Complicated: The Social Lives Of Networked Teens

With social media growing and growing into a mass of accounts and profiles and different groups of people and clubs and websites and other things, what adolescents do on social media is something that many parents worry about. Not every parent is at ease with the fact that their child/teenager is out in open water; one young human being surrounded by millions of other human beings who are younger, the same age, or older than them. The article “Teenage social media butterflies may not be such a bad idea” takes a look at teenagers ' use of social media. Social media is a very important tool, allowing people to connect or continue their relationships without

There were many scenarios that were shown in the video “Growing Up Online,” provided by PBS. In one of those scenarios, social medias such as MySpace and Facebook were shown as something teenagers were constantly using. The actions of teenagers constantly using social media brought up an ethical issue concerning the ethical idea on whether teens should have full control of what they do online or whether parents to be able to monitor and control their teenager’s usage of social media.

In her book, It's Complicated, Danah Boyd expresses her views on modern-day social media and the modern-day teenager's reliability with it. The book is comprised of 8 enlightening categories: identity, privacy, addiction, danger, bullying, inequality, literacy, and searching for a public of their own. Throughout the book, Boyd provides data, true stories, and factual conversations to help support her main claim: social media has taken over our youth.

Older generations don’t realize how much technology has affected this generation of teenagers, along with the social media that comes along with the technology. As stated in “How Social Media Changed Teens’ Lives Forever”; “Negative posts or comments also can do great damage to a teen’s self-esteem.” (Ashley Black, Thomas Atseff and Colleen Kaveney) While many parents think social media is just a way to connect with others, many teenagers take it for granted. For example, “quitting social media because it made her miserable and obsessed with appearing perfect online”, is what a teenager felt about social media and what it has done to her. Though many think that social media is a great way to connect, teenagers take it to another level.

Melissa Healy, a reporter of the Los Angeles Times, in the article Teenage Social Media Butterflies May Not Be Such A Bad Idea, claims that kids who spend lots of time on social media are not the least well-adjusted, but psychologically healthiest. Healy supports her argument by demonstrating how social media is beneficial to a teen’s health. According to a three-year Digital Youth Project, when teengars use social media, it helps them develop important social skills such as communication, grappling with social norms, and developing technical skills. Psychology professor Kaveri Subrahmanyam describes that teens behave the same between offline relationships and online ones, so most teens will use the internet safely. The author’s purpose is

In the adaptive environment of technology and social media, quantifying exact usage of social media by adolescents remains fluid. However, the following statistics are staggering when considering the implications, 7.5 million children under the ‘required’ age of 13 have Facebook accounts, despite the terms of service agreement set forth by the social media network. In addition, on average, 11-18 year-olds spend 11 hours a day exposed to electronic media. (Shapiro)

In Melissa Healy’s article, published on May 18, 2010, Los Angeles Times, “Teenage Social Media Butterflies May Not Be Such a Bad Idea,” she argues that social media and their social skills may not be such a catastrophe after all and that teenagers who use social media are psychologically healthiest. Healy supports this claim by first describing how, according to the research found by Amori Yee Mikami, social networking sites are mostly used to, not to converse with strangers online, but to interact with friends they already know and said, “So people of well-adjusted teens may have little to worry about regarding the way their children behave when using social media. It’s likely to be similarly positive behavior.” Then, she makes a connection

In Melissa Healy’s article, “Teenage Social Media Butterflies May Not Be Such a Bad Idea,” she debates whether or not the psychologically healthiest kids are children that spend a lot of time on social networking sites. First, I agree with that argument because I don’t think children use social media in any way that can be harmful to them because teenagers will not always use social media to communicate with friends but also to research for their homework. Then, I support the idea that “Adolescents are largely using social networking sites to keep in touch with friends they already know, not to converse with strangers…” because I feel like I don’t put myself in danger whilst using social media in any way. Finally, I can also agree with “…forming

In the article, It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens, the author Danah Boyd states that “trapped by helicopter parents and desperate to carve out a space of their own, teens need a place to make mistakes”. Teens should be allowed to go online and go on social media without their parents freaking out. Yes, there are dangers to going online as there are dangers to everything. There is technology everywhere, teens can go online wherever and whenever they want, it's inevitable. Teens access to the internet and to going online is a great resource and is very helpful, so why try and take that away?

