1. We credit Elisabeth Soep for this compelling term, which she conceptualized in Elisabeth Soep, “The Digital Afterlife of Youth-Made Media: Implications for Media Literacy Education,” Comunicar 19, no. 38 (2012): 93–100.
2. Sonia Livingstone and Alicia Blum-Ross, Parenting for a Digital Future: How Hopes and Fears about Technology Shape Children’s Lives (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020).
3. Participants first selected a response from ten options (randomized order) that were (1) selected based on literature review about salient digital topics and prior fieldwork and (2) pretested with youth. Options included: being asked for inappropriate pictures; comparing to others on social media; connecting with strangers; digital drama and cyberbullying; digital footprints or online posts lasting forever; pressure to always stay connected; risks to private information; seeing inappropriate content; too much screen time; and other (please specify). All participants were prompted for an open-ended explanation (Why is [response] your biggest worry?). This list of options felt relatively robust at the time, though three years later we can certainly identify additional topics we would add if we were redoing our data collection today (e.g., posting about civic issues on social media, echo chambers, and filter bubbles). We are grateful that our subsequent data collection, particularly interviews and teen advisory council discussion, allows us to address a broader range of issues in the chapters of this book.
4. Catherine D’Ignazio and Lauren Klein, Data Feminism (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2020), 5.
5. Livingstone and Blum-Ross, Parenting for a Digital Future. See also earlier ethnographic work by Lynn Schofield Clark, The Parent App: Understanding Families in the Digital Age (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2012).
6. We credit media researcher Henry Jenkins here, who often uses this phrase when speaking about the optimal roles of adults in young people’s digital lives.
7. “I Used to Think . . . Now I Think . . .” Thinking Routine, Project Zero, Harvard Graduate School of Education, accessed April 21, 2021, https://pz.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/I%20Used%20to%20Think%20-%20Now%20I%20Think_1.pdf.
1. Eric J. Vanman, Rosemary Baker, and Stephanie J. Tobin, “The Burden of Online Friends: The Effects of Giving up Facebook on Stress and Well-Being,” Journal of Social Psychology 158, no. 4 (2018): 496–508.
2. These headline examples were from (1) CNBC, https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/25/quitting-facebook-for-5-days-can-lower-your-stress-levels.html#:~:text=In%20addition%20to%20the%20physiological,worsened%20sense%20of%20well%2Dbeing; (2) Business Insider, https://www.businessinsider.com/deleting-facebook-could-be-bad-for-you-2018-4; and (3) a YouTube video from Wochit News (link no longer active but previously at https://www.youtube.com/watch/?v=0xk8A-qo79w [screenshot available on request]).
3. Donna Ruch, Arielle Sheftall, Paige Schlagbaum, Joseph Rausch, John Campo, and Jeffrey Bridge, “Trends in Suicide among Youth Aged 10 to 19 Years in the United States, 1975 to 2016,” JAMA Network Open 2, no. 5 (2019): e193886–e193886; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Youth Risk Behavior Survey: Data Summary & Trends Report 2009–2019 (2020), https://www.cdc.gov/healthyyouth/data/yrbs/pdf/YRBSDataSummaryTrendsReport2019-508.pdf; Jean Twenge, “Increases in Depression, Self-Harm, and Suicide among US Adolescents After 2012 and Links to Technology Use: Possible Mechanisms,” Psychiatric Research and Clinical Practice 2, no. 1 (2020): 19–25.
4. Hugues Sampasa-Kanyinga and Rosamund F. Lewis, “Frequent Use of Social Networking Sites Is Associated with Poor Psychological Functioning among Children and Adolescents,” Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking 18, no. 7 (2015): 380–385; Jean Twenge, “Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?” The Atlantic, September 2017, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/has-the-smartphone-destroyed-a-generation/534198/; Kevin Wright, Jenny Rosenberg, Nicole Egbert, Nicole A. Ploeger, Daniel R. Bernard, and Shawn King, “Communication Competence, Social Support, and Depression among College Students: A Model of Facebook and Face-to-Face Support Network Influence,” Journal of Health Communication 18, no. 1 (2013): 41–57.
5. Sarah M. Coyne, Jeffrey Hurst, William Justin Dyer, and Quintin Hunt, “Suicide Risk in Emerging Adulthood: Associations with Screen Time over 10 Years,” Journal of Youth and Adolescence, February 2, 2021.
6. Georgia Wells, Jeff Horwitz, and Deepa Seetharaman, “Facebook Knows Instagram Is Toxic for Teen Girls, Company Documents Show,” Wall Street Journal, September 14, 2021, sec. Tech, https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-knows-instagram-is-toxic-for-teen-girls-company-documents-show-11631620739.
7. Susan Harter, The Construction of Self (New York: Guilford Press, 1999).
8. Daniel Clay, Vivian Vignoles, and Helga Dittmar, “Body Image and Self-Esteem among Adolescent Girls: Testing the Influence of Sociocultural Factors,” Journal of Research on Adolescence 15 (2005): 452.
9. A meta-analysis of studies on social media use and body image disturbance found a small, positive effect of social media use on body disturbance overall, which the authors note is significant yet smaller in size than the effect of traditional media on body image. See Alyssa Saiphoo and Zahra Vahedi, “A Meta-Analytic Review of the Relationship between Social Media Use and Body Image Disturbance,” Computers in Human Behavior 101 (2019): 259–275.
10. Our aim is to use affirming language to represent teens’ identities, gender and otherwise. We acknowledge that what counts as affirming language is a moving target over time and may well be different by the time this book is in your hands.
11. See for review: Candice Odgers and Michaeline Jensen, “Annual Research Review—Adolescent Mental Health in the Digital Age: Facts, Fears, and Future Directions,” Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 61, no. 3 (2020): 336–348.
12. Amy Orben and Andrew Przybylski, “The Association Between Adolescent Well-Being and Digital Technology Use,” Nature Human Behaviour 3, no. 2 (2019): 173–182.
13. Odgers and Jensen, “Annual Research Review.”
14. Michaeline Jensen, Madeleine J. George, Michael R. Russell, and Candice L. Odgers, “Young Adolescents’ Digital Technology Use and Mental Health Symptoms: Little Evidence of Longitudinal or Daily Linkages,” Clinical Psychological Science 7, no. 6 (2019): 1416–1433.
15. Erica Euse, “Maybe Social Media Isn’t as Bad for Teens as We Thought,” I-D, August 26, 2019, https://i-d.vice.com/en_us/article/7x5bpd/maybe-social-media-isnt-as-bad-for-teens-as-we-thought.
16. Three examples: Ine Beyens, J. Loes Pouwels, Irene I. van Driel, Loes Keijsers, and Patti M. Valkenburg, “The Effect of Social Media on Well-Being Differs from Adolescent to Adolescent,” Scientific Reports 10, no. 1 (2020): 1–11; Jensen et al., “Young Adolescents’ Digital Technology Use”; Caroline Pitt, Ari Hock, Leila Zelnick, and Katie Davis, “The Kids Are / Not / Sort of All Right: Technology’s Complex Role in Teen Wellbeing during COVID-19,” in Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ‘21) (New York: ACM Press, 2021).
17. “Tech Time Not to Blame for Teens’ Mental Health Problems,” UCI News, August 23, 2019, https://news.uci.edu/2019/08/23/tech-time-not-to-blame-for-teens-mental-health-problems/.
18. Emily Weinstein, Evan Kleiman, Peter Franz, Victoria Joyce, Carol Nash, Ralph Buonopane, and Matthew Nock, “Positive and Negative Uses of Social Media among Adolescents Hospitalized for Suicidal Behavior,” Journal of Adolescence 87 (2021): 63–73.
19. danah boyd, It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014).
20. Philippe Verduyn, Nino Gugushvili, and Ethan Kross, “The Impact of Social Network Sites on Mental Health: Distinguishing Active from Passive Use,” World Psychiatry 20, no. 1 (2021): 133–134; Ingibjorg Eva Thorisdottir, Rannveig Sigurvinsdottir, Bryndis Bjork Asgeirsdottir, John P. Allegrante, and Inga Dora Sigfusdottir, “Active and Passive Social Media Use and Symptoms of Anxiety and Depressed Mood among Icelandic Adolescents,” Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking 22, no. 8 (2019): 535–542; Philippe Verduyn, Oscar Ybarra, Maxime Résibois, John Jonides, and Ethan Kross, “Do Social Network Sites Enhance or Undermine Subjective Well-Being? A Critical Review,” Social Issues and Policy Review 11, no.1 (2017): 274–302.
21. Jean Twenge and Gabrielle Martin, “Gender Differences in Associations between Digital Media Use and Psychological Well-Being: Evidence from Three Large Datasets,” Journal of Adolescence 79 (2020): 91–102.
22. Ine Beyens, Loes Pouwels, Irene I. van Driel, Loes Keijsers, and Patti M. Valkenburg, “Social Media Use and Adolescents’ Well-Being: Developing a Typology of Person-specific Effect Patterns,” PsyArXiv, December 16, 2020.
23. Jessica Piotrowski and Patti Valkenburg, “Finding Orchids in a Field of Dandelions: Understanding Children’s Differential Susceptibility to Media Effects,” American Behavioral Scientist 59, no. 14 (2015): 1776–1789; Anya Kamenetz, The Art of Screen Time: How Your Family Can Balance Digital Media and Real Life (New York: PublicAffairs, 2018); Patti Valkenburg and Jochen Peter, “The Differential Susceptibility to Media Effects Model,” Journal of Communication 63, no. 2 (2013): 221–243.
24. Jacqueline Nesi, Sophia Choukas-Bradley, and Mitchell J. Prinstein, “Transformation of Adolescent Peer Relations in the Social Media Context: Part 1—A Theoretical Framework and Application to Dyadic Peer Relationships,” Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review 21, no. 3 (2018): 267–294.
25. E.g., Kelly Jakubowski, Tuomas Eerola, Barbara Tillmann, Fabien Perrin, and Lizette Heine, “A Cross-Sectional Study of Reminiscence Bumps for Music-Related Memories in Adulthood,” Music & Science 3 (2020): 2059204320965058; Alexandra Lamont and Catherine Loveday, “A New Framework for Understanding Memories and Preference for Music,” Music & Science 3 (2020): 2059204320948315.
