Bill Campbell's List: Some articles by or about danah boyd on social media

• She doesn't buy the conventional view that the Internet is a dramatic cultural game-changer; we're simply finding digital ways to replicate offline behavior. "The issues we have with technology are rarely about the technologies themselves,"
• "Technology simply mirrors and magnifies all sorts of things we see in everyday life--and that's good, bad and ugly,"

• As they started looking into specific cases of teens answering “anonymous” harassing questions, they started realizing that a number of vicious questions were posted by
   the Formspring account owners themselves.
• there are teens out there who are self-harassing by “anonymously” writing mean questions to themselves and then publicly answering them.
• three distinct explanations for why a teen might do this:
• 1. It’s a cry for help.
• 2. They want to look cool.
• 3. They’re trying to trigger compliments.
• Navigating popularity processes and social hierarchies is extremely challenging on the psyche.
• The increasing amount of stress in the lives of teens – especially by achievement-focused parents – doesn’t help. And there are teens who respond to these stresses by lashing out – at others and at themselves.
• I think that this is an important reminder of how what we see online continues to mirror and magnify what we see offline:
• it became apparent to me that our victim was the one who was writing the notes

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• Sometimes, I feel like I’m living in parallel universes. I attend conferences and hear from parents and journalists who are talking about the bullying pandemic. And then I talk with teenagers about their social dramas, producing the interactions that adults identify as bullying. I hear from well-meaning adults about how they want to create interventions to help teenagers with bullying. And then I hear teens complain about the assemblies and messaging that they’re forced to listen to that don’t even begin to resonate with them. Whenever I talk to folks about bullying, I’m forced to confront the fact that adults and teens are talking past one another.
• When I first started interviewing teenagers about bullying, they would dismiss my questions. “Bullying is so middle/elementary school,” they’d say. “There’s no bullying problem at my school,” they’d say. And then, as our interview would continue, I’d hear about all sorts of interactions that sounded like bullying. I quickly realized that we were speaking different languages. They’d be talking about “starting drama” or “getting into fights” or “getting into my business” or “being mean.” They didn’t see rumors or gossip as bullying, regardless of whether or not it happened online. And girls didn’t see fighting over boys or ostracizing one another because of boys as bullying.
• I received the following email from someone who wants to be anonymous but I think that the message is very powerful and, thus, must be shared:
• Years later I met a bloke in the pub I had no memory of.
• I have no memory of what I did, but don’t see why he’d lie about it. If anything it stopped me seeing myself as the victim and realise it probably wasn’t how I remember it. I remember humiliations and wins but no so much those of others.

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• Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg openly questioned the value of COPPA in the first place.
• While Facebook has often sparked anger over its cavalier attitudes towards user privacy, Zuckerberg’s challenge with regard to COPPA has merit. It’s imperative that we question the assumptions embedded in this policy. All too often, the public takes COPPA at face-value and politicians angle to build new laws based on it without examining its efficacy.
• Does COPPA actually empower parents?

• From a national sample of 1,007 U.S. parents who have children living with them between the ages of 10-14 conducted July 5-14, 2011, we found:

   
   
  • Although Facebook’s minimum age is 13, parents of 13- and 14-year-olds report that, on average, their child joined Facebook at age 12.
   
  • Half (55%) of parents of 12-year-olds report their child has a Facebook account, and most (82%) of these parents knew when their child signed up. Most (76%) also assisted their 12-year old in creating the account.
   
  • A third (36%) of all parents surveyed reported that their child joined Facebook before the age of 13, and two-thirds of them (68%) helped their child create the account.
   
  • Half (53%) of parents surveyed think Facebook has a minimum age and a third (35%) of these parents think that this is a recommendation and not a requirement.
   
  • Most (78%) parents think it is acceptable for their child to violate minimum age restrictions on online services.
• Parents do appear to be having conversations with their children, as COPPA intended. Yet, what does it mean if they’re doing so in order to violate the restrictions that COPPA engendered?
• COPPA is a well-intentioned piece of legislation with unintended consequences for parents, educators, and the public writ large. It has stifled innovation for sites focused on children and its implementations have made parenting more challenging. Our data clearly show that parents are concerned about privacy and online safety. Many want the government to help, but they don’t want solutions that unintentionally restrict their children’s access. Instead, they want guidance and recommendations to help them make informed decisions. Parents often want their children to learn how to be responsible digital citizens. Allowing them access is often the first step.

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