【推荐1】Dansh Boyd, who holds positions at Microsoft Research, New York University, and Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, has a pointed message for parents: Most everything we think we know about the way our kids are using the Internet is wrong. Boyd's new book, it's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens, makes the case that the Internet isn't nearly as scary or damaging to young people as many moms and dads believe. As the mother of a 16-yaer-old, I found most of it fascinating. Here are two of my biggest takeaways:

Technology is not turning our teens into social misfits.

Although the image persists that young people would rather test than talk, and prefer connecting of Facebook than hanging out in person, Boyd says this isn't true. "Most of the teens that I met ... were desperate for the opportunity to leave their homes to gather with friends," she writes.

The trouble is that in many communities, young people have less freedom than they once did because they are so over scheduled and because parents are worried about their safety. "The era of being able to run around after school as long as you are home before dark is long over." Boyd notes.

To make up for this lost freedom, teens have turned to their computers. "The success of social media must be understood partly in relation to this shrinking social landscape." Boyd explains. Facebook, Twitter. Instagram, Snapchat, and other sites "are not only new public spaces: they are in many cases the only 'public' spaces in which teens can easily communicate with large groups of their peers."

Adolescents aren't as Internet savvy as we like to think.

Although teens have been called "digital natives" for having grown up practically glued to their computers and smart-phones, they still remain simple in many ways about what they find online. After all, they're just kids.

"Many of today's teens are indeed deeply engaged with social media ... but this does not mean that they have the knowledge or skills to make the most of their online experiences," Boyd writes. "The so-called 'digital natives,' far from being useful, is often a distraction to understanding the challenges that youth face in the networked world."

One area in which young people need help is in learning to distinguish between valid and misleading sources of information. "Teens may make their own media or share content online," Boyd observes, "but this does not mean that they inherently have the knowledge or perspective to critically examine what they consume."

Yet many teachers, librarians, and, yes, parents do. "Even those who are afraid of technology," Boyd says, "can offer valuable critical perspective."

As a mom or dad, the most important thing for your kid to plug into is your hard-earned wisdom.

【推荐2】How to not be a slave to technology

Schwartz, CEO of The Energy Project, shared four of his most important tools for applying technology more productively, and building a work life that supports—rather than wastes—your energy.

Build daily rituals (习惯).     1     Build highly specific behaviors that you do at precise times over and over again until it becomes as automatic as brushing your teeth at night. The best way to prioritize (优先考虑) what’s important to us and make sure we actually do the things we care about is to create highly specific habits.

Take a “first things first” approach to your mornings.     2     Ninety-five percent of people have more energy early in the morning than they do as the day wears on, and they also have fewer distractions(干扰). So if that’s the case, why wouldn’t you do the most important thing when you have the most energy?

Use technologies selectively. If you expose yourself to different forms of technology continuously, they will pull you in the way a drug would, even when you know it is not serving you well. Keep technological temptations (诱惑) away when you find yourself getting too distracted—or as Schwartz puts it: “    3    ”.

    4     Many of us live our lives in a gray zone—were not fully focused on work when we’re working, and during our leisure time, we’re not fully relaxed. This leaves us feeling distracted. Schwartz’s advice?     5     Applying less than your full focus doesn’t just make you less productive; distraction keeps you from being fulfilled by and connected to your work. Distraction is the enemy to meaning.

【推荐3】Maintaining an ideal relationship can be a lifelong journey.     1     However, by committing to your future and treating your partner with love and respect, you are sure to maintain a relationship that is ideal for you.

    2     One of the most beautiful things about being in a relationship is creating special routines and inside jokes that only the two of you share. These shared behaviors help create a stronger bond in an ideal relationship. You shouldn't rely on your relationship behaviors from the past, especially if they clearly didn't work out the last time.

Communicate clearly. Being able to effectively convey your feelings to your partner is an important part of being in a relationship. Your partner isn't able to read your mind, so you'll need to work on talking things out, even when you are upset at one another.     3    .

Handle disagreements fairly. If you disagree about something, try not to get too upset about it. It might help you to take a moment to calm down and then try to talk calmly about the situation.    4     Then try to see the problem from his point of view so that you can come to a compromise to resolve the problem.

Keep your promises. Your partner needs to be able to trust you completely to maintain an ideal relationship. Because of this, it's important that you always stay true to your word and keep any promise you make to your partner.    5     It's better to avoid a potential situation in the future where you might have to take back something you said.

【推荐1】Most of us are already aware of the direct effect we have on our friends and family. But we rarely consider that everything we think, feel, do, or say can spread far beyond the people we know. Conversely(相反地), our friends and family serve as conduits(渠道) for us to be influenced by hundreds or even thousands of other people. In a kind of social chain reaction, we can be deeply affected by events we do not witness that happen to people we do not know. As part of a social network, we go beyond ourselves, for good or ill, and become a part of something much larger.

Our connectedness carries with it fundamental implications(影响) for the way we understand the human condition. Social networks have value precisely because they can help us to achieve what we could not achieve on our own. Yet, social­network effects are not always positive. Depression, obesity, financial panic, and violence also spread. Social networks, it turns out, tend to magnify(放大) whatever they are seeded with.

Partly for this reason, social networks are creative. And what these networks create does not belong to any one individual—it is shared by all those in the network. In this way, a social network is like a commonly owned forest: We all stand to benefit from it, but we also must work together to ensure it remains healthy and productive. While social networks are fundamentally and distinctively human, and can be seen everywhere, they should not be taken for granted.

If you are happier or richer or healthier than others, it may have a lot to do with where you happen to be in the network, even if you cannot recognize your own location. And it may have a lot to do with the overall structure of the network, even if you cannot control that structure at all. And in some cases, the process feeds back to the network itself. A person with many friends may become rich and then attract even more friends. This rich­get­richer dynamic means social networks can dramatically reinforce two different kinds of inequality in our society: situational inequality and positional inequality.

Lawmakers have not yet considered the consequences of positional inequality. Still, understanding the way we are connected is an essential step in creating a more just society and in carrying out public policies affecting everything from public health to the economy. We might be better off vaccinating(接种疫苗) centrally located individuals rather than weak individuals. We might be better off helping interconnected groups of people to avoid criminal behaviour rather than preventing or punishing crimes one at a time.

If we want to understand how society works, we need to fill in the missing links between individuals. We need to understand how interconnections and interactions between people give rise to wholly new aspects of human experience that are not present in the individuals themselves. If we do not understand social networks, we cannot hope to fully understand either ourselves or the world we inhabit.