26. “Privileged” position in our memories: Jennifer Senior, “Why You Truly Never Leave High School,” New Yorker, January 18, 2013.
Other references on this phenomenon include Jakubowski et al., “Cross-Sectional Study of Reminiscence Bumps”; Steve Janssen, Antonio Chessa, and Jaap Murre, “Modeling the Reminiscence Bump in Autobiographical Memory with the Memory Chain Model,” Constructive Memory (2003): 138–147; Steve Janssen, Antonio Chessa, and Jaap Murre, “The Reminiscence Bump in Autobiographical Memory: Effects of Age, Gender, Education, and Culture,” Memory 13, no. 6 (2005): 658–668.
Note, however, that while a particular peak around the teen years is documented in some studies, others suggest different peaks across a wider period (roughly ages ten to thirty) for various types of memories. Those interested in this research can see for review: Khadeeja Munawar, Sara Kuhn, and Shamsul Haque, “Understanding the Reminiscence Bump: A Systematic Review,” PloS one 13, no. 12 (2018): e0208595.
27. Katie McLaughlin, Megan Garrad, and Leah Somerville, “What Develops during Emotional Development? A Component Process Approach to Identifying Sources of Psychopathology Risk in Adolescence,” Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience 17, no. 4 (2015): 403–410.
28. This developmental reality and its connection to the reminiscence bump is made by Laurence Steinberg in the textbook Adolescence, 12th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2020).
29. Grace Icenogle, Laurence Steinberg, Natasha Duell, Jason Chein, Lei Chang, Nandita Chaudhary, Laura Di Giunta, et al., “Adolescents’ Cognitive Capacity Reaches Adult Levels Prior to Their Psychosocial Maturity: Evidence for a ‘Maturity Gap’ in a Multinational, Cross-Sectional Sample,” Law and Human Behavior 43, no. 1 (2019): 69–85.
30. Linda Van Leijenhorst, Kiki Zanolie, Catharina S. Van Meel, P. Michiel Westenberg, Serge A. R. B. Rombouts, and Eveline A. Crone, “What Motivates the Adolescent? Brain Regions Mediating Reward Sensitivity across Adolescence,” Cerebral Cortex 20, no. 1 (2010): 61–69.
31. Betty Jo Casey, Sarah Getz, and Adrianna Galvan, “The Adolescent Brain,” Developmental Review 28, no 1. (2008): 62–77.
32. Sarah-Jayne Blakemore and Trevor Robbins, “Decision-making in the Adolescent Brain,” Nature Neuroscience 15, no. 9 (2012): 1184–1191; Laurence Steinberg, “Risk Taking in Adolescence: What Changes, and Why?,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1021, no. 1 (2004): 51–58.
33. Dustin Albert, Jason Chein, and Laurence Steinberg, “The Teenage Brain: Peer Influences on Adolescent Decision Making,” Current Directions in Psychological Science 22, no. 2 (2013): 114–120.
34. Carrie Masten, Naomi Eisenberger, Larissa A. Borofsky, Jennifer Pfeifer, Kristin McNealy, John C. Mazziotta and Mirella Dapretto, “Neural Correlates of Social Exclusion during Adolescence: Understanding the Distress of Peer Rejection,” Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 4, no. 2 (2009): 143–157; Amanda Guyer, Victoria Choate, Daniel S. Pine, and Eric E. Nelson, “Neural Circuitry Underlying Affective Response to Peer Feedback in Adolescence,” Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 7, no. 1 (2012): 81–92.
35. Mitch Prinstein and his colleagues’ extensive work provides rich empirical and theoretical confirmation of the power of popularity among adolescents. They find that adolescent social status predicts outcomes like future health, professional success, and adult relationships. See, for example, Mitch Prinstein, Popular: The Power of Likability in a Status-Obsessed World (New York: Viking, 2018).
36. Deborah Christie and Russell Viner, “Adolescent Development,” BMJ 330, no. 7486 (2005): 301–304.
37. Erik Erikson, Identity: Youth and Crisis (No. 7) (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1968).
38. Urie Bronfenbrenner, The Ecology of Human Development: Experiments in Nature and Design (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977); Urie Bronfenbrenner and Anne C. Crouter, “Evolution of Environmental Models in Developmental Research,” in The Handbook of Child Psychology, ed. Paul Mussen (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1983), 358–414; Urie Bronfenbrenner and Pamela A. Morris, “The Bioecological Model of Human Development,” in The Handbook of Child Psychology: Theoretical Models of Human Development, ed. William Damon (series ed.) and Richard Lerner (vol. ed.) (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2006), 793–828.
39. Bronfenbrenner and colleagues’ approach has been variously referred to and elaborated on as the bioecological model, the Process-Person-Context-Time (PPCT) model, and ecological systems theory. See Bronfenbrenner and Morris, “Bioecological Model”; Urie Bronfenbrenner, “Developmental Ecology through Space and Time: A Future Perspective,” in Examining Lives in Context: Perspectives on the Ecology of Human Development, ed. Phyllis Moen, Glenn H. Elder, and Kurt Luscher (Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association, 1995), 599–618; Urie Bronfenbrenner, The Ecology of Human Development.
40. S. Craig Watkins, “Digital Divide: Navigating the Digital Edge,” International Journal of Learning and Media 3, no. 2 (2012): 1–12.
41. S. Craig Watkins, The Digital Edge: How Black and Latino Youth Navigate Digital Inequality (New York: NYU Press, 2018); Henry Jenkins, Sangita Shresthova, Liana Gamber-Thompson, Neta Kligler-Vilenchik, and Arely Zimmerman, By Any Media Necessary: The New Youth Activism (New York: NYU Press, 2016).
42. Emily used this metaphor as a description in her 2017 dissertation. Emily Weinstein, “Influences of Social Media Use on Adolescent Psychosocial Well-Being: ‘OMG’ or ‘NBD’?” (EdD diss., Harvard Graduate School of Education, 2017).
43. danah boyd, “Social Network Sites as Networked Publics: Affordances, Dynamics, and Implications,” in Networked Self: Identity, Community, and Culture on Social Network Sites, ed. Zizi Papacharissi (London: Routledge, 2010), 39–58.
44. danah boyd, “Why Youth ♥ Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life,” in Youth, Identity, and Digital Media, ed. David Buckingham (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008), 119–142; danah boyd, “Social Network Sites as Networked Publics”; Alexander Cho, “Default Publicness: Queer Youth of Color, Social Media, and Being Outed by the Machine,” New Media & Society 20, no. 9 (2018): 3183–3200; Nesi et al., “Transformation of Adolescent Peer Relations in the Social Media Context: Part 1; Nicholas Negroponte, Being Digital, 1st ed. (New York: Vintage, 1996).
1. Tristan Harris uses this evocative language to describe persuasive design. See, for example, Tristan Harris, “How Technology Is Hijacking Your Mind—from a Magician and Google Design Ethicist,” Medium, May 18, 2016, https://medium.com/thrive-global/how-technology-hijacks-peoples-minds-from-a-magician-and-google-s-design-ethicist-56d62ef5edf3.
2. Iver Iversen, “Skinner’s Early Research: From Reflexology to Operant Conditioning,” American Psychologist 47, no. 11 (1992): 1318–1327; Burrhus Frederic Skinner, Science and Human Behavior (New York: Free Press, 1953); Lauren Slater, Opening Skinner’s Box: Great Psychological Experiments of the Twentieth Century (New York: W. W. Norton, 2004).
3. Adam Alter and Tristan Harris have both made these clear connections between variable intermittent rewards and persuasive design features, and described similarities to gambling. E.g., Mattha Busby, “Social Media Copies Gambling Methods to Create ‘Psychological Cravings,’” Guardian, May 8, 2018; Shauna Reid, “5 Questions for Adam Alter,” American Psychological Association 48, no. 7 (July/August 2017); Cadence Bambenek, “Ex-Googler Slams Designers for Making Apps Addictive ‘Like Slot Machines,’” Business Insider, May 25, 2016.
4. American Gaming Association, State of the States 2021: The AGA Survey of the Commercial Casino Industry, May 2021, https://www.americangaming.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/AGA-2021-State-of-the-States_FINALweb-150ppi.pdf.
5. Lucy Foulkes and Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, “Is There Heightened Sensitivity to Social Reward in Adolescence?,” Current Opinion in Neurobiology 40 (2016): 81–85.
6. Brian M. Galla, Sophia Choukas-Bradley, Hannah M. Fiore, and Michael Esposito, “Values-Alignment Messaging Boosts Adolescents’ Motivation to Control Social Media Use,” Child Development 92, no. 5 (2021): 1717–1734.
7. James Paul Gee, Good Video Games and Good Learning (New Literacies and Digital Epistemologies) (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc, 2007).
8. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, FLOW: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (New York: Harper and Row, 1990).
9. Harris, “How Technology Is Hijacking Your Mind.”
10. Brandon T. McDaniel and Sarah M. Coyne “‘Technoference’: The Interference of Technology in Couple Relationships and Implications for Women’s Personal and Relational Well-Being,” Psychology of Popular Media Culture 5, no. 1 (2016): 85–98.
11. James A. Roberts and Meredith E. David, “My Life Has Become a Major Distraction from My Cell Phone: Partner Phubbing and Relationship Satisfaction among Romantic Partners,” Computers in Human Behavior 54 (2016): 134–141; McDaniel and Coyne, “‘Technoference.’”
12. Genavee Brown, Adriana M. Manago, and Joseph E. Trimble, “Tempted to Text: College Students’ Mobile Phone Use During a Face-to-Face Interaction with a Close Friend,” Emerging Adulthood 4, no. 6 (2016): 440–443.
13. Brandon T. McDaniel and Jenny S. Radesky, “Technoference: Parent Distraction with Technology and Associations with Child Behavior Problems,” Child Development 89, no. 1 (2018): 100–109.
14. Laura A. Stockdale, Sarah M. Coyne, and Laura M. Padilla-Walker, “Parent and Child Technoference and Socioemotional Behavioral Outcomes: A Nationally Representative Study of 10- to 20-Year-Old Adolescents,” Computers in Human Behavior 88 (2018): 219–226.
