Quick Summary
With no shortage of research on youth and technology, and specifically social media and teens, dana boyd, herself not a stranger to the library community, wrote
With no shortage of research on youth and technology, and specifically social media and teens, dana boyd, herself not a stranger to the library community, wrote It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens which became available this year. After seeing this highlighted on a local listserv, and with a title like that, I was instantly intrigued. boyd, Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research, Research Assistant Professor at New York University, and Fellow at Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, has earned her stripes in this field with dozens of publications sharing her research over the last 10-15 years. boyd has a way of providing what feels like an “insider” perspective. In the case of It’s Complicated, her research takes a nuanced look into teen use of social media. For a 22-minute video summary of some of this research, check out her keynote for the Family Online Safety Institute’s 2013 annual conference in which she makes a distinction between teens participating in public spaces and “being public,” questions traditional approaches to Internet safety, and problematizes parental (and familial) surveillance of teen social media activity. Good food for thought for any librarian.