[Air-l] where did you go, out; what did you do, nothing

[Paul DiPerna]

Today I found these links/sources (below), and maybe they will be
informative.  Teen wellness is an important topic, one that I do not
know much about, so I thought I'd look for survey data.

At first scan, I think these teen surveys address some of the things
mentioned in this thread.  However I haven't had the chance to read
through carefully.  All but one of the surveys report national samples.

On teen ICT use and cyber-bullying (2006):
http://attorneygeneral.utah.gov/PrRel/CyberBullies/Fight%20Crime%20Invest%20in%20Kids%20CARAVAN%20Teen.pdf

"High Schoolers View the Future" (2005):
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/artsandliving/HighSchoolNational.pdf

"National Survey of American Attitudes on Substance Abuse IX: Teen
Dating Practices and Sexual Activity" (August 2004):
http://www.casacolumbia.org/pdshopprov/files/august_2004_casa_teen_survey.pdf

Teen attitudes and perceptions in the Kansas City metro area (2004):
http://www.pfc.org/PFC_KTS.pdf


- Paul



--------------
Paul DiPerna
Blau Exchange
http://www.blauexchange.org
email: pdiperna at blauexchange.org
Online ID: http://claimid.com/pdiperna


-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [Air-l] where did you go, out; what did you do, nothing
From: danah boyd <aoir.z3z at danah.org>
Date: Tue, January 23, 2007 4:02 pm
To: Barry Wellman <wellman at chass.utoronto.ca>
Cc: Paul DiPerna <pdiperna at blauexchange.org>, air-l at listserv.aoir.org

Barry - I wish that i was talking about the exceptions but i've
definitely seen problematic behavior across a variety of teens, far
beyond the atypical.  When i talk about self-destruction, i'm not
talking about suicide.  Amongst working class youth (primarily inner
city and rural), it often comes out in the form of meth or alcohol
abuse, sex for status or to get back at people, and in the some urban
cases, gang communities providing the kinds of social stability that
isn't present at home.  In the wealthier communities, alcohol still
persists (but meth dies off).  Stress jumps through the roof (i've
seen more kids with ulcers than i thought was possible).  This is
where you start getting eating disorders and cutting as mechanisms to
gain control over one's life.  I don't see that much potential
suicide honestly.  Amongst middle/upper class white kids who identify
with emo culture, they talk about suicide, but no more than the goths
did... they don't actually do it, just like with goths.  I'm not
doing quantitative work so i can't give you numbers but well over
half of my subjects tell me something that just depresses me along
these lines.  The extreme behaviors are indeed extreme, but the
spectrum is shifted too far into unhappy and dysfunctional land for
me to be enjoying all of the time that i spend with teens.  And i
don't recruit for dysfunctional.

Honestly, the atypical case in the hundreds of kids that i've talked
to in the last four months across the US is a functional sane
communicative relationship between parent and teen.  That doesn't
mean all kids are acting out of control.  Some are terrified of their
parents, some are terrified of not getting into college, some are
quite religious (although a lot more attend church than are religious
in the sense that they are not misbehaving because of it).  But
honestly, the lack of presence of parents across SES is just outright
depressing.  Single parents and dual-working parents are the primary
issue.  The wealthier fathers are just as absent as the working class
shift work fathers (often because they work past 7PM in their white
collar jobs and don't make it home to dinner).  Parents are stressed
and it shows through in the teens i talk with.  (I should note that
i'm not just seeing this amongst teens - i want to strangle half my
colleagues in the tech industry who have young children, work on
weekends, and don't go home until 8/9PM on weeknights and then wonder
why their kids are acting strange and come to me for advice.)

At a core, Barry and i do agree - most American teens do anything to
avoid scrutiny but that doesn't mean that their choices don't terrify
their parents. And it's this being terrified that results in lockdown
that results in alienation and rebellion and cycle cycle cycle.

....

As for studies... there are a bunch of us working on a large scale
MacArthur Foundation Digital Youth Initiative.  This will be
qualitative studies of teens from tons of different angles.
Personally, i will be formally interviewing over 200 teens from at
least 6 different areas in the country (and i have informally talked
to hundreds more from other regions).  There are over 20 of us on one
branch of that study and there are a number of other connected
studies, including some quantitative work.  I'm explicitly looking at
technology use but i try to ground it by understanding what teens are
doing more broadly.

I would love to hear of other projects taking place.  Obviously,
there's PEW.  And Larry Rosen has been surveying parent/teen
relationships around tech and trust.

danah





On Jan 21, 2007, at 9:35 AM, Barry Wellman wrote:

> My sense is that I was hypothesizing about the broad middle while
> danah is
> talking atypical cases. So both of us are right. Suicidal (or
> attempted
> suicidal) teens were big in my generation too. Hmn, should Romeo and
> Juliet have gone to couples therapy?
>
>  Barry Wellman
>  _____________________________________________________________________
>
>   Barry Wellman   S.D. Clark Professor of Sociology   NetLab Director
>   Centre for Urban & Community Studies          University of Toronto
>   455 Spadina Avenue    Toronto Canada M5S 2G8    fax:+1-416-978-7162
>   wellman at chass.utoronto.ca  http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman
>         for fun: http://chass.utoronto.ca/oldnew/cybertimes.php
>  _____________________________________________________________________
>