15. Andrew K. Przybylski and Netta Weinstein, “Can You Connect with Me Now? How the Presence of Mobile Communication Technology Influences Face-to-Face Conversation Quality,” Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 30, no. 3 (2013): 237–246.
16. Eric Suni, “Teens and Sleep,” April 17, 2009, Sleep Foundation, https://www.sleepfoundation.org/teens-and-sleep.
17. See for review: Sakari Lemola, Nadine Perkinson-Gloor, Serge Brand, Julia F. Dewald-Kaufmann, and Alexander Grob, “Adolescents’ Electronic Media Use at Night, Sleep Disturbance, and Depressive Symptoms in the Smartphone Age,” Journal of Youth and Adolescence 44, no. 2 (2015): 405–418.
18. Children appear to be especially vulnerable to these impacts. See Anne-Marie Chang, Daniel Aeschbach, Jeanne F. Duffy, and Charles A. Czeisler, “Evening Use of Light-Emitting eReaders Negatively Affects Sleep, Circadian Timing, and Next-Morning Alertness,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112, no. 4 (2014): 1232–1237; Shigekazu Higuchi, Yuki Nagafuchi, Sang-il Lee, and Tetsuo Harada, “Influence of Light at Night on Melatonin Suppression in Children,” Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism 99, no. 9 (2014): 3298–3303.
19. Ben Carter, Philippa Rees, Lauren Hale, Darsharna Bhattacharjee, and Mandar S. Paradkar, “Association Between Portable Screen-Based Media Device Access or Use and Sleep Outcomes: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis,” JAMA Pediatrics 170, no. 12 (2016): 1202–1208; Matthew D. Weaver, Laura K. Barger, Susan Kohl Malone, Lori S. Anderson, and Elizabeth B. Klerman, “Dose-Dependent Associations Between Sleep Duration and Unsafe Behaviors among US High School Students,” JAMA Pediatrics 172, no. 12 (2018): 1187–1189.
20. Monique K. LeBourgeois, Lauren Hale, Anne-Marie Chang, Lameese D. Akacem, Hawley E. Montgomery-Downs, and Orfeu M. Buxton, “Digital Media and Sleep in Childhood and Adolescence,” Pediatrics 140, Suppl. 2 (November 1, 2017): S92–S96.
21. Michael B. Robb, Screens and Sleep. The New Normal: Parents, Teens, Screens, and Sleep in the United States (San Francisco: Common Sense Media, 2019), accessed April 1, 2021, https://www.commonsensemedia.org/sites/default/files/uploads/research/2019-new-normal-parents-teens-screens-and-sleep-united-states.pdf.
22. Jason J. Jones, Gregory Kirschen, Sindhuja Kancharla, and Lauren Hale, “Association between Late-Night Tweeting and Next-Day Game Performance among Professional Basketball Players,” Sleep Health 5, no. 1 (2019): 68–71.
23. American Psychological Association, Multitasking: Switching Costs (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2006), accessed March 16, 2019, https://www.apa.org/research/action/multitask.
24. Kaitlyn E. May and Anastasia D. Elder, “Efficient, Helpful, or Distracting? A Literature Review of Media Multitasking in Relation to Academic Performance,” International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education 15, no. 1 (2018): 13; Larry D. Rosen, L. Mark Carrier, and Nancy A. Cheever. “Facebook and Texting Made Me Do It: Media-Induced Task-Switching While Studying,” Computers in Human Behavior 29, no. 3 (2013): 948–958; Jessica S. Mendoza, Benjamin C. Pody, Seungyeon Lee, Minsung Kim, and Ian M. McDonough, “The Effect of Cellphones on Attention and Learning: The Influences of Time, Distraction, and Nomophobia,” Computers in Human Behavior 86 (2018): 52–60. An interesting caveat: Some studies show that action video game playing can reduce task-switching costs, in addition to supporting other skills (such as visual-spatial and perceptual). See, for example, Shawn C. Green, Michael A. Sugarman, Katherine Medford, Elizabeth Klobusicky, and Daphne Bavelier, “The Effect of Action Video Game Experience on Task-Switching,” Computers in Human Behavior 28, no. 3 (2012): 984–994.
25. Mark L. Carrier, Larry D. Rosen, Nancy A. Cheever, and Alex F. Lim. “Causes, Effects, and Practicalities of Everyday Multitasking,” Developmental Review 35 (2015): 64–78; May and Elder, “Efficient, Helpful, or Distracting?”
26. Mizuko Itō, Sonja Baumer, Matteo Bittanti, danah boyd, Rachel Cody, Becky Herr-Stephenson, Heather A. Horst, et al., Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010); Henry Jenkins, Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009); Joseph Kahne, Nam-Jin Lee, and Jessica T. Feezell, “The Civic and Political Significance of Online Participatory Cultures among Youth Transitioning to Adulthood,” Journal of Information Technology & Politics 10, no. 1 (2013): 1–20.
27. Carolyn McNamara Barry and Kathryn R. Wentzel, “Friend Influence on Prosocial Behavior: The Role of Motivational Factors and Friendship Characteristics,” Developmental Psychology 42, no. 1 (2006): 153–163. For a comprehensive synthesis of research on peer influence, see Matteo Giletta, Sophia Choukas-Bradley, Marlies Maes, Kathryn Linthicum, Noel Card, and Mitchell J. Prinstein, “A Meta-Analysis of Longitudinal Peer Influence Effects in Childhood and Adolescence,” PsyArXiv, May 19, 2021.
28. Jacqueline Nesi and Mitchell J. Prinstein, “Using Social Media for Social Comparison and Feedback-Seeking: Gender and Popularity Moderate Associations with Depressive Symptoms,” Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology 43, no. 8 (2015): 1427–1438.
29. Frederick X. Gibbons and Bram P. Buunk, “Individual Differences in Social Comparison: Development of a Scale of Social Comparison Orientation,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 76, no. 1 (1999): 129–142; Nesi and Prinstein, “Using Social Media.”
30. This passage describing Essena O’Neill’s social media departure appears nearly verbatim on pp. 12–13 of Emily’s 2017 dissertation. Emily Weinstein, “Influences of Social Media Use on Adolescent Psychosocial Well-Being: ‘OMG’ or ‘NBD’?” (EdD diss., Harvard Graduate School of Education, 2017).
31. Megan McCluskey, “Teen Instagram Star Speaks Out about the Ugly Truth Behind Social Media Fame,” Time, November 2, 2015, http://time.com/4096988/teen-instagram-star-essena-oneill-quitting-social-media/.
32. Kristina Rodulfo, “100 Shots, One Day of Not Eating: What Happens When You Say What Really Goes into the Perfect Bikini Selfie?,” Elle, November 2, 2015, http://www.elle.com/culture/news/a31635/essena-oneill-instagram-social-media-is-not-real-life/.
33. Hayley C. Cuccinello, “Instagram Star Essena O’Neill Quits Social Media, Exposes the Business Behind Her Pics,” Forbes, November 3, 2015, http://www.forbes.com/sites/hayleycuccinello/2015/11/03/instagram-star-essena-oneill-quits-social-media-exposes-the-business-behind-her-pics/#571c16901e47.
34. Eline Frison and Steven Eggermont, “Exploring the Relationships Between Different Types of Facebook Use, Perceived Online Social Support, and Adolescents’ Depressed Mood,” Social Science Computer Review 34, no. 2 (2016): 153–171; Erin A. Vogel, Jason P. Rose, Lindsay R. Roberts, and Katheryn Eckles, “Social Comparison, Social Media, and Self-Esteem,” Psychology of Popular Media Culture 3, no. 4 (2014): 206–222; Nesi and Prinstein, “Using Social Media”; Philippe Verduyn, David Seungjae Lee, Jiyoung Park, Holly Shablack, Ariana Orvell, Joseph Bayer, Oscar Ybarra, John Jonides, and Ethan Kross, “Passive Facebook Usage Undermines Affective Well-Being: Experimental and Longitudinal Evidence,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 144, no. 2 (2015): 480–488; Emily Weinstein, “Adolescents’ Differential Responses to Social Media Browsing: Exploring Causes and Consequences for Intervention,” Computers in Human Behavior 76 (2017): 396–405.
35. Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (New York: Macmillan, 2011).
36. Sophia Choukas-Bradley, Savannah R. Robert, Anne J. Maheux, and Jacqueline Nesi, “The Perfect Storm: A Developmental–Sociocultural Framework for the Role of Social Media in Adolescent Girls’ Body Image Concerns and Mental Health,” PsyArXiv, March 18, 2021.
37. Mariska Kleemans, Serena Daalmans, Ilana Carbaat, and Doeschka Anschȕtz, “Picture Perfect: The Direct Effect of Manipulated Instagram Photos on Body Image in Adolescent Girls,” Media Psychology 21, no. 1 (2018): 93–110.
38. Allen and colleagues’ study focused specifically on differences between cisgender and transgender, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming (TNG) youth, offering important evidence that underscores differences in how TNG youth can use and experience social media. We note that we use the terminology of “heavier internet users” in our text, though the authors measured Problematic Internet Use (PIU). Brittany J. Allen, Zoe E. Stratman, Bradley R. Kerr, Qianqian Zhao, and Megan Moreno, “Associations Between Psychosocial Measures and Digital Media Use Among Transgender Youth: Cross-Sectional Study,” JMIR Pediatrics and Parenting 4, no. 3 (2021): e25801, 8.
39. Crystal Abidin, “Communicative ❤ Intimacies: Influencers and Perceived Interconnectedness,” Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media & Technology 8 (2015): n.p.
40. Harter, Construction of the Self; Jerry Suls, René Martin, and Ladd Wheeler, “Social Comparison: Why, With Whom, and With What Effect?,” Current Directions in Psychological Science 11, no. 5 (2002): 159–163.
41. Daniel T. Gilbert, R. Brian Giesler, and Kathryn A. Morris, “When Comparisons Arise,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 69, no. 2 (1995): 227–236.
42. Robert L. Selman, The Growth of Interpersonal Understanding: Developmental and Clinical Analyses (New York: Academic Press, 1980).
