Earlier this week in Essentials I expressed my frustration with the negative tone of a New York Times', reg. required, piece on the impact of mobile technology and social networks on young people's ability to function socially IRL. Now that I've had some time to digest, I thought I'd expand..

The leading question in the headline "Antisocial Networking?" points to the concern expressed in the piece over "whether the quality of [teens'] interactions is being diminished without the intimacy and emotional give and take of regular, extended face-to-face time." To the piece's credit, it does go on to explore some of the positive aspects of technology (bringing shy kids out of their shell, facilitating an active social life) and also points out that only time and more nuanced research (yes, please!) will give us the answer. But the repetition of that fear-based logic that teens' growing preference for texting and IM'ing over in-person interactions and phone calls will somehow take a toll on their ability to connect with peers and others in real life still bothered me.

For one thing, as Emily Bazelon points out over on Slate, this seems to paint an overly romanticized picture of those excessive hours that teens spent on the phone in the past (not that recapping the school day and co-watching "Dawson's Creek" didn't seem like an important bonding experience for me and my best friend at the time…). It also just doesn't seem to give enough credit to how well digital natives have adapted to speaking in an authentic voice online, typos and all. This generation gap in online-speak fluency is the running joke behind sites that poke fun at parents' communication skills a la "Postcards From Yo Momma," but it also points to a fluidity that teens and twentysomethings have developed in moving between their online and offline identities. This includes the ability to express themselves online in a multifaceted way, learning to relate appropriately to the different people in their lives that they encounter in both realms, and recognizing the limits of the medium (i.e., breaking up over texting = not cool).

Of course, that doesn't mean the changes between now and then are completely neutralized. Teens today are (say it with us now) encountering unprecedented challenges in navigating and managing their digital selves and netiquette just like the rest of us. But for better or worse, the dynamics at play on these platforms are still developmentally nothing new. These kids are also still spending hours on end together in school and presumably on the weekends. And according to an earlier Sunday Style piece in the Times, they don't appear to be spending that facetime avoiding physical contact with one another .

Like the phone vs. Facebook disconnect, I sense that what will continue to be most difficult for older generations to understand is the many gradients between a teen with an active online social life, and one that is actually at-risk for isolating themselves. It's the same with the spectrum between flirting online and ill-advised "sexting" we've discussed before or between posting a snarky comment on a friend's wall and "cyberbullying" (side note: for a great fictionalized example of this murky water, read Will Grayson, Will Grayson). Assessing what falls in the normal realm teenage experience, and what behavior counts as extreme isn't just difficult for adults. If you caught Youth Advisory Board member Amanda's insightful post on online harassment the other day, or the slightly melodramatic piece on "fauxting" I cited in Essentials, it's clear that these gray areas can be pretty confusing to the teens and twentysomethings exploring them as well. Maybe the take away here is to curb the judgmental tone of the talk around "kids today" and nix the notion of teens becoming antisocial pod people, and start a more open, intergenerational dialogue around these minor, but meaningful changes.

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Teenage Insults, Scrawled on Web, Not on Walls [New York Times. reg. required, on Formspring]

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