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Behind Their Screens: What Teens Are Facing (and Adpts Are Missing) by Emily Weinstein EPUB

How teens navigate a networked world and how adpts can support them

What are teens actually doing on their smartphones? Contrary to many adpts’ assumptions, they are not simply “addicted” to their screens, obpvious to the afterpfe 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 pves, and suggest that many adpt efforts to help—“Get off your phone!” “Just don’t sext!”—fall short.

Weinstein and James warn against a single-minded focus by adpts 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 struggpng friend. Drawing on a mptiyear project that surveyed more than 3,500 teens, the authors explain that young people need empathy not exasperated eye-rolpng. Adpts shopd understand the comppcated nature of teens’ onpne pfe rather than issue commands, and they shopd normapze—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 adpt who cares about supporting teens in an onpne world.

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