43. Laura P. E. Van Der Aar, Sabine Peters, and Eveline A. Crone, “The Development of Self-Views across Adolescence: Investigating Self-Descriptions with and without Social Comparison Using a Novel Experimental Paradigm,” Cognitive Development 48 (2018): 256–270.
44. Richard W. Robins, Kali H. Trzesniewski, Jessica L. Tracy, Samuel D. Gosling, and Jeff Potter, “Global Self-Esteem across the Life Span,” Psychology and Aging 17, no. 3 (2002): 423–434.
45. See, for a discussion and review, the section “What Prompts Social Comparison?,” in Gibbons and Buunk, “Individual Differences in Social Comparison,” 130–131.
46. Ladd Wheeler and Kunitate Miyake, “Social Comparison in Everyday Life,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 62, no. 5 (1992): 760–773.
47. danah boyd, “Social Steganography: Learning to Hide in Plain Sight,” Apophenia, August 23, 2010, https://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2010/08/23/social-steganography-learning-to-hide-in-plain-sight.html.
48. Jessica H. Lu and Catherine Knight Steele, “‘Joy Is Resistance’: Cross-Platform Resilience and (Re)Invention of Black Oral Culture Online,” Information, Communication & Society 22, no. 6 (May 12, 2019): 823–837.
49. Kishonna L. Gray, Intersectional Tech: Black Users in Digital Gaming (Baton Rouge, LA: LSU Press, 2020).
50. Patrick M. Markey and Christopher J. Ferguson, “Internet Gaming Addiction: Disorder or Moral Panic?,” American Journal of Psychiatry 174, no. 3 (2017): 195–196; Andrew K. Przybylski, Netta Weinstein, and Kou Murayama, “Internet Gaming Disorder: Investigating the Clinical Relevance of a New Phenomenon,” American Journal of Psychiatry 174, no. 3 (2016): 230–236; Christopher J. Ferguson, Mark Coulson, and Jane Barnett, “A Meta-Analysis of Pathological Gaming Prevalence and Comorbidity with Mental Health, Academic and Social Problems,” Journal of Psychiatric Research 45, no. 12 (2011): 1573–1578. Note that the above studies are with young adults, not adolescents, although the editorial makes claims about the relevance to kids/young people. To look further at these studies on adolescents, see Jia Yuin Fam, “Prevalence of Internet Gaming Disorder in Adolescents: A Meta-Analysis across Three Decades,” Scandinavian Journal of Psychology 59, no. 5 (2018): 524–531; Katajun Lindenberg, Sophie Kindt, and Carolin Szász-Janocha, “Characteristics and Conditions Associated with Internet Use Disorders,” in Internet Addiction in Adolescents: The PROTECT Program for Evidence-Based Prevention and Treatment, ed. Katajun Lindenberg, Sophie Kind, and Carolin Szász-Janocha (New York: Springer International Publishing), 17–28.
51. James Paul Gee, What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).
52. Mizuko Itō et al., Hanging Out, Messing Around.
53. Jordan Shapiro, The New Childhood: Raising Kids to Thrive in a Digitally Connected World (London, UK: Hachette, 2019).
54. Adam Gazzaley and Larry D. Rosen, The Distracted Mind: Ancient Brains in a High-Tech World (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2016); Adam Gazzaley and Larry D. Rosen, “Remedies for the Distracted Mind,” Behavioral Scientist, January 1, 2018, https://behavioralscientist.org/remedies-distracted-mind/.
1. Niobe Way, Deep Secrets: Boys’ Friendships and the Crisis of Connection (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011).
2. Joanna Yau and Stephanie M. Reich, “Are the Qualities of Adolescents’ Offline Friendships Present in Digital Interactions?,” Adolescent Research Review 3, no. 3 (2018): 339–355.
3. Nesi et al., “Transformation of Adolescent Peer Relations in the Social Media Context: Part 2—Application to Peer Group Processes and Future Directions for Research.”
4. Tim is one of the teens who Emily interviewed for her 2017 dissertation, and she shared this quote previously in her dissertation writing(s), including Emily Weinstein, “The Social Media See-Saw: Positive and Negative Influences on Adolescents’ Affective Well-being,” New Media & Society 20, no. 10 (2018): 3597–3623.
5. Weinstein et al., “Positive and Negative Uses of Social Media.”
6. Weinstein, “The Social Media See-Saw.”
7. David Buckingham, ed., Youth, Identity, and Digital Media (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007); Sherry Turkle, Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997).
8. Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (London: Harmondsworth, 1978), 56.
9. Alice E. Marwick and danah boyd, “I Tweet Honestly, I Tweet Passionately: Twitter Users, Context Collapse, and the Imagined Audience,” New Media & Society 13, no. 1 (2011): 115.
10. Robin I. M. Dunbar, “The Social Brain: Psychological Underpinnings and Implications for the Structure of Organizations,” Current Directions in Psychological Science 23, no. 2 (2014): 109–114.
11. Robin I. M. Dunbar, “The Social Brain Hypothesis,” Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News, and Reviews 6, no. 5 (1998): 178–190.
12. Robin I. M. Dunbar, “Do Online Social Media Cut through the Constraints That Limit the Size of Offline Social Networks?,” Royal Society Open Science 3, no. 1 (2016): 150292.
13. Mark S. Granovetter, “The Strength of Weak Ties,” American Journal of Sociology 78, no. 6 (1973): 1360–1380.
14. Marwick and boyd, “I Tweet Honestly . . .”
15. Marwick and boyd, “I Tweet Honestly . . .”
16. In their book Instagram: Visual Social Media Cultures (Digital Media and Society) (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2020), Tama Leaver, Tim Highfield, and Crystal Abidin trace the history of Snapchat Stories and intentionally ephemeral sharing opportunities. The feature began as a distinct aspect of Snapchat and was adopted by Instagram. As Leaver and colleagues describe, the inclusion of Stories reflected a successful effort to enable more relaxed sharing on the Snapchat platform.
17. Jean M. Twenge, A. Bell Cooper, Thomas E. Joiner, Mary E. Duffy, and Sarah G. Binau, “Age, Period, and Cohort Trends in Mood Disorder Indicators and Suicide-Related Outcomes in a Nationally Representative Dataset, 2005–2017,” Journal of Abnormal Psychology 128, no. 3 (2019): 185–199; CDC, Youth Risk Behavior Survey.
1. This story is based on an actual tea account, and the examples are verbatim except for names—but Mill High School is a pseudonym.
2. This apt comparison was also made about YikYak in a February 4, 2015 article by John Patrick Pullen for TIME Magazine, https://time.com/3694578/you-asked-what-is-yik-yak/.
3. Weinstein et al., “Positive and Negative Uses of Social Media.”
4. Nesi et al., “Transformation of Adolescent Peer Relations in the Social Media Context: Part 2.”
5. “How Are Photos and Videos Chosen for Search & Explore?,” Instagram, accessed February 1, 2021, https://help.instagram.com/487224561296752.
6. Alice Marwick and danah boyd, “‘It’s Just Drama’: Teen Perspectives on Conflict and Aggression in a Networked Era,” Journal of Youth Studies 17, no. 9 (2014): 1187–1204.
7. Sarah Jackson, Moya Bailey, and Brooke Foucault Welles, #HashtagActivism: Networks of Race and Gender Justice (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2020).
8. Bari Weiss covered some of the controversy unfolding at other NYC private schools in April 2021. Relevant posts include Bari Weiss, “The Goal of This Newsletter,” Common Sense with Bari Weiss, April 19, 2021, https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/the-goal-of-this-newsletter; and Bari Weiss, “You Have to Read This Letter,” Common Sense with Bari Weiss, April 17, 2021, https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/you-have-to-read-this-letter.
9. John Suler, “The Online Disinhibition Effect,” CyberPsychology & Behavior 7, no. 3 (2004): 321–326.
10. E.g., Michal Dolev-Cohen and Azy Barak, “Adolescents’ Use of Instant Messaging as a Means of Emotional Relief,” Computers in Human Behavior 29, no. 1 (2013): 58–63.
11. Suler, “Online Disinhibition Effect”; Noam Lapidot-Lefler and Azy Barak, “Effects of Anonymity, Invisibility, and Lack of Eye-Contact on Toxic Online Disinhibition,” Computers in Human Behavior 28, no. 2 (2012): 434–443.
12. Suler, “Online Disinhibition Effect.”
13. As described in Elizabeth Englander, 25 Myths about Bullying and Cyberbullying (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell, 2020), 84.
14. E.g., Noam Lapidot-Lefler and Michal Dolev-Cohen, “Comparing Cyberbullying and School Bullying among School Students: Prevalence, Gender, and Grade Level Differences,” Social Psychology of Education: An International Journal 18, no. 1 (2015): 1–16.
15. For a classic paper on this topic, see David Elkind, “Egocentrism in Adolescence,” Child Development 38 (1967): 1025–1034. Also, though Elkind postulated a decline in egocentrism around ages fifteen to sixteen, subsequent research indicates that it remains relevant to adolescents’ thinking into later adolescent years (e.g., ages eighteen to twenty-one; see Paul D. Schwartz, Amanda M. Maynard, and Sarah M. Uzelac, “Adolescent Egocentrism: A Contemporary View,” Adolescence 43, no. 171 [2009]: 441–448).
16. Robert L. Selman, Promotion of Social Awareness: Powerful Lessons for the Partnership of Developmental Theory and Classroom Practice (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2003); Silvia Diazgranados, Robert L. Selman, and Michelle Dionne, “Acts of Social Perspective Taking: A Functional Construct and the Validation of a Performance Measure for Early Adolescents,” Social Development 25, no. 3 (2018): 572–601.
17. Christian K. Tamnes, Knut Overbye, Lia Ferschmann, Anders M. Fjell, Kristine B. Walhovd, Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, and Iroise Dumontheil, “Social Perspective Taking Is Associated with Self-Reported Prosocial Behavior and Regional Cortical Thickness across Adolescence,” Developmental Psychology 54, no. 9 (2018): 1745–1757.
18. Dan Olweus, Bullying at School: What We Know and What We Can Do (Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 1993).
