How teens navigate a networked world and how adults can support them.
What are teens actually doing on their smartphones? Contrary to many adults’ assumptions, they are not simply “addicted” to their screens, oblivious to the afterlife of what they post, or missing out on personal connection. They are just trying to navigate a networked world. In Behind Their Screens, Emily Weinstein and Carrie James, Harvard researchers who are experts on teens and technology, explore the complexities that teens face in their digital lives, and suggest that many adult efforts to help—“Get off your phone!” “Just don’t sext!”—fall short.
Weinstein and James warn against a single-minded focus by adults on “screen time.” Teens worry about dependence on their devices, but disconnecting means being out of the loop socially, with absence perceived as rudeness or even a failure to be there for a struggling friend. Drawing on a multiyear project that surveyed more than 3,500 teens, the authors explain that young people need empathy, not exasperated eye-rolling. Adults should understand the complicated nature of teens’ online life rather than issue commands, and they should normalize—let teens know that their challenges are shared by others—without minimizing or dismissing. Along the way, Weinstein and James describe different kinds of sexting and explain such phenomena as watermarking nudes, comparison quicksand, digital pacifiers, and collecting receipts. Behind Their Screens offers essential reading for any adult who cares about supporting teens in an online world.
Author(s): Emily Weinstein, Carrie James
Publisher: The MIT Press
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 238
City: Cambridge
Contents
Introduction: What Are We Missing? Why Does It Matter?
From the Mouths of Babes
Privileging Youth Voices
Teens on Screens: What We See and What We Don’t
Behind Their Screens, but Not Behind Their Backs
Rethinking Familiar Topics
1 Digital Worries in Context
You’ve Been Misled
Wait: Isn’t Social Media Causing Teen Depression?
It’s (Still) Complicated
The Fatal Flaw of the “Screen Time Debate”
Orchids, Dandelions, and Screen Time
Three Lenses
A Developmental Lens
“You Don’t Even Know Me”
An Ecological Lens
A Digital Lens
2 The Pull of the Screen
“I Can’t Seem to Get Off My Phone”
Hard for Everyone, Even Harder for Teens
Pulled To—and Away from—People
Lights Out, Screens On
Pulled from Focus
“It’s Big Brain Time”
Comparison Quicksand
“The Perfect Storm”—and a Caveat
Is Authenticity the New Perfect?
What’s with Teens and Constant Comparison?
Mirror, Mirror on the . . . Screen
Dark Pockets, Bright Spots
Teens Want Adults to Know
3 Friendship Dilemmas
What’s New Is Old—Sort Of
Dilemmas of Availability
Burdensome Communication
Second and Third Guessing
Performing Closeness
Friendships under the Social Media Spotlight
How Many Friends Can You Really Have?
Curating the Inner Circle
When Friends Struggle in Public
Teens Want Adults to Know
4 Small Slights, Big Fights
A Toxic Combination: Geospecificity, Attentive Audiences, Anonymous Posting
“Hiding Behind a Screen”
The Specter of Cyberbullying
Blatant Hostility
In Front of a Crowd
Playing Tag (But Not the Way You Remember)
Sometimes You Just Don’t Know
Subtle(r) Jabs
If You Know, You Know
Context Shapes Consequences
The Thing We Missed
Teens Want Adults to Know
5 Nudes (and Why Teens Sext When They Know the Risks)
“It Could Ruin Your Reputation!”
Wanted, Pressured, and Shared Without Permission: What’s the Difference and Why Does It Matter?
Why So Short-Sighted?
Deciding to Send
Consensual Sexting—at Least at First
Pressured Sexting
Send, Or Else
The Ultimate Breach: Sharing Others’ Nudes Without Permission
Beliefs → Behaviors
Sex(ting) and Gender
Sexting Hacks: How Girls Navigate a Landscape of No Good Choices
Legal Considerations
How Adults Respond When Sexts Circulate
“The Porn Crisis”
Teens Want Adults to Know
6 The Political Is (Inter)Personal—and Vice Versa
Slacktivism and Hashtag Activism
Youth and Participatory Politics: New Powers, New Puzzles
Rewind
What Difference Did One Decade Make?
Silence Is Taking Sides
Friendships Are on the Line
Performing for (Like-Minded) Others: Being Woke and Being Good
Performative Activism
Posting Out of Turn
They’re Canceled
The Third Rail: Is It Okay to Listen to the Other Side?
Teens Want Adults to Know
7 Digital Footprints That (May) Last a Lifetime
Ruined Lives
The Trouble with “You Are What You Post”
“There’s No Going Back”
A Scroll Down Memory Lane
The Liabilities of Learning and Changing
The (Developmental) Draw of the Digital
Efforts to Fly below the Radar
The Power of Peers
Beyond Their Full Control
Adults as (Unwanted) Coauthors
Collecting Receipts
A Further Threat: Being Canceled
The Right to Be Forgotten?
The Liabilities of a World That’s Changing Too
Feeling Out of Control: Privacy Risks Abound
Another Rewind
Teens Want Adults to Know
Conclusion: The Digital Agency Argument
Digital Agency
It Takes a Village
The Room(s) Where It Happens
Conversation Keys
“I Used to Think . . . Now I Think . . .”
Used to Think . . . Now We Think . . .
Looking Again and Looking Forward
Acknowledgments
Appendix: The Research behind Behind Their Screens
Phase 1: Educator Study
Phase 2: Youth Surveys
Phase 3: Teen Advisory Council
RELEVANT PRIOR RESEARCH
Notes
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Conclusion
Appendix
Index
