It's complicated

I spent part of Friday reading Danah Boyd's new It's Complicated, a rather optimistic assessment of the place of social media in the lives of American teens. One thesis: teens want to explore, and to experiment with a public life - but malls are often now off limits. So they turn to Facebook. Another thesis: social media, like any media, can be used toward positive or negative ends. Certainly, Boyd manages to set herself apart from the dark, worried views of Sherry Turkle. But ultimately it's her intentionally trite title, drawn from teenaged slang, that really remains in my ears. Because you know what? It is complicated. In fact, it's all complicated.

For instance, the other day we were about to set out on our little triangular jaunt across a slice of Baltimore - down Roland to JHU; past the large paper moon and over the river to the nursery; down the hill to my parking to - when I grabbed, Achtung Baby, one of U2's greatest albums and now (gulp) a 20-year-old CD. And suddenly L. and I were back in the early 1990s, singing and humming along, transported to an era long before Facebook. But, soon enough, we surfaced again, returning to 2014, and began to chat briefly about plans for the fall; I think that we were telling Cleo, once again, about her new school, and thinking about how our schedule and drives might be different then. And so there we were, on a handsome Friday morning, almost simultaneously living in the past and the future.

At some point, I'm sure, we'll be vexed by our teenaged daughter's use of some app whose purposes we cannot even imagine right now (and may not be able to, then). Why does she spend, we'll wonder, so much time on that, when it's a beautiful day out? And then, perhaps, I'll remember this entry, and recall that we, too, once surfed from memory to hypothetical, momentarily blithe to the day outside - and then even took the time to open a laptop and type up our thoughts about that virtual experience.

So, Cleo, you're not entirely excused, not yet. But I understand, at least in part. It's complicated, no?