19. Englander, 25 Myths about Bullying and Cyberbullying; Sameer Hinduja and Justin Patchin, Bullying Beyond the Schoolyard: Preventing and Responding to Cyberbullying (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2015).
20. For a synthesis and overview of multiple studies carried out by the authors, including their 2019 survey findings, see Sameer Hinduja and Justin W. Patchin, “Cyberbullying: Identification, Prevention, and Response” (Cyberbullying Research Center, 2020), accessed March 12, 2021, https://cyberbullying.org/Cyberbullying-Identification-Prevention-Response-2020.pdf.
21. Englander, 25 Myths about Bullying and Cyberbullying.
22. Englander, 90.
23. Sameer Hinduja and Justin W. Patchin, “Connecting Adolescent Suicide to the Severity of Bullying and Cyberbullying,” Journal of School Violence 18, no. 3 (2019): 333–346.
24. Megan A. Moreno, Aubrey D. Gower, Heather Brittain, and Tracy Vaillancourt, “Applying Natural Language Processing to Evaluate News Media Coverage of Bullying and Cyberbullying,” Prevention Science: The Official Journal of the Society for Prevention Research 20, no. 8 (2019): 1274–1283.
25. Nesi et al., “Transformation of Adolescent Peer Relations in the Social Media Context: Part 2.”
26. Kishonna Gray’s ethnographic work reveals layered dynamics through which racism, sexism, heterosexism, and other “intersecting oppressions” permeate online games and gaming cultures. Gray also identifies the ways in which Black men and Black women find “solace” (p. 104), empowerment, and strategies of resistance in these contexts. Gray, Intersectional Tech.
27. boyd, “Social Steganography.”
28. Catherine Sebastian, Essi Viding, Kipling D. Williams, and Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, “Social Brain Development and the Affective Consequences of Ostracism in Adolescence,” Brain and Cognition, Adolescent Brain Development: Current Themes and Future Directions 72, no. 1 (2010): 134–145.
29. Caitlin Elsaesser, Desmond Upton Patton, Emily Weinstein, Jacquelyn Santiago, Ayesha Clarke, and Rob Eschmann, “Small Becomes Big, Fast: Adolescent Perceptions of How Social Media Features Escalate Online Conflict to Offline Violence,” Children and Youth Services Review no. 122 (2021): 105898.
30. Desmond U. Patton, David Pyrooz, Scott Decker, William R. Frey, and Patrick Leonard, “When Twitter Fingers Turn to Trigger Fingers: A Qualitative Study of Social Media-Related Gang Violence,” International Journal of Bullying Prevention 1, no. 3 (2019): 1–13.
31. Jeffrey Lane, The Digital Street. (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2018).
32. Desmond U. Patton, Jeffrey Lane, Patrick Leonard, Jamie Macbeth, and Jocelyn R Smith Lee, “Gang Violence on the Digital Street: Case Study of a South Side Chicago Gang Member’s Twitter Communication,” New Media & Society 19, no. 7 (2016): 1000–1018.
33. Cho, “Default Publicness.”
1. Pamela K. Kohler, Lisa E. Manhart, and William E. Lafferty, “Abstinence-Only and Comprehensive Sex Education and the Initiation of Sexual Activity and Teen Pregnancy,” Journal of Adolescent Health 42, no. 4 (2008): 344–351; Kathrin F. Stanger-Hall and David W. Hall, “Abstinence-Only Education and Teen Pregnancy Rates: Why We Need Comprehensive Sex Education in the U.S,” PLOS ONE 6, no. 10 (October 14, 2011): e24658.
2. Katrien Symons, Koen Ponnet, Michel Walrave, and Wannes Heirman, “Sexting Scripts in Adolescent Relationships: Is Sexting Becoming the Norm?,” New Media & Society 20, no. 10 (2018): 3836–3857.
3. Two recent (as of this writing) meta-analyses of sexting: Sheri Madigan, Anh Ly, Christina L. Rash, Joris Van Ouytsel, and Jeff R. Temple, “Prevalence of Multiple Forms of Sexting Behavior among Youth: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis,” JAMA Pediatrics 172, no. 4 (2018): 327–335. In this analysis, reported means for prevalence are as follows: sending sexts (0.15, 95% CI, 0.13, 0.17), receiving (0.27, 95% CI, 0.23, 0.32), forwarding (0.12, 95% CI, .08, 0.16), having a sext forwarded without consent (0.08, 95% CI, 0.05, 0.12); Cristian Molla-Esparza, Josep-Maria Losilla, and Emelina López-González, “Prevalence of Sending, Receiving and Forwarding Sexts among Youths: A Three-Level Meta-Analysis,” PLOS ONE 15, no. 12 (December 7, 2020): e0243653. In this analysis, reported means for prevalence are as follows: sending sexts (0.14, 95% CI 0.12, 0.17), receiving (0.31, 95% CI 0.26, 0.36), forwarding (0.07, 95% CI 0.05, 0.09). The authors also note that all sexting experiences increased with age and became more prevalent in recent years.
4. See, for example, Elizabeth Englander and Meghan McCoy, “Sexting-Prevalence, Age, Sex, and Outcomes,” JAMA Pediatrics 172, no. 4 (2018): 317–318; Madigan et al., “Prevalence of Multiple Forms of Sexting Behavior”; Elizabeth Reed, Marissa Salazar, Alma I. Behar, Niloufar Agah, Jay G. Silverman, Alexandra M. Minnis, Melanie L. A. Rusch, and Anita Raj, “Cyber Sexual Harassment: Prevalence and Association with Substance Use, Poor Mental Health, and STI History among Sexually Active Adolescent Girls,” Journal of Adolescence 75 (2019): 53–62.
5. Justin W. Patchin and Sameer Hinduja, “The Nature and Extent of Sexting among a National Sample of Middle and High School Students in the U.S,” Archives of Sexual Behavior 48, no. 8 (2019): 2333–2343.
6. Relevant research includes: Eric Rice, Harmony Rhoades, Hailey Winetrobe, Monica Sanchez, Jorge Montoya, Aaron Plant, and Timothy Kordic, “Sexually Explicit Cell Phone Messaging Associated with Sexual Risk among Adolescents,” Pediatrics 130, no. 4 (2012): 667–673; Michele L. Ybarra, and Kimberly J. Mitchell, “‘Sexting’ and Its Relation to Sexual Activity and Sexual Risk Behavior in a National Survey of Adolescents,” Journal of Adolescent Health 55, no. 6 (2014): 757–764; Patchin and Hinduja, “Nature and Extent of Sexting”; Joris Van Ouytsel, Michel Walrave, and Koen Ponnet, “An Exploratory Study of Sexting Behaviors among Heterosexual and Sexual Minority Early Adolescents,” Journal of Adolescent Health: Official Publication of the Society for Adolescent Medicine 65, no. 5 (2019): 621–626.
7. E.g., Elizabeth Englander, “Sexting in LGBT Youth” (presentation, Virtual Annual Conference of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, October 12–24, 2020); Ybarra and Mitchell, “‘Sexting’ and Its Relation to Sexual Activity.”
8. Van Ouytsel, Walrave, and Ponnet, “An Exploratory Study of Sexting Behaviors”; Englander, “Sexting in LGBT Youth.”
9. Cho, “Default Publicness.”
10. Laurence Steinberg, “Cognitive and Affective Development in Adolescence,” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 9, no. 2 (February 2005): 72; emphasis added.
11. Camille Mori, Jessica E. Cooke, Jeff R. Temple, Anh Ly, Yu Lu, Nina Anderson, Christina Rash, and Sheri Madigan, “The Prevalence of Sexting Behaviors Among Emerging Adults: A Meta-Analysis,” Archives of Sexual Behavior 49, no. 4 (2020): 1103–1119; Madigan et al., “Prevalence of Multiple Forms of Sexting Behavior.”
12. Justin Lehmiller, Justin R. Garcia, Amanda N. Gesselman, and Kristen P. Mark, “Less Sex, but More Sexual Diversity: Changes in Sexual Behavior during the COVID-19 Coronavirus Pandemic,” Leisure Sciences 43, no. 1–2 (2020): 295–304.
13. Joris Van Ouytsel, Ellen Van Gool, Michel Walrave, Koen Ponnet, and Emilie Peeters, “Sexting: Adolescents’ Perceptions of the Applications Used for, Motives for, and Consequences of Sexting,” Journal of Youth Studies 20, no. 4 (2017): 446–470; Elizabeth Englander, “Coerced Sexting and Revenge Porn Among Teens,” Bullying, Teen Aggression & Social Media 1, no. 2 (2015): 19–21; HyeJeong Choi, Joris Van Ouytsel, and Jeff R. Temple, “Association between Sexting and Sexual Coercion among Female Adolescents,” Journal of Adolescence 53 (2016): 164–168.
14. Anne J. Maheux, Reina Evans, Laura Widman, Jacqueline Nesi, Mitchell J. Prinstein, and Sophia Choukas-Bradley, “Popular Peer Norms and Adolescent Sexting Behavior,” Journal of Adolescence 78 (2020): 62–66, 62.
15. Elkind, “Egocentrism in Adolescence.”
16. Amy Alberts, David Elkind, and Stephen Ginsberg, “The Personal Fable and Risk-Taking in Early Adolescence,” Journal of Youth and Adolescence 36, no. 1 (2007): 71–76.
17. Planned Parenthood, “All about Consent” (2019), accessed June 6, 2020, https://www.plannedparenthood.org/learn/teens/sex/all-about-consent.
18. Michelle Drouin and Elizabeth Tobin, “Unwanted but Consensual Sexting among Young Adults: Relations with Attachment and Sexual Motivations,” Computers in Human Behavior 31 (2014): 412–418.
19. Elizabeth Englander, “Low Risk Associated with Most Teenage Sexting: A Study of 617 18-Year-Olds,” (Bridgewater, MA: MARC, 2012), https://vc.bridgew.edu/marc_reports/6.
20. Michelle Drouin, Manda Coupe, and Jeffrey Temple, “Is Sexting Good for Your Relationship? It Depends . . . ,” Computers in Human Behavior, no. 75 (2017): 749–756.
