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A review by lindy_b
It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens by Danah Boyd
5.0
Although I have read and enjoyed boyd's other work for some time now, I put off reading this book. I needed emotional distance.
This is because boyd conducted her fieldwork for this book between 2005 and 2012. I graduated high school in 2012, so the teens she interviews are my peers. I too was subjected to constant hand wringing about message boards, Blogger, and MySpace would lead to a lonely life of mindless distraction unless a serial killer nabbed me first. I remember being frustrated because while I could tell that there was a fundamental misunderstanding, I could not articulate it. I didn't necessarily want to revisit that feeling. As I settle into my adult life, however, I keep finding myself in positions where I need to defend younger peoples' interactions with technology as, well, weird, but also developmentally important and probably harmless to the broader workings of society.
As boyd wryly notes, portions of this book were already out of date by the time it went to print, and three years after its publication, this is even more true. However, as boyd herself concludes, her work does provide a record of several specific events and junctures in time; the MySpace/Facebook divide of 2006-2007 is one example. I do think that the book's central thesis regarding teenagers' desire for and creation of public lives driving most of the consternation around their use of the internet still stands, and likely will for the foreseeable future. I also want to take the chapter dispelling the myth of "digital natives" and send it to everyone who works in university administration.
boyd shows more understanding issues of race, class, and sexual orientation than many writers who approach the teenagers-0n-the-internet topic, and I appreciate it. However, discussion of how gender structures non/engagement in networked publics was missing entirely.
This isn't negative or anything but it's not in the title or cover copy and it's worth knowing before you read, but It's Complicated is explicitly about American teenagers.
This is because boyd conducted her fieldwork for this book between 2005 and 2012. I graduated high school in 2012, so the teens she interviews are my peers. I too was subjected to constant hand wringing about message boards, Blogger, and MySpace would lead to a lonely life of mindless distraction unless a serial killer nabbed me first. I remember being frustrated because while I could tell that there was a fundamental misunderstanding, I could not articulate it. I didn't necessarily want to revisit that feeling. As I settle into my adult life, however, I keep finding myself in positions where I need to defend younger peoples' interactions with technology as, well, weird, but also developmentally important and probably harmless to the broader workings of society.
As boyd wryly notes, portions of this book were already out of date by the time it went to print, and three years after its publication, this is even more true. However, as boyd herself concludes, her work does provide a record of several specific events and junctures in time; the MySpace/Facebook divide of 2006-2007 is one example. I do think that the book's central thesis regarding teenagers' desire for and creation of public lives driving most of the consternation around their use of the internet still stands, and likely will for the foreseeable future. I also want to take the chapter dispelling the myth of "digital natives" and send it to everyone who works in university administration.
boyd shows more understanding issues of race, class, and sexual orientation than many writers who approach the teenagers-0n-the-internet topic, and I appreciate it. However, discussion of how gender structures non/engagement in networked publics was missing entirely.
This isn't negative or anything but it's not in the title or cover copy and it's worth knowing before you read, but It's Complicated is explicitly about American teenagers.