Don’t Blame Social Media if Your Teen Is Unsocial. It’s Your Fault
If kids can’t socialize, who should parents blame? Simple: They should blame themselves. This is the argument advanced in It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens, by Microsoft researcher Danah Boyd. Boyd—full disclosure, a friend of mine—has spent a decade interviewing hundreds of teens about their online lives.
What she has found, over and over, is that teenagers would love to socialize face-to-face with their friends. But adult society won’t let them. “Teens aren’t addicted to social media. They’re addicted to each other,” Boyd says. “They’re not allowed to hang out the way you and I did, so they’ve moved it online.”
It's a relevant point she brings forth - albeit a false one. Microsoft just as Google is much too biased in this debate and so is Danah Boyd. It is not just the parents fault, the upbringing and social life of a child is composed of many factors. It is not unreasonable to assume that most regular children at the age of ten are in possession of a smartphone and have working parents. At least half of the kids' days will be spent outside of parental jurisdiction and under the influence of other players. These players are - from most real to most virtual: Geolocation, Government, School, Teacher, Classmates/Clique, [...], Mobile device, Software company (Google, Microsoft et al). It is not just a mistake to blame parents, it is the deliberate attempt to throw off any kind of debate that needs to be had about the responsibility of tech companies. If kids learn that likes matter, they will behave accordingly.
I haven't read the book yet, but based on my knowledge of what boyd has said over the past decade, I'd hazard a guess that she actually means that parents should stop trying to defend their kids from nebulous external threats and recognize that their own behavior is a significant part of the issue.
Last I checked, Google wasn't a daycare service. I'm not really sure why you're trying to insist that it is.
If kids can’t socialize, who should parents blame? Simple: They should blame themselves. This is the argument advanced in It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens, by Microsoft researcher Danah Boyd. Boyd—full disclosure, a friend of mine—has spent a decade interviewing hundreds of teens about their online lives.
What she has found, over and over, is that teenagers would love to socialize face-to-face with their friends. But adult society won’t let them. “Teens aren’t addicted to social media. They’re addicted to each other,” Boyd says. “They’re not allowed to hang out the way you and I did, so they’ve moved it online.”
http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/12/ap_thompson-2/