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Amanda Lenhart is currently the Head of Research at Common Sense Media. [1] Prior to that, she has worked as a program director at the non-profit research group Data & Society, [2] and as an associate director and researcher at the Pew Internet & American Life Project. [3] She has published numerous articles and research reports, many of which focus on teenagers and their interactions with the internet and other new media technologies. [3]
Lenhart graduated magna cum laude from Amherst College with a double major in English and Anthropology. Lenhart also holds a Master's degree in Communication, Culture, and Technology from Georgetown University. [4]
Amanda Lenhart began working at the Pew Internet & American Life Project in 1999 and spent 16 years there, authoring numerous reports. Lenhart's research work focuses primarily on children, teens, and families. She often wrote about young people and how they interact with the web and with different new fads that spring from the evolving technologies. [5]
Lenhart has been a frequent spokesperson on trends in Internet and mobile cell phone use. In The New York Times , Lenhart was quoted in articles such as "Technology Leapfrogs Schools and Jurisdictions", [6] "Top Kitchen Toy? The Cellphone", [7] and "Tweeting? Odds Are You Live in a City". [8] The Washington Post has cited Lenhart in many articles, including "Sexting hasn't reached most young teens, poll finds", [9] "U.S. teens report 'frightening' levels of texting while driving", [10] and "New Research: Adults & Videogames". [11] In USA Today Lenhart was quoted in articles such as "Survey: Over half of adults, 50% of women play video games", [12] "Survey: Nearly every kid a video gamer", [13] and "Not all :) as informal writing creeps into teen assignments". [14] She has also been interviewed by multiple T.V. and radio sources. In 2003, Lenhart discussed net dropouts on the radio program "On the Media". [15]
In 2006, Amanda Lenhart was a guest on the Talk of The Nation radio show, where she joined social networking researcher danah boyd and Internet safety expert Parry Aftab in a discussion about Myspace. [16] [17] In 2007, Lenhart joined danah boyd, Michele Ybarra, and Dr. David Finkelhor for a luncheon panel for the Advisory Committee to the Congressional Internet Caucus on online youth victimization. [18] CBS cited Lenhart and posted her 2008 discussion with Larry Magid on game-playing. [19] [20] Also in 2008, Lenhart participated in a roundtable at the Association of Internet Researchers' Annual Conference in Copenhagen, including scholars Nancy Baym, Lewis Goodings, Malene Larsen, Raquel Recuero, Jan Schmidt, and Daniel Skog. [21]
In 2009, Lenhart appeared on the "Kojo Nnamdi Show" where she discussed "the opportunities and hazards that come with using social networking sites." [22] [23] She also served as a guest on the radio program "Future Tense", where she discussed sexting. [24] Lenhart has also appeared on "The Exchange", "The Kathleen Dunn Show", and MSNBC's "Countdown with Keith Olbermann".
Much of Lenhart's studies on teenagers focus on how they react to different elements of the technologically based world. She explores topics such as blogging, texting, sexting, cyber bullying, and mobile phones, and relates these to the younger population. [25]
Lenhart has also explored how people of various ages engage in social networking sites. [26] In an article on social media and young adults, Lenhart specifically looked at the decline in blogging and the simultaneous rise in the use of social networking sites such as Facebook. [27] In a video posted by ABC News, Lenhart discussed the findings from this study. [28]
In a presentation titled "Twitter and Status Updating: Demographics, Mobile Access and News Consumption" that was released in October 2009, Lenhart explored how Americans of various ages were utilizing Twitter and other social media. [29]
Web 2.0 and Twitter were also addressed in the Pew report on "Social Media and Young Adults" in 2010. [30] [31]
Lenhart has contributed reports such as "Teens and Sexting" [32] and an overview of mobile phone use termed "Teens and Mobile Phones Over the Past Five Years: Pew Internet Looks Back". [33]
Melissa Long of the CNN Newsroom interviewed Lenhart in late 2009. [34]
For Lenhart's study on cyberbullying, her team interviewed 935 parent-child pairs and 700 parent-child pairs in 2006 and 2007, respectively. [35] This study and analysis included such topics as harassment, bullying, safety, online usage, and victimization in the technologically advanced world and its findings were organized into a presentation given in 2009. [35]
Lenhart's research into gaming explores how teens and adults have incorporated gaming into their everyday lives. [36] [37]
One report of her findings is "Teens, Video Games and Civics", published in 2008. [38] [39] According to Lenhart, "gaming is nearly universal among teens, with 97% of American youth 12 to 17 playing computer, console, portable or cell phone games." The study found that half of teens play games on any given day, usually for about an hour. The study also noted that "gaming isn’t just the domain of boys - 94% of teen girls play games, as do 99% of teen boys." [40] In a blog entry in which she discussed this study, Lenhart discussed gaming in terms of education and social connections. [40]
Lenhart's research into education explores how those within the field use technology. [41] [42]
In an article by the Associated Press, she considered emoticons and other informal types of writing that have emerged with new technologies and texting. The title of the article is "Not all :) as informal writing creeps into teen assignments", but Lenhart pointed out that such a slip is "a teachable moment." She stated, "If you find that in a child's or student's writing, that's an opportunity to address the differences between formal and informal writing. They learn to make the distinction ... just as they learn not to use slang terms in formal writing." [14]
In 2010, Lenhart conducted a presentation on the recent findings of blogging as well as other types of technology as they relate to young adults and teenagers. [43]
In particular, Lenhart has discussed the decline of blogging. [28] [30]
During a luncheon panel for the Internet Caucus Advisory Committee, Lenhart discussed changes in identity that she sees a related to emergent social networking practices. [44] In other presentations such as "Teens, Online Stranger Contact & Cyberbullying: What the research is telling us", [45] Lenhart notes that understanding the identity needs of young people helps to explain why they participate in certain risk-taking activities online. [46]
Yet she has also noted that young people are learning to utilize digital media, even if those media are currently limited in their ability to fulfill young peoples' identity needs. [47] As she stated,
However, these new tools seem to ignore a fundamental disconnect between our online and offline identities. In the offline world, we don't present ourselves in the same way to all people in our lives - we show different sides of ourselves to our mothers, our friends, our employers. And even in the age of fine-grained privacy tools, those tools do not eliminate the complexity of figuring out how to best present oneself in a multi-use public space, particularly for those who have personal, professional and family contacts on these sites. [47]
In her presentation "Teens, Online Stranger Contact & Cyberbullying: What the research is telling us", Lenhart considered how cyberbullying is understood and discussed among parent-child pairs. [45] In a podcast by the Safe Internet Alliance, Lenhart joined Linda Criddle (president of Safe Internet Alliance), Nicol Turner-Lee (Vice President & Director of the Media and Technology Institute at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies), and David McClure (President & CEO of USIIA) to discuss the changing demographics of online users and the implications of those changes when it comes to safety, providers, and advertisers. [48] [49]
Parry Aftab is an Internet privacy and security lawyer, considered one of the founders of cyberlaw and founder of the world's largest and oldest cybersafety charity. Named by The Boston Herald as "the leading expert in cybercrime in the world," Aftab wrote the first cybersafety book in the world for parents and has received a long list of honors and has been appointed to the boards of directors and advisory boards of several companies, including TRUSTe, Facebook, MTV and Sesame Street Online. She is a longtime Internet safety expert who founded the Internet safety organization WiredSafety, StopCyberbullying and the consulting firm, WiredTrust. She was "the Privacy Lawyer" columnist for Information Week Magazine for many years. In 2016 Parry Aftab founded Cybersafety India and the StopCyberbullying and sextortion and morphing prevention initiatives for India. She resides in both the US and Canada.
Generation Z, also known as Zoomers, is the demographic cohort succeeding Millennials and preceding Generation Alpha. Researchers and popular media use the mid-to-late 1990s as starting birth years and the early 2010s as ending birth years, with the generation most frequently being defined as people born from 1997 to 2012. Most members of Generation Z are the children of younger Baby Boomers or Generation X.
Social media are interactive technologies that facilitate the creation, sharing and aggregation of content amongst virtual communities and networks. Common features include:
danah boyd is an American technology and social media scholar. She is a partner researcher at Microsoft Research, the founder of Data & Society Research Institute, and a distinguished visiting professor at Georgetown University.
Content creation is the act of producing and sharing information or media content for specific audiences, particularly in digital contexts. According to Dictionary.com, content refers to "something that is to be expressed through some medium, as speech, writing or any of various arts" for self-expression, distribution, marketing and/or publication. Content creation encompasses various activities including maintaining and updating web sites, blogging, article writing, photography, videography, online commentary, social media accounts, and editing and distribution of digital media. In a survey conducted by Pew, content creation was defined as "the material people contribute to the online world".
The Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI) is an international nonprofit organization. It is registered as a 501(c)(3) tax-deductible nonprofit charity in the United States and a registered charity in the United Kingdom. FOSI was founded in February 2007 by Stephen Balkam, who had created the Internet Content Rating Association (ICRA). FOSI is chaired by Dave Pierce, Vice President of Public Affairs, NCTA.
