bedrooms.”
― Danah Boyd, It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens

“Long before the internet, critical media literacy has never been considered essential in schools or communities. Instead,”
― Danah Boyd, It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens

“Rather than focusing on coarse generational categories, it makes more sense to focus on the skills and knowledge that are necessary to make sense of a mediated world. Both youth and adults have a lot to learn.”
― Danah Boyd, It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens

“We need concerned adults and young people to open their eyes on the digital street and reach out to those who are struggling. And we need to address the underlying issues that are at the crux of risky behaviors rather than propagate distracting myths. Fear is not the solution; empathy is.”
― Danah Boyd, It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens

“unwanted sexual solicitation than other youth.45 When teens are crashing, they engage in activities that are more likely to magnify their troubles. And when we see teens whose online activities look problematic, they’re often using technology to make visible a broader array of problems that they’re facing in every part of their lives.”
― Danah Boyd, It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens

“It’s easy to think of privacy and publicity as opposing concepts, and a lot of technology is built on the assumption that you have to choose to be private or public. Yet in practice, both privacy and publicity are blurred. Rather than eschewing privacy when they encounter public spaces, many teens are looking for new ways to achieve privacy within networked publics. As such, when teens develop innovative strategies to achieve privacy, they often reclaim power by doing so. Privacy doesn’t just depend on agency; being able to achieve privacy is an expression of agency.”
― Danah Boyd, It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens

“The very sight of at-risk youth should haunt all of us, but little is achieved if we focus only on making what we see invisible.”
― Danah Boyd, It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens

“the focus on technology simply obscures other dynamics at play.”
― Danah Boyd, It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens

“Along with planes, running water, electricity, and motorized transportation, the internet is now a fundamental fact of modern life.”
― Danah Boyd, It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens

“The importance of friends in social and moral development is well documented.17 But the fears that surround teens’ use of social media overlook this fundamental desire for social connection.”
― Danah Boyd, It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens

“I have learned one thing from my research, it’s this: 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.”
― Danah Boyd, It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens

“Teens are desperate to have access to and make sense of public life; understanding the technologies that enable publics is just par for the course.”
― Danah Boyd, It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens