danah boyd | apophenia

In less than a month, my new book – “It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens” - will be published.  This is the product of ten years worth of research into how social media has inflected American teen life.  If you’ve followed this blog for a while, you’ve seen me talk about these issues over […]

(Originally written for TIME Magazine) We’re afraid of and afraid for teenagers. And nothing brings out this dualism more than discussions of how and when teens should be allowed to participate in public life. Last week, Facebook made changes to teens’ content-sharing options. They introduced the opportunity for those ages 13 to 17 to share their updates and […]

Yesterday, Pew Internet and American Life Project (in collaboration with Berkman) unveiled a brilliant report about “Teens, Social Media, and Privacy.” As a researcher who’s been in the trenches on these topics for a long time now, none of their finding surprised me but it still gives me absolute delight when our data is so […]

In 2005, I started asking teenagers about their password habits. My original set of questions focused on teens’ attitudes about giving their password to their parents, but I quickly became enamored with teens’ stories of sharing passwords with friends and significant others. So I was ecstatic when Pew Internet & American Life Project decided to […]

Sometimes, when I’m in the field, I find teens who have strategies for managing their online presence that are odd at first blush but make complete sense when you understand the context in which they operate. These teens use innovative approaches to leverage the technology to meet personal goals. Let me explain two that caught […]

I recently received an email from a teen that I speak with that piqued my interest. I thought I’d share it with you: My friend (17 yo girl) isn’t allowed on Facebook because she has helicopter parents.  She has one anyway under a pseudonym. She is also battling depression and has been going through many […]

Logging onto Twitter to check out a few things quickly before running off to a homecoming football game, I couldn’t help but notice something important: “Pep Rally” was trending as a US trending topic. I immediately clicked on through and found countless teens commenting on their school pep rallies. These teens were posting about pep […]

I’m just finishing up the first 10 days of my fall sprint at intensive fieldwork. I’m a long way from being about to synthesize what I’m seeing but I wanted to share a few things since many of you are curious about my observations. First off, Nashville is a great city to do fieldwork because […]

The book that I’m writing is focused on myths that we have about teens and social media. I’m trying to find some good quotes from news media that perpetuate these myths and I’m hoping that you might be able to help. The more salacious and outraged, the better.  I’m looking for articles in mainstream venues […]