Technically, the kids are all right

It was the Dead's lyricist, John Perry Barlow, who first coined the phrase ''digital natives'' to describe generations born after the internet achieved ubiquity. And that phrase, the story goes, has led parents and teachers to assume, incorrectly, that today's youngsters possess an innate understanding of the technology that dominates their lives.

''More and more of our jobs are dependent on technological sophistication, and yet we're doing nothing to help prepare our kids for this,'' says danah boyd, assistant research professor at Harvard and principal researcher for Microsoft Research.

''We assume that if they figured out Facebook, surely they can figure out the skills needed to work at a company like Facebook. That's societally detrimental.''

Professor boyd - like k.d.lang, she prefers the lower case - has completed a major study on how US teenagers use the internet in general, and social media in particular. Published by Yale University Press, her book is called It's Complicated, and is the result of in-depth interviews with scores of teens over an eight-year period.

Her findings are intriguing. Despite the generational dropping of the ball precipitated by the ''digital natives'' label, she reports, the result has not been the social disaster many pundits claim to see.

''By and large, the kids are all right,'' she concludes in her book, making another allusion to '60s youth culture.

This reassurance may seem at odds with the frequent headlines and policy announcements about the dangers of social media, but boyd's findings are broadly in line with those of similar studies in Australia.

''I'm unrelentingly positive about the potential of technology for good; I can't foresee any major problems,'' says Rosalie O'Neale, senior adviser at the Australian Communication and Media Authority (ACMA) and lead author of that body's September 2013 survey of how young people use the net, Like, Post, Share.

Yet how can this be? Surely the dangers of social media wouldn't be such a hot topic unless there was some factual basis for them? Well, there is - but it all depends on how you interpret the data. ACMA has conducted two survey-based studies. Like, Post, Share's predecessor, Click and Connect, was published in 2009.

''We focused on cyber bullying,'' O'Neale explains. ''Over the period between the two reports we haven't found that the experience of bullying has grown exponentially. It has remained at a steady state.''

The ACMA data showed that instances of bullying peaked at the ages of 14 and 15, with 21 per cent of respondents reporting at least one incidence of antisocial behaviour.

On the surface that appears to be a worryingly high percentage, even though it dips again by age 16, but O'Neale points out that 14 and 15 are ''pretty volatile times'' for teens. Both she and boyd note that cyber bullying at that age is often an online extension of an offline conflict.

''Cyber bullying can often be an extension of face-to-face bullying. It doesn't often happen online in isolation,'' says O'Neale.

And danah boyd goes further. ''Statistically, Facebook is less dangerous than the mall, which is less dangerous than the home,'' she says.

''What most parents fail to realise is that the young people who are at risk in the mall and on Facebook are those who are also at risk at home. These are youth who are surrounded by abuse, addiction and mental health struggles. They look for attention in all the wrong places.

''There are statistically anomalous cases, but if we focus on these we will be paralysed as a society. When we do this to our children, we don't let them grow into adulthood.''

Ballarat teenager Eliza Gregurke provides a case in point. Now 19, she has been an avid social media user since opening a Myspace account when she was in year 6.

''I check my Facebook at least 20 times a day, I think,'' she says. ''When I'm at home I check it at least every hour. I post something onto it at least five times a week.''

Also a frequent user of Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest, Gregurke's social media history reflects that of around 80 per cent of teen users, according to ACMA's figures.

She says she has never received any really offensive material online. ''There's never been any bullying or anything like that,'' she says. ''I used to get into arguments about other people's grammar and spelling - does that count?''

''Publics'' is the term boyd uses to describe social media spaces. In her study she found that US teens used these spaces overwhelmingly to continue conversations begun in the physical world. They chatted mostly with school friends, friends of friends, and former school friends who have moved away. Contact with strangers was rare, and rarely sustained. (Both O'Neale and Gregurke report similar patterns.)

Online publics, boyd writes, are analogous to the physical meeting places of previous decades - malls in the '80s, for example, or drive-ins in the '50s. And just like parents today, parents then often freaked out about what their kids might be doing. Adult fears about social media, she writes, are less about evidence and more about recurrent moral panic.

Over the decades, the invention of landline telephones, mobile telephones and other technologies, such as wire tapping, prompted fear and anxiety among communities. Social media, boyd says, is the latest development in this continuum.

''Will Facebook stabilise or be replaced by a more suitable tool? I don't know,'' she says. ''I'm confident parents will find a new tool to be anxious about with each generation of youth, and I expect it to be technologically mediated tools for quite some time, rather than more general media like rock'n'roll and comic books.''

In Australia, Rosalie O'Neale also found that fears about social media could be seen from a much older, and much more familiar, perspective.

''The majority of parents are very concerned about their kids' safety, online and offline,'' she said. ''When we spoke to the kids, most were not so concerned about things such as bullying or predatory behaviour, because they hadn't happened to the vast majority of them. It's like the bad fairy story.''

For boyd, the comparison seems apt. Fairy stories typically depict either utopia or hell, and the same choice is inherent in each new technology. For many parents, she says, social media fears arise from ''dashed hopes''.

''We have many problems in our society, many of which have nothing to do with the kinds of technology that we're talking about,'' she says.

''Over and over again, we talk about how technology will solve these problems. When it comes to youth, this dynamic gets magnified in significant ways. We want to have the perfect technology that will magically educate our children. We want interconnected technologies to step in and eradicate racism and increase harmony. It doesn't work like this. These tools can be useful, but they will not solve our social ills.''

And neither, of course, will they ease the concerns of adults worried about bogymen on Facebook. Those fears persist both here and in the US.

''In many respects there is a lot of commonality between teens in the US and Australia and their use of technology, but there are some differences,'' says O'Neale. ''The rate of take-up is different, for instance. Our pricing plans are different, too. That can really dictate the different ways in which people use different technologies.''

Clear comparisons between US and Australian markets are tricky, but a survey of Samsung Galaxy S3 pricings last year, for instance, found that unlimited-call, 24-month contracts cost almost $1000 more in America than here. The same survey also reported that iPhone 5s cost more to rent in the US, but data bundles were cheaper. For cash-strapped teens, monthly bills clearly dictate usage strategies.

Access to technology is also important, and boyd identifies a deepening socio-economic divide driven by the quality and quantity of digital devices in rich and poor US schools. And for the teenagers themselves, access to digital devices is more than just an option. It is essential.

In Ballarat, Eliza Gregurke uses her smartphone exclusively to access social media. Recently she received a sudden and brutal reality check - the thing broke. ''It was horrible,'' she said. ''I had a panic attack straight away. I don't have a clock at home so I didn't know what time it was. I had to check the clock in my car. I couldn't see what appointments I had. I couldn't reply to messages.

''I don't have a home phone. Without my device I couldn't contact anyone.''

Getting a new mobile immediately became her only priority. All other intentions and plans were dumped for several hours until she managed to organise a replacement device.

''I kind of knew that was a bad reaction,'' she says. ''But I've got no other way to communicate, so what else could I do?''