Product Description
"A must read for parents (and future parents) of teenagers. Consider Anastasia Goodstein as the daughter you totally 'get' - explaining all the behaviors of the daughter you totally don't 'get.' Consider this a parent/teen dictionary. Brilliant and lifesaving!"
- Atoosa Rubenstein, former editor in chief of
Seventeen magazine
"
Totally Wired is both an awakening and a comfort for adults who feel lost in the infinite alleys of cyberspace. Goodstein gives it to us straight - honestly examining the threats to kids, but also including fresh insights into the positive ways young people use the wired world in their lives."
- Joe Kelly, president of Dads & Daughters and author of
Dads and Daughters: How to Inspire, Understand, and Support Your Daughter Hooking up via MySpace, bullying on a blog. Using a cell phone as a tracking device? Clearly, being a teen today isn't the same as it used to be. So what are LiveJournal, Xanga, Facebook, and MySpace, and what exactly are teens doing on these sites?
Totally Wired is the first inside guide to what teens are
really doing on the Internet and with technology today. Author Anastasia Goodstein creates an informative and accessible guide that covers topics such as social networking, blogging, cyberbullying, and much, much more.
Including interviews with a cross section of industry professionals and teenagers, and loaded with fascinating statistics and revealing anecdotes, Totally Wired is the first guide that explains to parents in easy-to-understand terms what kids are really up to online, and arms parents with the knowledge they need to promote Internet safety.
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #458897 in Books
- Published on: 2007-03-20
- Released on: 2007-03-20
- Original language:
English
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Paperback
- 205 pages
Features
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Goodstein isn't a parent and hails from Generation X (just after the boomers), but she has a keen interest in teenagers, a background in teen media and writes a blog (Ypulse.com) which is devoted to teen media and marketing. The author explains that she's spent her career trying to be a "voice of reason" for teens and for adults trying to reach them; in this book she continues her quest to help parents understand their kids by offering a window into their digital world. Goodstein covers the bases, including cyber bullying, blogs and "social-networking sites" such as MySpace. She asks boomer parents to remember talking on the phone for hours or writing in a diary, which she compares to chatting online and blogging. Today's teens are developmentally identical to teens who listened to Elvis and wore poodle skirts, Goodstein argues, but they have a new venue—the Internet—for exploring their hopes, desires and voices. Goodstein urges parents to take the plunge into cyberspace not only in order to keep their children safe but also to build closer relationships. "Ask them about their digital lives," she advises, "and they'll start talking about the rest of their lives." Focusing on the pros rather than the risks, Goldstein presents a solid and accessible guide to help understand the wired generation. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter One Meet a Totally Wired Teen
A Day in the Life of a Totally Wired Teen
Many of us remember watching the space-age cartoon The Jetsons and collectively dreaming about what the future would look like. While today’s teens are not driving flying cars (yet) or studying cyborg biology and astromathematics, they would probably relate well to Judy, the Jetsons’ teenage daughter. Just as Judy revealed every secret to her digital diary, or DiDi, and lived by the directions of her microprocessor personal organizer, today’s teens are totally wired.
To get a better idea of what it means to be totally wired, let’s spend a day in the life of a teen today. I’ll call her Judy Jetson. Once Judy is awake, thanks to Mom and an old-fashioned alarm clock (still essential to getting sleep-deprived teens out of bed), she turns on the computer in her room. She quickly checks for messages on her two favorite community sites. She opens iTunes and begins getting dressed to a mix of Reggaeton (a combination of hip-hop, Latin music, and reggae), pop rock from the band Maroon 5, and pure pop from Gwen Stefani. Most of what’s on her iTunes are songs from CDs her friends burned for her. She can’t remember the last song or CD she actually paid for. Before heading downstairs for breakfast, she checks her cell phone for voice and text messages from her boyfriend and friends.
Judy arrives at school early but doesn’t see her friends outside. She immediately begins calling them on her cell phone. She used to text everyone until her parents got the bill and gave her a strict limit on how many text messages she could send. She finds her friend Marsha and continues the conversation they began last night on her LiveJournal about the upcoming class ski trip. Judy learned the hard way not to name names on her LiveJournal after she gossiped about someone at school who then found out about the post. Major drama ensued. She turns her cell phone to vibrate, silencing her “Holla Back Girl” ring tone, knowing that if it rings in school, it will be taken away by her teachers until the end of the day.
