Sunday, October 12, 2014

It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teenagers


I started my search on Amazon by searching "internet society" and found my first book, Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet. This book takes a deeper behind-the-scenes look at the Internet. From here, I found my next two books from the "People who bought this book also enjoyed:" area. This led me to my next two books Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other and It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teenagers. Alone Together is based off hundreds of interviews of internet users and the affects the internet is having on their personal relationships, causing issues of privacy, community, intimacy, and solitude. It's Complicated analyzes how growing up with constant access to technology and the internet is affecting the new generations. Alone Together has the most pages at 384. It's Complicated was the most expensive at $16.00, with the other two costing just under ten dollars. All three books had 4+ stars and great overall reviews from around 100 customers.
It's Complicated was available at 1580 libraries, Tubes was available at 1351 libraries, and Alone Together was held by the most libraries at 2869. All three books had some type of "Internet" in their classifications, ranging from the history of the internet and teenagers and the internet. Alone Together had information technology in their classifications, as well as human-computer interactions. When searching my books on Google Books, It's Complicated had the most reviews at 93, while the others only had about 15 to 20. It seemed that It's Complicated was the most popular on Google. It's Complicated had the highest popularity on LibraryThing and the most stars at 4.13. At this point, I decided I would do It's Complicated because every site was telling me that it was the most relevant, well known, and interesting.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Grace,

The book you chose, It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teenagers, sounds very interesting! I would be curious about how growing up with all this technology/internet access is affecting generations but also how it's affecting generations differently. Access to technology, I would argue, is even different when we were young.

It also reminded me of this YouTube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRl8EIhrQjQ) I saw through Facebook about Social Networks really being Anti-Social Networks. It’s a pretty interesting video that ties with the book you chose.

Madeleine