In a research article by Alice Marwick and Danah Boyd (2014) discuss this connection between young adults and social media. They explore this myth that teens and young adults do not simply care about their privacy when online. Marwick and Boyd (2014) note that, “We argue that the dynamics of sites like Facebook have forced teens to alter their conceptions of privacy to account for the networked nature of social media” (p. 1051). Along with what they are arguing Marwick and Boyd use their past practices and experiences to offer a sort of model of networked privacy to thoroughly explain hpw privacy is achieved in networked publics. In their article Marwick and Boyd (2014) quickly debunk the myth that teenagers do not simply care about their online

Harlen Coben, editorial,¨Undercover Parent ¨( March 16,2008 ), claims that parents should monitor their teens and what they do on the internet. The author started off being against this idea but, then he sat down at a dinner with his friends whom convinced him otherwise. The author backs up his reasons after his anecdote. The authors purpose of this article is to make sure that parents are doing their best to protect their teens from the dangers of being online, in order to establish total and complete safety with his or hers teen/teens. The intended audience for this article is parents with teenagers or kids who have access to the internet, now assuming the author has teens of his their would be some connection made with the audience their.

Internet safety has been an extensive issue for children and adolescents since accuse to the Internet has become readily available in homes. With Internet use increasing at such rapid rates and a large proportion of adolescents using the Internet daily, the awareness of Internet safety should be addressed. The term Internet safety can be defined as “the knowledge of maximizing an individuals safety to private information, and self protection from using the Internet”. The impact and influence that the Internet has on adolescent life is far-reaching and research findings by Norris (2007) indicate that one-quarter of the American youth that go online at home, do so in the privacy of their rooms. Additionally, with the recent trend of wireless connections there has been a profound expansion in private Internet usage. The diverse means by which adolescents are using the Internet has become coupled with inherent risks of unsupervised and uneducated use.

The book investigates the relationship between teens and social media in many aspects. These aspects include identity, privacy, and addiction. By the time I read the third chapter, which was based on teens’ “addiction” to social media, my perspective on it had changed completely. One of Boyd’s most critical points in that chapter is that attributing the term “addiction” to social media is a misnomer, and she specifically mentions that “addiction rhetoric positions new technologies as devilish and teenagers as constitutionally incapable of having agency in response to the temptations that surround them” (Boyd 83). In other words, using the term “addiction” to describe excessive social media usage gives a negative connotation towards social media and usage of it in general. In addition, the term also implies that teens cannot control their social media usage at levels of not being able to control alcohol and/or drug usage. This particular point grabbed my attention. Could teens really become “addicted” to social media on that level? Thinking about most of my high school friends, it seemed like that was the case for some of them. Even for those who weren’t “addicted” to social media, they still use it a lot. What are the factors behind a person’s usage of social media? Is there something special about Facebook, Snapchat, or Instagram that I was missing out on or overlooked? There was only one way to find out, and that was to interview someone about their social media usage and

The Internet is a technology that has negative impacts on our daily lives. It has changed aspects of our life for the last 50 years, and it has demonstrated the considerable influence on people’s lives. Almost 3.2 billion people in the world use the internet. The Internet has gained acceptance across the globe, and it has also become central to the critical changes experienced in today’s society. Some of the changes are social isolation, health disorder, a lack of privacy and internet addiction.

The Internet was introduced to human society in 1950s. With the changes internet brought, it has become a controversial source over the past few years. The internet is a mechanical machine used for information spreading, a tool between people for interaction, and collaboration regardless of one’s geography. Like everything, the internet comes with bad and good; however, the benefits should be seen in light of the detrimental.