Decoding Teenagers

We read a article in class about a lady who basically is saying that the internet can be helpful for kids. Instead of it being bad like some adults are making it seem like it is. Her name is Danah Boyd. She is the first anthropologist that they have at the interactive telecommunications program at N.Y.U. She thinks that kids ability to roam around outside has been taken away. It is not the same like it used to be. It is actually safer now than it was back then when kids were able to roam the outside world without parents being down their back like they are now.
Dr. Boyd said, "Children naturally congregate on social media sites for the relatively unsupervised conversations, flirtations, immature humor and social exchanges that are the normal stuff of teenage hanging-out." She thinks adults worry about the wrong things. Dr. Boyd had reached out to other adults online who became mentors for her. She thinks that the internet can help connect kids and people who have been in certain situations. The kids can get help from the people about certain ways to deal with the problem they are having.
Dr. Boyd said, "The most deadly misconception about American youth has been the sexual predator panic. The model we have of the online sexual predator is this lurking man who reaches out on the internet and grabs a kid. And there is no data that supports that. The vast majority of sex crimes against kids involves someone that kid trusts, and it's overwhelmingly family members."