Men and women use social network services (SNSs) differently and with different frequencies. In general, several researchers have found that women tend to use SNSs more than men and for different and more social purposes.
Sexting is sending, receiving, or forwarding sexually explicit messages, photographs, or videos, primarily between mobile phones. It may also include the use of a computer or any digital device. The term was first popularized early in the 21st century and is a portmanteau of sex and texting, where the latter is meant in the wide sense of sending a text possibly with images. Sexting is not an isolated phenomenon but one of many different types of sexual interaction in digital contexts that is related to sexual arousal.
Researchers study Social media and suicide to find if a correlation exists between the two. Some research has shown that there may be a correlation.
Various researchers have undertaken efforts to examine the psychological effects of Internet use. Some research employs studying brain functions in Internet users. Some studies assert that these changes are harmful, while others argue that asserted changes are beneficial.
Bullying suicide are considered together when the cause of suicide is attributable to the victim having been bullied, either in person or via social media. Writers Neil Marr and Tim Field wrote about it in their 2001 book Bullycide: Death at Playtime.
Cyberbullying is a form of bullying or harassment using electronic means. It has become increasingly common, especially among teenagers and adolescents, due to young people's increased use of social media. Related issues include online harassment and trolling. In 2015, according to cyberbullying statistics from the i–Safe Foundation, over half of adolescents and teens had been bullied online, and about the same number had engaged in cyberbullying. Both the bully and the victim are negatively affected, and the intensity, duration, and frequency of bullying are three aspects that increase the negative effects on both of them.
Amanda Michelle Todd was a 15-year-old Canadian student and victim of cyberbullying who hanged herself at her home in Port Coquitlam, British Columbia. A month before her death, Todd posted a video on YouTube in which she used a series of flashcards to tell her experience of being blackmailed into exposing her breasts via webcam on the livestreaming and online chat service Blogger, and of being bullied and physically assaulted. The video went viral after her death, resulting in international media attention. The original video has had more than 15 million views as of May 2023, although mirrored copies of the video had received tens of millions of additional views shortly after her death; additionally, a YouTube video by React has a video of teens reacting to Todd's video which has garnered 44.7 million views as of May 2023, and various videos from news agencies around the world regarding the case have registered countless millions more. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police and British Columbia Coroners Service launched investigations into the suicide.
The Cybersmile Foundation is an international nonprofit organization committed to tackling all forms of cyberbullying and digital abuse. They promote kindness, diversity, and inclusion through professional support services, education programs, awareness campaigns and corporate partnerships.
Social media in education is the use of social media to enhance education. Social media is "a group of Internet-based applications...that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content". It is also known as the read/write web. As time went on and technology evolved, social media has been an integral part of people's lives, including students, scholars, and teachers in the form of social media. However, social media is controversial because in addition to providing new means of connection, critics claim that it damages self-esteem, shortens attention spans, and increases mental health issues.
Social media can have both positive and negative impacts on a user's identity. Psychology and Communication scholars study the relationship between social media and identity in order to understand individual behavior, psychological impact, and social patterns. Communication within political or social groups online can result in practice application of those identities or adoption of them as a whole. Young people, defined as emerging adults in or entering college, especially shape their identities through social media.
Jessica Vitak is an American information scientist who is an associate professor at the University of Maryland. She is faculty in the University of Maryland College of Information Studies (iSchool) and Communication Department. She serves as Director of the University of Maryland Human–Computer Interaction Lab (HCIL) and an Associate Member of the Social Data Science Center (SoDa).
Sameer Hinduja is an American social scientist. He serves as Professor of Criminology at Florida Atlantic University and co-director of the Cyberbullying Research Center. He has served as a Fulbright Specialist Scholar at Dublin City University and currently serves as Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard University. Hinduja is also the co-founder and Co-Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Bullying Prevention. He is an international expert in cyberbullying, sexting, sextortion, online and offline dating violence, digital self-harm, and related forms of online harm among youth. He has written eight books, including Bullying Today: Bullet Points and Best Practices, Bullying Beyond the Schoolyard: Preventing and Responding to Cyberbullying, and School Climate 2.0. His research publications have been cited approximately 23,000 times, and have appeared in such outlets as Journal of Adolescent Health, Journal of Youth and Adolescence, Journal of Interpersonal Violence, Computers in Human Behavior, and New Media and Society. Topics studied include empathy, psychological resilience, parenting, social and emotional learning, school climate, and well-being.
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