So what are teenagers doing online, anyway?
It’s a fair question. For generations parents of teenagers have wanted to know about “the secret lives of teenagers” and teenagers have done whatever they could to keep their private lives, private.
Remember Romeo & Juliet? Secret teenage love and the terror of their parents bringing the fullness of their relationship to light? (Shakespeare added in the knife play for added dramatic effect.)
Just like everything else with social media… it’s the technology that changes, not the complexities of social networks.
Parents imagine teenagers are up to no good. If it’s private it must be bad, right? I like to take stuff out of the parents imagination.
When you start to look at the actual data of what teenagers do online you start to realize something pretty uninteresting: Teenagers are largely doing online what you are doing online. There are certainly some differences… but when you compare your own usage to that below you’ll see that you probably have more in common with the teenagers in your life than not.
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