danah boyd, in her great new book It’s Complicated: the social lives of networked teens:
Many adults I meet assume that their own childhoods were better and richer, simpler and safer, than the digitally mediated ones contemporary youth experience. They associate the rise of digital technology with decline—social, intellectual, and moral. The research I present here suggests that the opposite is often true. For adults to hear the voices of youth, they must let go of their nostalgia and suspend their fears. This is not easy.
Amen.