Gym Rats and Social (Media) Pariahs

Popular media often characterize youths’ use of social media as overwhelmingly negative, reporting that teens engage in reckless, unsafe behaviors with little thought to their online privacy or safety. Typically, these popular media accounts are based on adults’ prescriptive views of youths’ attitudes and behaviors.

While email's continued evolution is significant, what it has retained from the old web sets it apart from the other pretty, convenient apps. Email is an open, interoperable protocol. Someone can use Google's service, spin up a server of her own, or send messages through Microsoft's enterprise software. And yet all of these people can communicate s... See more