21. Cho, “Default Publicness.”
22. Elizabeth Englander, “What Do We Know About Sexting, and When Did We Know It?,” Journal of Adolescent Health 65, no. 5 (2019): 577–578; emphasis added.
23. Jeremy Adam Smith, “Can Sexting Increase Relationship Satisfaction?,” Greater Good, September 2016, https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/can_sexting_increase_relationship_satisfaction.
24. Anna Ševčíková, “Girls’ and Boys’ Experience with Teen Sexting in Early and Late Adolescence,” Journal of Adolescence 51 (2016): 156–162.
25. Poco D. Kernsmith, Bryan G. Victor, and Joanne P. Smith-Darden, “Online, Offline, and Over the Line: Coercive Sexting among Adolescent Dating Partners,” Youth & Society 50, no. 7 (2018): 891–904.
26. Elizabeth Reed, Marissa Salazar, and Anita Raj, “Nonconsensual Sexting and the Role of Sex Differences,” JAMA Pediatrics 172, no. 9 (2018): 890.; Reed et al., “Cyber Sexual Harassment.”
27. Jennifer Wolak and David Finkelhor, “Sextortion: Key Findings from a Survey of 1,631 Victims,” Crimes Against Research Center / THORN, June 2016, http://unh.edu/ccrc/pdf/Key%20Findings%20from%20a%20Survey%20of%20Sextortion%20Victims%20revised%208-9-2016.pdf.
28. Bianca Klettke, David J. Hallford, Elizabeth Clancy, David J. Mellor, and John Toumbourou, “Sexting and Psychological Distress: The Role of Unwanted and Coerced Sexts,” Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking 22, no. 4 (2019): 237–242.
29. Sameer Hinduja and Justin W. Patchin, “Digital Dating Abuse among a National Sample of U.S. Youth,” Journal of Interpersonal Violence, January 8, 2020, 0886260519897344; Lauren A. Reed, Richard M. Tolman, and L. Monique Ward, “Snooping and Sexting: Digital Media as a Context for Dating Aggression and Abuse Among College Students,” Violence Against Women 22, no. 13 (2016): 1556–1576; Lauren A. Reed, Jenny McCullough Cosgrove, Jill D. Sharkey, and Erika Felix, “Exploring Latinx Youth Experiences of Digital Dating Abuse,” Social Work Research 44, no. 3 (2020): 157–168.
30. Julia Lippman and Scott W. Campbell, “Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don’t . . . If You’re a Girl: Relational and Normative Contexts of Adolescent Sexting in the United States,” Journal of Children and Media 8, no. 4 (2014): 371–386.
31. Molla-Esparza et al., “Prevalence of Sending”; Madigan et al., “Prevalence of Multiple Forms of Sexting Behavior.”
32. M. Johnson, F. Mishna, M. Okumu, and J. Daciuk, Non-consensual Sharing of Sexts: Behaviours and Attitudes of Canadian Youth (Ottawa: MediaSmarts, 2018), accessed February 12, 2021, https://mediasmarts.ca/sites/default/files/publication-report/full/sharing-of-sexts.pdf.
33. Van Ouytsel et al., “Sexting: Adolescents’ Perceptions.”
34. Van Ouytsel et al., “Sexting: Adolescents’ Perceptions.”
35. Johnson et al., Non-consensual Sharing of Sexts.
36. M. Dolores Gil-Llario, Vicente Morell-Mengual, Martha Cecilia Jiménez-Martínez, Paula Iglesias-Campos, Beatriz Gil-Julia, and Rafael Ballester-Arnal, “Culture as an Influence on Sexting Attitudes and Behaviors: A Differential Analysis Comparing Adolescents from Spain and Colombia,” International Journal of Intercultural Relations 79 (2020): 145–154.
37. Johnson et al., Non-consensual Sharing of Sexts.
38. Research points to the power of norms in shaping sexual behaviors, even at the macro level. An interesting example: One large study that examined beliefs and behaviors across seventeen European countries revealed a relationship between cultural beliefs about the appropriate age for first sexual encounters and the actual ages at which people in those contexts become sexually active. See Aubrey Spriggs Madkour, Margaretha de Looze, Ping Ma, Carolyn Tucker Halpern, Tilda Farhat, Tom F. M. Ter Bogt, Virginie Ehlinger, Saoirse Nic Gabhainn, Candace Currie, and Emmanuelle Godeau, “Macro-Level Age Norms for the Timing of Sexual Initiation and Adolescents’ Early Sexual Initiation in 17 European Countries,” Journal of Adolescent Health 55, no. 1 (2014): 114–121; Gil-Llario et al., “Culture as an Influence on Sexting Attitudes and Behaviors.”
39. Patchin and Hinduja, “Nature and Extent of Sexting”; Jeff R. Temple, Jonathan A. Paul, Patricia van den Berg, Vi Donna Le, Amy McElhany, and Brian W. Temple, “Teen Sexting and Its Association with Sexual Behaviors,” Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine 166, no. 9 (2012): 828–833.
40. Molla-Esparza et al., “Prevalence of Sending”; Madigan et al., “Prevalence of Multiple Forms of Sexting Behavior.”
41. Madigan et al., “Prevalence of Multiple Forms of Sexting Behavior.”
42. Peggy Orenstein, Girls & Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape (New York: HarperCollins, 2016).
43. Lippman and Campbell, “Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don’t,” 381.
44. Lauren A. Reed, Margaret P. Boyer, Haley Meskunas, Richard M. Tolman, and L. Monique Ward, “How Do Adolescents Experience Sexting in Dating Relationships? Motivations to Sext and Responses to Sexting Requests from Dating Partners,” Children and Youth Services Review 109 (2020): 104696.
45. Gender differences in sexting behaviors is an ongoing area of research. Understanding sexting decision-making in light of gender and intersections with other identities is also important. Notably, a small study focused on digital dating abuse among Latinx youth found that girls were more likely to say that they experienced pressure to sext, to have sent an unrequested nude, and to have perpetrated pressure on their partner to sext (the latter was statistically significant). Reed et al., “Exploring Latinx Youth Experiences.”
46. Cyberbullying Research Center, “Sexting Laws Across America,” accessed August 9, 2019, https://cyberbullying.org/sexting-laws.
47. Katie Lannan, “Alternatives to felony pitched for teens who share sexual images,” Daily Hampshire Gazette, December 3, 2019, https://www.gazettenet.com/Alternatives-to-pitched-for-teens-who-share-sexual-images-31007643.
48. “Nonconsensual Pornography (Revenge Porn) Laws in the United States,” Ballotpedia, accessed April 17, 2021, https://ballotpedia.org/Nonconsensual_pornography_(revenge_porn)_laws_in_the_United_States.
49. Lannan, “Franklin Lawmaker”; Shira Schoenberg, “Gov. Charlie Baker Refiles Bill to Address ‘Sexting’ and ‘Revenge Porn,’” MassLive, February 6, 2019, sec. News, https://www.masslive.com/news/2019/02/gov-charlie-baker-refiles-bill-to-address-sexting-and-revenge-porn.html; Cyberbullying Research Center, “Sexting Laws in Massachusetts,” accessed April 17, 2021, https://cyberbullying.org/sexting-laws/massachusetts.
50. Justin W. Patchin and Sameer Hinduja, “It Is Time to Teach Safe Sexting,” Journal of Adolescent Health 66, no. 2 (2020): 140–143.
51. Lippman and Campbell, “Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don’t”; Amy Adele Hasinoff, Sexting Panic: Rethinking Criminalization, Privacy, and Consent (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2015).
52. Johnson et al., Non-consensual Sharing of Sexts.
53. Jennifer S. Hirsch and Shamus Khan, Sexual Citizens: A Landmark Study of Sex, Power, and Assault on Campus (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2020).
54. Hirsch and Kahn, Sexual Citizens, xv.
55. Hirsch and Kahn, 144.
56. Patchin and Hinduja, “It Is Time to Teach Safe Sexting.”
57. Gail Dines, “Pornography” presentation, Digital Media and Mental Health Research Retreat, Children and Screens, virtual, May 24–25, 2021.
58. Culture Reframed, “Solving the Public Health Crisis of the Digital Age,” accessed September 3, 2021, https://www.culturereframed.org.
59. Culture Reframed, “Solving the Public Health Crisis of the Digital Age.”
60. Ana J. Bridges, Robert Wosnitzer, Erica Scharrer, Chyng Sun, and Rachael Liberman, “Aggression and Sexual Behavior in Best-Selling Pornography Videos: A Content Analysis Update,” Violence Against Women 16, no. 10 (2010): 1065–1085. Note: The Bridges et al. (2010) content analysis is a widely cited study of 304 scenes from popular pornographic videos and found that 88.2 percent contained physical aggression. Fritz et al.’s (2020) descriptive analysis of free pornographic content from Pornhub and Xvideos found lower prevalence of physically aggressive acts (45 percent of Pornhub scenes and 35 percent of Xvideo scenes; across these scenes, 97 percent had women as the targets and women’s reactions to the aggression was “rarely negative”). Niki Fritz, Vinny Malic, Bryant Paul, and Yanyan Zhou, “A Descriptive Analysis of the Types, Targets, and Relative Frequency of Aggression in Mainstream Pornography,” Archives of Sexual Behavior 49, no. 8 (2020): 3041–3053.
61. Fritz et al., “A Descriptive Analysis.”
62. Fritz et al., “A Descriptive Analysis.”
63. Malachi Willis, Sasha N. Canan, Kristen N. Jozkowski, and Ana J. Bridges, “Sexual Consent Communication in Best-Selling Pornography Films: A Content Analysis,” Journal of Sex Research 57, no. 1 (2020): 52–63.
64. Eric W. Owens, Richard J. Behun, Jill C. Manning, and Rory C. Reid, “The Impact of Internet Pornography on Adolescents: A Review of the Research,” Sexual Addiction & Compulsivity 19, no. 1–2 (2012): 99–122.
65. Elisha Fieldstadt, “Billie Eilish Reveals She Watched Porn at Young Age, Calls It ‘a Disgrace,’” NBC News, December 15, 2021, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/billie-eilish-reveals-watched-porn-young-age-calls-disgrace-rcna8863.
