The Kids Are Online
Confronting the Myths and Realities of Young Digital Life
$42.40
- Paperback
312 pages
- Release Date
14 April 2025
Summary
A nuanced, intimate picture of how young people live with and on social media.
Today’s young people find themselves at the center of widespread debates about their online safety, and they are often told that social media platforms affect their mental health and body image by exposing them to cyberbullying and distressing images. Foregrounding their voices and experiences, The Kids Are Online explores how they navigate their identities across platforms and how…
Book Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780520416093 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10: | 0520416090 |
| Author: | Ysabel Gerrard |
| Publisher: | University of California Press |
| Imprint: | University of California Press |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Number of Pages: | 312 |
| Release Date: | 14 April 2025 |
| Weight: | 363g |
| Dimensions: | 25mm x 140mm x 216mm |
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Critics Review
“Gerrard shifts the scholarly perspective from that of a concerned parent to that of the young people actually using this technology. Through more than a hundred interviews with teens, she examines their conflicting emotions and encounters with digital technology. The book promises to include recommendations for building safer social media ecosystems and is sure to spark agreement and debate among college students.” * Choice Reviews *
“The Kids Are Online is the result of conversations with more than 100 teenagers whose experiences reveal what Gerrard calls ‘the platform paradox’: different experiences from platform to platform and simultaneously good and bad experiences on the same platform. Exploring the paradoxical circumstances of engaging with mental health content, using pseudonyms and anonymous apps, and digitally editing photos, The Kids Are Online shows how the young people interviewed accept potential risks online to find community, pleasure, excitement, and self-confidence.” * CHOICE *
“The Kids Are Online is a model of engaged reflexive digital sociology: conceptually distinctive, empirically careful, and publicly intelligible. I strongly recommend it to scholars, practitioners, and families seeking to move beyond zero‐sum narratives of youth online safety towards nuanced, context‐sensitive understandings of young digital life.”
* The British Journal of Sociology *“The Kids Are Online presents a unique addition to the discussion on safety and teenagers by directly asking the teenagers themselves… . There is humor in the quotes Gerrard chooses to highlight from her interviews and it provides a sense of humanity that is often lost in text.”
* The AAG Review of Books *Ysabel Gerrard
Ysabel Gerrard is Senior Lecturer in Digital Communication at the University of Sheffield. Alongside her academic writing, she has published in The Guardian, WIRED, and VICE.
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