Archive for the ‘Youth’ Category
Tuesday, October 19th, 2010
The title quote is a reaction to a recent press release from Nielsen:
If it seems like American teens are texting all the time, it’s probably because on average they’re sending or receiving 3,339 texts a month. That’s more than six per every hour ...
Posted in Technology, Youth | 1 Comment »
Sunday, August 15th, 2010
My conference paper about media constructions of parenthood during the recent "sexting" panic is available for download. Link and abstract below.
Lynn, Randy. 2010. "Constructing Parenthood in Moral Panics of Youth, Digital Media, and 'Sexting.'" 105th annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, August 14-17, Atlanta, GA. (PDF, ...
Posted in Deviance, Youth | No Comments »
Thursday, July 29th, 2010
Adolescence is popularly considered a biological inevitability largely due to the prevalence of misleading claims about the adolescent brain, such as the following which appeared recently in the New York Times:
While we used to think the brain was relatively mature by 16 or 18, in fact it is still developing ...
Posted in Youth | No Comments »
Tuesday, June 29th, 2010
Earlier this month I spent a week at the National Data Archive for Child Abuse and Neglect investigating the correlation between guardian behaviors (rules, filters, surveillance, etc.) and youth online safety.
I’ve recently become interested in how technology use among youths is regulated within the family. Parents tend to learn about ...
Posted in Technology, Youth | 1 Comment »
Saturday, May 22nd, 2010
My paper, "Teens, Tribunes, and Tribulations: Representations of Youth and Technology in Mass Media," is now available for download.
Written last fall for a public sociology class, it examines how essentialist and determinist constructions of youth and technology (of the sort espoused by Bauerlein in my most recent post) act as ...
Posted in Deviance, Technology, Youth | No Comments »
Thursday, May 20th, 2010
Mark Bauerlein is an English professor, moral panic practitioner, technological determinist, and G. Stanley Hall kool aid drinker, as evidenced by his book, The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future.
These credentials are evidently sufficient for an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, where ...
Posted in Technology, Youth | No Comments »
Tuesday, May 11th, 2010
FiveThirtyEight, a paragon of insightful statistical commentary, critiques a series of Hyundai commercials featuring Jeff Bridges in which adult fears of reckless teen drivers are exploited to sell cars:
My point here is not to justify teen driving behavior. It's a serious problem, but one that receives ample attention, ...
Posted in Youth | No Comments »
Thursday, April 15th, 2010
I was strolling through the old Google Reader this morning and found an article on CNN about "hooking up." How's this for a first sentence?
When Jennifer Nicholas sees television shows or movies where characters "hook up" or have sex with "friends with benefits," she cringes, because that's how ...
Posted in Deviance, Youth | No Comments »
Friday, March 5th, 2010
I like the Pew Internet and American Life Project. Their surveys are reliable and well-constructed, and they've collected tons of publicly available data over the past 10 years.
Their public relations, though, doesn't approach the quality of their methods. Exhibit A: thorough takedowns of last month's "just-this-side-of-moral-crusading...soft ball pitch to those ...
Posted in Technology, Youth | No Comments »
Monday, November 2nd, 2009
Susan Engel, psychologist and educational administrator, has her take on the cesspool of American education in yesterday's NYT:
If we really want good schools, we need to create a critical mass of great teachers. And if we want smart, passionate people to become these great educators, we have to attract them ...
Posted in Education, Youth | No Comments »