1. Taylor Lorenz, Kellen Browning, and Sheera Frenkel, “TikTok Teens and K-Pop Stans Say They Sank Trump Rally,” New York Times, June 21, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/21/style/tiktok-trump-rally-tulsa.html.
2. Jenkins et al., By Any Media Necessary.
3. Constance A. Flanagan and Nakesha Faison, “Youth Civic Development: Implications of Research for Social Policy and Programs,” Social Policy Report 15, no. 1 (2001): 3–14.
4. boyd, “Why Youth ♥ Social Network Sites”; Henry Jenkins, Sam Ford, and Joshua Green, Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture (New York: NYU Press, 2013).
5. Notably, in 2020–2021, when we asked teens and young adults about the term, “slacktivism,” the reaction was either a blank stare or “Is that like using Slack (the digital communications platform) for activism?” This was suggestive of both the growing popularity of the tool, Slack, and perhaps of a fading hold of the discourse that equates online actions with laziness.
6. Evgeny Morozov, “The Brave New World of Slacktivism,” Foreign Policy, May 19, 2009, https://foreignpolicy.com/2009/05/19/the-brave-new-world-of-slacktivism/.
7. Malcolm Gladwell, “Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted,” New Yorker, September 27, 2010, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/10/04/small-change-malcolm-gladwell.
8. Zeynep Tufekci, Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017), xxvi.
9. Ethan Zuckerman, “New Media, New Civics?,” Policy & Internet 6, no. 2 (2014): 151–168.
10. Jennifer Earl and Katrina Kimport, Digitally Enabled Social Change: Activism in the Internet Age (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2013).
11. Evgeny Morozov, “From Slacktivism to Activism,” Foreign Policy, September 5, 2009, https://foreignpolicy.com/2009/09/05/from-slacktivism-to-activism/.
12. Danielle Allen and Jennifer S. Light, eds., From Voice to Influence: Understanding Citizenship in a Digital Age (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015).
13. Jackson, Bailey, and Welles, #HashtagActivism. See also Catherine Knight Steele, “Black Bloggers and Their Varied Publics: The Everyday Politics of Black Discourse Online,” Television & New Media 19, no. 2 (2018): 112–127; Zizi Papacharissi, Affective Publics: Sentiment, Technology, and Politics (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2014).
14. Jackson, Bailey, and Welles, #HashtagActivism; Ian P. Philbrick and Sanam Yar, “What Has Changed Since George Floyd,” New York Times, August 3, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/03/briefing/coronavirus-vaccine-tropical-storm-isaias-tiktok-your-monday-briefing.html.
15. Breanna Draxler, “Harnessing People Power to Protect Alaska’s Last Remaining Wilderness,” YES! Magazine, January 27, 2021, https://www.yesmagazine.org/environment/2021/01/27/alaska-arctic-national-wildlife-refuge-tiktok.
16. Joseph Kahne, Ellen Middaugh, and Danielle Allen, “Youth, New Media and the Rise of Participatory Politics,” in Allen and Light, From Voice to Influence, 41.
17. Though we focus here on informal avenues for participation, social media also enable direct engagement with politicians and social media-fueled windows into the nuts and bolts of policymaking. Leaver and colleagues’ description of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Instagram use offers an illustrative example. Leaver, Highfield, and Abidin, Instagram, 155.
18. Kahne et al., “Youth, New Media.”
19. Similarly, sociologist Lynn Schofield Clark discusses “online artifacts of political engagement,” which she defines as “photos, memes, quoted sayings, and original or curated commentary that evince young people’s emotional investment and participation in unfolding events” (236). As these media are shared on different social media platforms by peers, they can draw “newcomers” into political activities such as walkouts. Lynn Schofield Clark, “Participants on the Margins: Examining the Role That Shared Artifacts of Engagement in the Ferguson Protests Played Among Minoritized Political Newcomers on Snapchat, Facebook, and Twitter,” International Journal of Communication 10 (2016): 235–253. In their more recent ethnographic research with high school students, Regina Marchi and Schofield Clark observed the ways in which liking and sharing news about current events—what they refer to as “connective journalism”—can be a “first step” in a “continuum of communicative action” that includes adding one’s feelings about such issues and then involvement in political organizing and action. Regina Marchi and Lynn Schofield Clark, “Social Media and Connective Journalism: The Formation of Counterpublics and Youth Civic Participation,” Journalism 22, no. 2 (February 1, 2021): 285–302. Online information practices are increasingly recognized by researchers as sites of political agency, especially for historically marginalized youth. Based on their qualitative research, Amana Kaskazi and Vanessa Kitzie assert that “information practices function as a form of political participation; practices such as seeking, sharing, and assessing constitute keyways for participants to engage with locally and culturally meaningful political information and challenge the status quo.” Amana Kaskazi and Vanessa Kitzie, “Engagement at the Margins: Investigating How Marginalized Teens Use Digital Media for Political Participation,” New Media & Society, April 15, 2021, https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448211009460.
20. See Emily Weinstein, “The Personal Is Political on Social Media: Online Civic Expression Patterns and Pathways Among Civically Engaged Youth,” International Journal of Communication 8 (2014): 210–233.
21. Emily Weinstein, Margaret Rundle, and Carrie James, “A Hush Falls Over the Crowd? Diminished Online Civic Expression Among Young Civic Actors,” International Journal of Communication 9 (2015): 83–105.
22. See Ellen Middaugh, Benjamin Bowyer, and Joseph Kahne, “U Suk! Participatory Media and Youth Experiences with Political Discourse,” Youth & Society 49, no. 7 (2017): 902–922; Kjerstin Thorson, “Facing an Uncertain Reception: Young Citizens and Political Interaction on Facebook,” Information, Communication & Society 17, no. 2 (2014): 203–216; Kjerstin Thorson, Emily K. Vraga, and Neta Kligler-Vilenchik, “Don’t Push Your Opinions on Me: Young Citizens and Political Etiquette on Facebook,” in Presidential Campaigning and Social Media: An Analysis of the 2012 Campaign, ed. John Allen Hendricks and Dan Schill (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2017), 74–93; Ariadne Vromen, Brian D. Loader, Michael A. Xenos, and Francesco Bailo, “Everyday Making through Facebook Engagement: Young Citizens’ Political Interactions in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States,” Political Studies 64, no. 3 (2016): 513–533.
23. Soep, “Digital Afterlife of Youth-Made Media.”
24. Desmond Upton Patton, Douglas-Wade Brunton, Andrea Dixon, Reuben Jonathan Miller, Patrick Leonard, and Rose Hackman, “Stop and Frisk Online: Theorizing Everyday Racism in Digital Policing in the Use of Social Media for Identification of Criminal Conduct and Associations,” Social Media + Society 3, no. 3 (2017): 2056305117733344.
25. Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding Politics: How Americans Produce Apathy in Everyday Life (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Thorson, “Facing an Uncertain Reception.”
26. Neta Kligler-Vilenchik, “Friendship and Politics Don’t Mix? The Role of Sociability for Online Political Talk,” Information, Communication & Society 24, no. 1 (2021): 118–133.
27. Howard Gardner and Katie Davis, The App Generation: How Today’s Youth Navigate Identity, Intimacy, and Imagination in a Digital World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013).
28. Kaskazi and Kitzie, “Engagement at the Margins.”
29. Erikson, Identity: Youth and Crisis.
30. Michael J. Nakkula and Eric Toshalis, Understanding Youth: Adolescent Development for Educators (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press, 2006), 33.
31. Flanagan and Faison, “Youth Civic Development”; James Youniss, Jeffrey A. McLellan, and Miranda Yates, “What We Know about Engendering Civic Identity,” American Behavioral Scientist 40, no. 5 (1997): 620–631.
32. Jennifer Graham, “Cancel Culture Is Entering a Dangerous New Phase,” Deseret News, August 22, 2020, https://www.deseret.com/indepth/2020/8/22/21362516/cancel-culture-forgiveness-j-k-rowling-carson-king-apology-moral; Adam B. Vary, “J. K. Rowling’s Book Sales Lagging Despite Industry Boom in June,” Variety, July 16, 2020, https://variety.com/2020/film/news/jk-rowling-book-sales-harry-potter-1234708777/.
33. Jonah Engel Bromwich, “Everyone Is Canceled,” New York Times, June 28, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/28/style/is-it-canceled.html.
34. Zeynep Tufekci, “The Social-Media Mob Was Good,” The Atlantic, May 28, 2020, https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/05/case-social-media-mobs/612202/.
35. Valeriya Safronova, “James Charles, From ‘CoverBoy’ to Canceled,” New York Times, May 14, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/14/style/james-charles-makeup-artist-youtube.html.
36. Sanah Yar and Jonah E. Bromwich, “Tales from the Teenage Cancel Culture,” New York Times, October 31, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/31/style/cancel-culture.html.
37. Diana C. Mutz, Hearing the Other Side: Deliberative Versus Participatory Democracy (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
38. Flanagan and Faison, “Youth Civic Development”; James Youniss and Miranda Yates, Community Service and Social Responsibility in Youth (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997).
39. Eli Pariser, The Filter Bubble: How the New Personalized Web Is Changing What We Read and How We Think (New York: Penguin Press, 2012); Cass R. Sunstein, #Republic: Divided Democracy in the Age of Social Media (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017).
1. Kate Robertson, “Alexi McCammond, Teen Vogue Editor Resigns after Fury over Past Racist Tweets,” New York Times, March 18, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/18/business/media/teen-vogue-editor-alexi-mccammond.html.
2. Hannah Natanson, “Harvard Rescinds Acceptances for at Least Ten Students for Obscene Memes,” Harvard Crimson, June 5, 2017, https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2017/6/5/2021-offers-rescinded-memes/.
3. Bill Murphy Jr., “Meet the 10 Harvard Students Who Just Ruined Their Lives,” Inc., June 6, 2017, https://www.inc.com/bill-murphy-jr/harvard-facebook-group-admitted-students-offer-rescinded.html.
4. Soep, “Digital Afterlife of Youth-Made Media.”
5. Brady Robards and Siân Lincoln, Growing Up on Facebook (New York: Peter Lang, 2020); “scroll-back method,” 51; “panic,” “urgency,” 63; “anxiety,” 62, 63; “therapeutic,” 73, 181; “memory ‘sparks,’” 96.
