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Bean Soup, Social Media Theory

It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens

danah boyd uses more than a decade of fieldwork and interviews to show that teenagers’ use of social media is nuanced and purposeful, shaped by social needs for identity, community, privacy, and expression. She argues that many adult fears — about addiction, privacy loss, danger, and bullying — are exaggerated or misunderstood and that teens’ networked lives reflect adaptive social behavior, not pathology.

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The Psychology of the Internet

Patricia Wallace’s The Psychology of the Internet provides a comprehensive research‑based overview of how online environments shape human behavior, emotions, and social interaction across contexts such as impression formation, group dynamics, aggression, attraction, altruism, privacy, gaming, development, and gender. The book integrates classic and contemporary psychological research to explain why people behave differently online and how those behaviors both reflect and inform social life on the Internet.

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