The Social Lives of Networked Teens

Do not blame social media if your teen is nonsocial. This is your fault [Clive Thompson's wired opinion]

If children can not socialize, who should their parents blame? Simple: They should blame themselves. This is a discussion that Microsoft researcher Danah Boyd proposed in "Complexity: Social life of online teenagers". Boyd has revealed that one of my friends spent ten years to interview hundreds of teenagers about their online life. She discovered that her teenager likes meeting directly with her friends. However, adult society does not allow them. "You are not addicted to social media, they are addicted to each other," Boyd said. "They moved it online as they will not allow me to do this with you."

In the beginning of 2014, Boyd announced her work on Yale University's publication. In its complexity, Boyd believes that social media is not as threatening as parents think, and it provides space for young people to express their emotions and thoughts without being judged. In 2009, Fast Company made Boyd one of the most influential technical women. In May 2010, she received the Public Society Prize from the American Sociology Information and Communication Technology Association (CITASA). Also in 2010, Fortune magazine named her as the smartest scholar in the field of technology, and "a guardian of how young people use the Internet." In 2010, Boyd was included in the list of top innovators under the age of 35. She is a young global leader of the 2011 World Economic Forum. Foreign policy in 2012 cited Boyd as one of the top 100 thinkers in the world, "To show us that big data is not necessarily better data"

Danah Boyd is a senior researcher at Microsoft Research, founder of Data and Society and a visiting professor at New York University. She wrote "Complexity: Social Life for Online Youth" and served as a director of the crisis text line, the American Indian Museum and the Social Science Research Council. She posted from zephoria.org/ blog or @ zephoria