Jan 24, 2025

Ph.D. Alum danah boyd Writes Op-Ed for Bloomberg About Adults’ Relationships With Technology

From Bloomberg

Parents Have a Worse Relationship to Tech Than Their Kids

By danah boyd

A decade ago, danah boyd wrote It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens (Yale University Press) to “shed light on the complex and fascinating practices of contemporary American youth” navigating the evolving online world. In this Next Chapter, boyd explores the role of parents, who are upset about their kids’ online habits — but also modeling the same or worse behaviors.

Many kids are not OK. Over the past few years, we have seen countless headlines about the mental health challenges young people face. Much ado is made of their relationship with technology. This isn’t the first time there’s been a panic about the role of tech broadly, and social media specifically. When I wrote It’s Complicated,the dominant fears were bullying, predation and addiction.

But now, as then, people have the analysis backwards. Technology is not creating a lack of social connection; it’s the lack of social connection that is driving young people to technology. This time, ironically, parents are also a much bigger part of the problem than they were a decade ago.

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danah boyd received her Ph.D. from the UC Berkeley School of Information and is the founder of the Data & Society Research Institute. She is also a researcher at Microsoft and a visiting professor at New York University.

Last updated: January 30, 2025