There are lots of computers at Judy’s school and some students even have laptops. Her favorite community site was blocked after a classmate posted a bunch of camera phone photos of herself and her friends drinking and smoking pot. The school administrators were also terrified that sexual predators would hunt students down because some of them put all of their personal information online. Judy uses school computers mainly to check her Web e-mail, do research for school, and type projects or make PowerPoint presentations for class. She and her friends seem more comfortable with the computers than most of the teachers and often end up answering their questions or helping them figure stuff out. Her English teacher, a young guy in his twenties, had everyone in her class create a blog writing as a character from one of the novels they had read that year. She chose Elizabeth Bennet from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. She gave this teacher a very high rating on Ratemyteacher.com, unlike her algebra teacher, who always seemed to call on Judy when she wasn’t paying attention.
Judy’s after-school time is packed. She either has soccer practice or SAT prep class. Any free time she has is spent doing homework or babysitting for her younger brother, Elroy. When she does spend time on the computer at home, it’s usually to update her LJ, post comments on her friends’ LJs, or instant-message (IM) her school friends or her cousin in California. She also uses IM and her MySpace profile to keep in touch with some of her middle school friends who ended up attending different high schools. She keeps tabs on her boyfriend’s online profile as well—often leaving flirtatious comments or posting cute photos of them together. She likes having a boyfriend even though it’s very time-consuming. Some of her girlfriends prefer having “friends with benefits.” Her boyfriend loves video games—she bought him the new Madden NFL for Christmas.
Judy’s mom insists on family meals for everyone to check in and catch up. No TV is allowed. Her parents don’t really know that much about computers except how to use e-mail and shop. Her mom teaches middle school art and her dad is a college professor. Just like with some of her teachers, Judy often also has to help them with the computer. They have read some articles in the newspaper about what teens are doing online and got the school’s memo about online predators. They talked to Judy about not giving out personal information online. They also told her that if they get sued for her illegal music, she’ll spend the rest of her life paying their legal bills. Other than that they pretty much operate under the we-trust-you-so-we-won’t-spy-on-you approach to parenting, hoping for the best.
On the weekends Judy and her friends either go see movies, rent DVDs, hang out in her boyfriend’s basement watching him play video games, or go to a party. It’s not uncommon for her to be hanging out with her group of friends and receive a text message from someone in the same room, usually about another friend who is also in the room. When she’s out, her parents usually call her on her cell phone to check in. Most of the parties are at the homes of friends whose parents are out of town. Judy tells her parents she’s somewhere else on these nights. As long as she answers her cell phone when they call, she usually gets away with it.
Judy feels strongly that she wants to help make the world a better place. She put a banner for the One Campaign, an effort to eradicate poverty in the third world led by U2’s singer Bono, on her LJ and started an online fund-raising drive at her school to help victims of Hurricane Katrina. Judy is totally wired—she can’t imagine a world without the Internet, iPods, or cell phones.
Eighties Flashback
Many of us remember struggling to get out of bed and get ready for school. My mom usually had to wake me up. She would sing some corny song, open the blinds, and, if that didn’t work, start sprinkling cold water on my face. As a teen in the late 1980s, you had to have a stereo in your room. It was your prized possession (much like the computer is today), and often was taken away as punishment. So was the telephone. The kind with the cord that plugged into the wall. Cassettes, especially mixed tapes your friends made for you, were all the rage and had begun replacing vinyl. I often got ready for school listening to Led Zeppelin, David Bowie, the Cure, or Kate Bush, depending on my mood. If you needed to talk to a friend before school, the only way to do this was by calling her on a landline or from a pay phone.
Most of us didn’t have any computers at school—at least not in the classrooms. We did all have calculators. In the late 1980s, there was no Web or Internet, just the basic DOS programming I learned at computer camp. If your parents could afford a Commodore 64 at home, it was basically a glamorized typewriter you could play a few games on.