6. Robards and Lincoln, Growing Up on Facebook, 96.
7. Adriana Manago’s detailed discussion of digital media and identity processes outlines a suite of relevant opportunities and challenges relevant to adolescent development. Adriana M. Manago, “Identity Development in the Digital Age: The Case of Social Networking Sites,” in The Oxford Handbook of Identity Development, ed. Kate C. Mclean and Moin Syed (New York: Oxford Press, 2014), 508–524.
8. Erikson, Identity: Youth and Crisis.
9. Turkle, Life on the Screen.
10. Erikson, Identity: Youth and Crisis.
11. Katie Davis and Emily Weinstein, “Identity Development in the Digital Age: An Eriksonian Perspective,” in Identity, Sexuality, and Relationships among Emerging Adults in the Digital Age, ed. M. F. Wright (Hershey, PA: IGI Global, 2017), 1–17.
12. Shanyang Zhao, Sherri Grasmuck, and Jason Martin, “Identity Construction on Facebook: Digital Empowerment in Anchored Relationships,” Computers in Human Behavior 24, no. 5 (2008): 1816–1836.
13. Robards and Lincoln, Growing Up on Facebook, 4.
14. Patton et al., “Stop and Frisk Online,” 2056305117733344.
15. boyd, “Social Steganography.”
16. boyd, “Social Steganography.” See also James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992); Lane, Digital Street.
17. Margo Gardner and Laurence Steinberg, “Peer Influence on Risk Taking, Risk Preference, and Risky Decision Making in Adolescence and Adulthood: An Experimental Study,” Developmental Psychology 41, no. 4 (2005): 625–635.
18. Lauren E. Sherman, Ashley A. Patyon, Leanna M. Hernandez, Patricia M. Greenfield, and Mirella Dapretto, “The Power of the Like in Adolescence: Effects of Peer Influence on Neural and Behavioral Responses to Social Media,” Psychological Science 27, no. 7 (July 1, 2016): 1027–1035.
19. Laurence Steinberg, “A Social Neuroscience Perspective on Adolescent Risk-Taking,” Developmental Review 28, no. 1 (2008): 78–106.
20. Leaver, Highfield, and Abidin, Instagram.
21. Tama Leaver and Tim Highfield, “Visualising the Ends of Identity: Pre-Birth and Post-Death on Instagram,” Information, Communication & Society 21, no. 1 (2018): 30–45.
22. Leaver and Highfield, “Visualising the Ends”; Leaver, Highfield, and Abidin, Instagram.
23. Dan Levin, “A Racial Slur, a Viral Video, and a Reckoning,” New York Times, December 26, 2020, sec. U.S., https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/26/us/mimi-groves-jimmy-galligan-racial-slurs.html.
24. On the statement “It’s fair for college admissions to consider applicants’ social media posts,” 33 percent (1,147) of youth disagreed, 31 percent (956) were undecided, and 39 percent (1,322) agreed. On the statement “It’s reasonable for people to face consequences later in life for posts shared in middle or high school,” 40 percent (1,382) of youth disagreed, 25 percent (849) were undecided, and 35 percent (1,214) agreed. On the statement “If someone makes an offensive comment on social media, people have the right to call them out—even if it hurts their reputation,” 17 percent (599) disagreed, 20 percent (688) were undecided, and 63 percent (2,159) agreed.
25. Merrill Perlman, “The Rise of ‘Deplatform,’” Columbia Journalism Review, February 4, 2021, https://www.cjr.org/language_corner/deplatform.php.
26. Brooke Erin Duffy and Ngai Keung Chan, “‘You Never Really Know Who’s Looking’: Imagined Surveillance across Social Media Platforms,” New Media & Society 21, no. 1 (January 1, 2019): 119–138.
27. Rachel Buchanan, Erica Southgate, and Shamus P Smith, “‘The Whole World’s Watching Really’: Parental and Educator Perspectives on Managing Children’s Digital Lives,” Global Studies of Childhood 9, no. 2 (June 1, 2019): 167–180.
28. Ben Wolford, “Everything You Need to Know about the ‘Right to Be Forgotten,’” GDPR.EU, n.d., https://gdpr.eu/right-to-be-forgotten.
29. Kate Eichhorn, The End of Forgetting: Growing Up with Social Media (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019). For a discussion of the Star Wars Kid, see pp. 121–122.
30. Leo Kelion, “Google Wins Landmark Right to Be Forgotten Case,” BBC, September 24, 2019, https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-49808208.
31. Aaron Krolik and Kashmir Hill, “The Slander Industry,” New York Times, April 24, 2021, sec. Technology, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/04/24/technology/online-slander-websites.html.
32. Graeme Wood, “America Has Forgotten How to Forgive,” The Atlantic, March 19, 2021, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/03/america-has-lost-ability-forgive/618336/.
33. Carol S. Dweck, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (New York: Ballantine, 2007).
34. Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson, Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts (New York: Harcourt, 2007).
35. Loretta Ross, “I’m a Black Feminist. I Think Call-Out Culture Is Toxic,” New York Times, August 17, 2019, sec. Opinion, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/17/opinion/sunday/cancel-culture-call-out.html; Jessica Bennett, “What If Instead of Calling People Out, We Called Them In?,” New York Times, November 19, 2020, sec. Style, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/19/style/loretta-ross-smith-college-cancel-culture.html.
36. As we describe in the appendix, we collected survey responses from students in fifteen middle and high schools. In the survey questionnaire we used at the first two participating schools in our study, this option was phrased as “threats to private information.” We modified the language to “risks to private information” after data collection at the first two sites. Why? In short, we were sufficiently surprised that privacy issues topped the concerns list that we conducted additional pretesting of our item to further check its interpretation. While this didn’t alert us to any obvious misunderstandings, it raised a question for us about whether it was possible that some students interpret the word “threats” as inherently acute because of the term’s frequent use in relation to physical fights and bullying. We therefore decided to shift to “risks.” This did not change the popularity of the response item, though, which was the top response overall and either the most prevalent or second most prevalent worry selected by students at fourteen of our fifteen school sites.
37. Based on their focus group study with young adults, Hargittai and Marwick (2016) describe a “privacy paradox: namely, concern over privacy, but little presence of privacy-protective behavior” (3738). Eszter Hargittai and Alice Marwick, “‘What Can I Really Do?’ Explaining the Privacy Paradox with Online Apathy,” International Journal of Communication 10 (2016): 3737–3757. Davis and James (2013) similarly show that tweens have clear conceptions of privacy. Katie Davis and Carrie James, “Tweens’ Conceptions of Privacy Online: Implications for Educators,” Learning, Media and Technology 38, no. 1 (2013): 4–25.
38. Ralf De Wolf, “Contextualizing How Teens Manage Personal and Interpersonal Privacy on Social Media,” New Media & Society 22, no. 6 (2020): 1060.
1. Carrie James, Emily Weinstein, and Kelly Mendoza, “Teaching Digital Citizens in Today’s World: Research and Insights Behind the Common Sense K–12 Digital Citizenship Curriculum” (San Francisco: Common Sense Media, 2019), https://www.commonsense.org/education/sites/default/files/tlr_component/common_sense_education_digital_citizenship_research_backgrounder.pdf.
2. As Livingstone and Blum-Ross put it aptly, “anxious parents read the runes to figure out which of their child’s behaviors may yield future benefits or harms, which newly sparked interests could chart a profitable path to adulthood, which missed opportunities will later be regretted, and which easily overlooked problems signal trouble to come.” Livingstone and Blum-Ross, Parenting for a Digital Future, 9.
3. Albert Bandura, “Social Cognitive Theory: An Agentic Perspective,” Annual Review of Psychology 52, no. 1 (2001): 1–26.
4. Seligman’s research on learned helplessness serves as a compelling example of the ways inhibited control and agency can lead to depression. See, for example, Christopher Peterson, Steven F. Maier, and Martin E. P. Seligman, Learned Helplessness: A Theory for the Age of Personal Control (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).
5. Albert Bandura, “Adolescent Development from an Agentic Perspective,” in Self-Efficacy Beliefs of Adolescents, ed. Frank Pajares and Timothy Urdan (Greenwich, CT: Information Age, 2006), 5.
6. Tom Harrison, Thrive: How to Cultivate Character So Your Children Can Flourish Online (London, UK: Robinson, 2021), 83.
7. Overall, some parents are permissive in allowing tech access (“enablers”), while others aim to restrict screen time (“limiters”). But there is a third path: “Digital mentors” whose tech parenting is focused on actively talking to kids about online skills and experiences and working to understand and positively shape kids’ tech use. Digital mentoring may have benefits: survey data (though correlational in nature) indicates that children who have been digitally mentored appear least likely to engage in problematic behavior online. Alexandra Samuel, “Parents: Reject Technology Shame,” The Atlantic, November 4, 2015.
Importantly, adopting a successful mentoring approach to digital parenting isn’t simply a matter of choosing to model/guide versus limit. As Livingstone and Blum-Ross’s work illustrates powerfully, parenting strategies play out in the context of socioeconomic realities, inequities, and parents’ work schedules. From a resources and time perspective, families are differently positioned to mentor and support their children’s’ digital activities and opportunities toward digital agency. Livingstone and Blum-Ross, Parenting for a Digital Future.
8. Katie Davis, Technology’s Child: Digital Media’s Role in the Ages and Stages of Growing Up (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2023).
9. Davis, Technology’s Child.
10. Kathryn C. Montgomery, Jeff Chester, and Tijana Milosevic, “Children’s Privacy in the Big Data Era: Research Opportunities,” Pediatrics 140, Suppl. 2 (November 1, 2017): S117–S121; Jenny Radesky, Yolanda Linda Reid Chassiakos, Nusheen Ameenuddin, Dipesh Navsaria, and the Council on Communication and Media, “Digital Advertising to Children,” Pediatrics 146, no. 1 (July 1, 2020): e20201681.
11. “I Used to Think . . . Now I Think . . .”
1. Anselm L. Strauss and Juliet Corbin, Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1998).