Offers sensible steps for foreseeing and minimizing damage to ourselves and others on social media.
Careless posting can produce unpredictably harmful repercussions—and come back to hurt us—say the authors of this adaptation of their 2021 volume for adults on digital ethics, You Are Here.
Two university professors who specialize in communication in online environments offer teens advice on navigating the digital world. Short-term thinking is presented as a central problem. Comparisons of online “information pollution” with elements from nature such as the redwoods and hurricanes and concepts like the biomass pyramid help make the authors’ points accessible. Stressing and sharing can become a vicious circle: Anxious doomscrolling ratchets up worries, and some then share bad news impulsively without checking its accuracy or considering the consequences. The authors advocate shifting one’s perspective, benefiting from what’s known as the overview effect; their explanation of real-life and online context is widely applicable. Media users should also know how their content is monetized, how information is weaponized against marginalized groups, and why the motto “don’t feed the trolls” allows bias and hatred to flourish. The writing strives for a chatty, not-too-serious tone and avoids scolding, but experts and their research are often cited, validating the information. Text boxes labeled “reflection” invite readers to make personal, experiential connections to the authors’ points, as do anecdotes, direct questions, a (somewhat confusing) overarching narrative about fictional teens and their online interactions, and interludes with authorial comments and exchanges.
Offers sensible steps for foreseeing and minimizing damage to ourselves and others on social media. (source notes, bibliography, index) (Nonfiction. 14-18)Pub Date: March 14, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-5362-2874-8
Page Count: 176
Publisher: MITeen Press/Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
Virtually every teenager struggles with difference and identity; at its best, this book will help its readers understand and...
How do parents react when a child is far different from themselves—and how do those children cope with difference?
This young-readers’ edition of the original 2012 tome is far shorter but follows an identical format. In the first and last chapters, the author speaks of his own life journey as a gay Jew; in between he tells of families encountering the following differences: deaf, dwarfs, Down syndrome, autism, schizophrenia, disability, prodigies, rape, crime, and transgender. He speaks with sensitivity about children who find community—or not—with others like themselves. He discusses such deeply philosophical and ethical questions as whether cochlear implants at birth are leading to the genocide of the Deaf community and whether parents of “pillow angels”—severely disabled children—should agree to medically stunt their children’s growth so the children can always be moved by loving arms instead of cranelike equipment. He argues that many children born “far from the tree” eventually find acceptance and even celebration among their families—but also despairs for those who deal with schizophrenia and those conceived by rape. Readers are not spared distressing details: a severely autistic child smears himself with excrement, then flings it at his parents; a family pet is killed gruesomely as a warning to a lesbian couple and their transgender child; there’s a substantial list of parents convicted of killing their children—and who are given light or even nonexistent jail sentences. Less mature teens—or those with low self-esteem—may well profit from confining their reading to the eloquent, encouraging first and last chapters.
Virtually every teenager struggles with difference and identity; at its best, this book will help its readers understand and embrace intersectionality. (notes, further reading) (Nonfiction. 14-18)Pub Date: July 25, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4814-4090-5
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: April 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2017
An outstanding book that links the diversity of creed and the impact of impulsive actions to themes of tolerance and...
In the fall of 2013, on a bus ride home, a young man sets another student on fire.
In a small private high school, Sasha, a white teen with Asperger’s, enjoyed “a tight circle of friends,” “blazed through calculus, linguistics, physics, and computer programming,” and invented languages. Sasha didn’t fall into a neat gender category and considered “the place in-between…a real place.” Encouraged by parents who supported self-expression, Sasha began to use the pronoun they. They wore a skirt for the first time during their school’s annual cross-dressing day and began to identify as genderqueer. On the other side of Oakland, California, Richard, a black teen, was “always goofing around” at a high school where roughly one-third of the students failed to graduate. Within a few short years, his closest friends would be pregnant, in jail, or shot dead, but Richard tried to stay out of real trouble. One fateful day, Sasha was asleep in a “gauzy white skirt” on the 57 bus when a rowdy friend handed Richard a lighter. With a journalist’s eye for overlooked details, Slater does a masterful job debunking the myths of the hate-crime monster and the African-American thug, probing the line between adolescent stupidity and irredeemable depravity. Few readers will traverse this exploration of gender identity, adolescent crime, and penal racism without having a few assumptions challenged.
An outstanding book that links the diversity of creed and the impact of impulsive actions to themes of tolerance and forgiveness. (Nonfiction. 14-18)Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-374-30323-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
PROFILES
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