Almost all of your teenage social life happened in person or on the phone. You might play Frogger or Donkey Kong on your Atari or watch the MTV Video Countdown at your friend’s house after school. Bullying happened through handwritten notes or in person, like when two eighth-grade girls decided to make my seventh-grade existence hellish for several weeks. Growing up in Nashville, my friends and I saw a lot of live concerts and went to all-ages shows. We also had a VCR, which at the time was very high tech. I usually rented movies if a friend was spending the night or if I was grounded. I also kept a diary in my nightstand that I would confess to before going to sleep.
It seemed like there was more free time for teens to just hang out back then. When I was a younger teen, my friends and I hung out at the mall after school or at the McDonald’s parking lot at night. When I was an older teen, I hung out with other teens who listened to punk or alternative music at a children’s playground called Dragon Park. We spent hours just talking to different teens from different schools in the dark, united by our professed love of the same kind of music. I also went to parties at the homes of friends whose parents were out of town, and usually I lied about it.
In my junior year of high school, I saw an episode of 20/20 about the destruction of the environment that moved me to start an environmentalist club at my school. We started a schoolwide recycling program and went on camping trips together.
Copyright © 2007 by Anastasia Goodstein. All rights reserved.
Customer Reviews
Required Reading
Anastasia Goodstein knows teenagers. She has studied them, marketed to them, and talked to them. Don't be turned off because the author is not a parent of a teen. Because Goodstein isn't a parent, she was able to get teens to open up about their online experiences. And she also talked to parents who share there struggles, concerns and perspectives. If you really want to know what your teen is doing online - or if your young child is just starting to go online - buy this book NOW.
What you will learn is that there are dangers on the Internet, and more often the dangers are your child's fellow students. Cyber-bullying from classmates is becoming more a danger to teens than strangers trolling for sex, and Goodstein covers the various methods of cyber-bullying. Considering that teenagers don't always make the right choices, parents do have a lot to worry about.
While Goodstein properly alerts parents to the real dangers of the Internet, she also balances it with realism. Although your teen may not always understand the consequences of what she does online, she probably already knows about the dangers of the Internet and how to protect herself. You'll read comments from real teens about their online experiences. The comments will alarm you and and comfort you all at the same time.
Helpful tips and "insider" information are peppered throughout the pages. Know what a "Code 9" is? Find the answer and more teen code in the book. (Code 9 = parent in the room). Are teens "hooking up" with other teens they meet online? Maybe not as much as you might have been told. Where is the balance between protecting your child and trusting your child? There's not an easy answer but you can find out what other parents are doing successfully.
You will be a better-informed parent after reading this book, even if you think you already know everything about teens' online life. I think of myself has a pretty online-aware parent, but I learned something from reading Totally Wired, and you will too.
Totally Useful
If you have teens in your life, you need to read Totally Wired. Goodstein de-mystifies text messaging and social networking, offers common-sense advice on how to manage the security concerns about your teens online time, and provides a `cheat sheet' to help us interpret what's really going on in our teenagers' world.
The best part is that Goodstein really gets teens. Drawing analogies to things that were familiar to us from our youth, she helps us understand that MySpace is really just another place to hang out, that personalizing your own online page is a way for teens to express themselves just as I did by hanging posters in my room or pinning buttons to my denim jacket, and that many teens do need parents to help them understand the boundaries, both offline and online. Reading this book made me remember how much fun it was to be a teenager myself (in between all the drama). And I came away with a new sense of respect for the choices that today's far more empowered teens are making for themselves.
Now if someone would only write a book to help teens understand their parents ...
A must for every parent, every teacher, every librarian - anyone working with young people!
Anastasia know her stuff! With a thorough knowledge of the youth media landscape and an exhaustive and stellar group of people interviewed and profiled - this is a fantastic book! It's a nice and easy read with an amazing amount of information imparted. Anastasia does a great job of pairing what teens are doing online with their developmental traits and needs -- this is not a lost generation - they are simply being teens as teens have always been - in new ways. This book will calm fears, educate parents, educators, lawmakers etc. on the reality of this new wired world. The bottom line with this issue is that parents need to be educated on what their children are doing, and put their "worry" and concern in the right areas - once they learn what's really going on they won't respond to the hype and hysteria that the media at large seems intent on passing on. Every parent, every public and school library MUST get their hands on this - learn it, love it, live it!
