Quiet on Set: How Adults Fail To Protect Children From Abuse Milo Santamaria | March 2024 After the release of the shocking documentary Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV, a 4 hour exposé on the abuse that took place on Nickelodeon sets, viewers have taken to the internet criticizing parents and other
Review of Why Aren’t We Doing This By Anthony Bernier | October 2023 Adults love writing so-called “non-fiction” books about young people. The most popular of these books indulge cliched and unsupported claims based on moral panics-of-the-week. This week’s panic is about “the teenage brain” and depression. The next week it’s about overindulging an energy
Librarians Punch Down on Teenagers By Anthony Bernier | October 2023 How can I continue doing this work? I teach future librarians about serving teenagers professionally and equitably. People find it odd that librarians need this teaching. The behaviors of national library leaders, though, demonstrate they do. The hottest issue in libraries today pits libraries
At least part of the responsibility for the rollback on reproductive choice rests with an unlikely culprit: liberal Hollywood. By Anthony Bernier, July 2023 Isn’t it nice to blame it all on Trump? Trump’s reactionary political base. Trump absconding with the Supreme Court. Trump repealing “Roe” – a women’s right to abortion. While true, of course, these
Still Believe in the ‘Undeveloped Teen Brain?’ Well, don’t. By Anthony Bernier | June 2023 The theory of the “teenage brain” purports to explain young peoples’ “impulsivity,” “volatile” emotions, and “risk-taking” behaviors. It’s a notion emerging from the 19th century’s concept of “Youth Development” and more recently advanced by some in the neuro-science field
Generations: The Real Differences Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents―and What They Mean for America’s Future By Jean M. Twenge Reviewed by Mike Males | June 8, 2023 2 Out of 5 Stars: Leaves Out Huge Issues Generations sounds at least the hundredth alarm in the last hundred years proclaiming a “new
At a time when many make self-satisfied gestures at the notion of “alternative facts” that it looks like we’ll be living with for the next four years, I’d like to point out that we’ve come to live with a few alternative facts of our own. A branch library I served at during the early 1990s
American Library Association’s (ALA) recent dog-piling on young people for their incapacity to discern “fake news” got me thinking. In its 22 November issue of ALA Direct, that “tightly curated” e-newsletter, the association pointed uncritically to a recent Stanford study cherry-picking on young people for media skills that our last election cycle showed challenged adults
Few clichés promise to do more damage to libraries than claiming to be “safe spaces.” Libraries are not safe spaces. At the very least, such a claim perpetuates an immodest and ill-defined boast and, as with most boasts, this one can’t be delivered. Recently, within the space of only one month, two west coast libraries
How much more time must pass before libraries realize that young adults don’t need any “youth development” agenda to recognize them as active participants and contributors to the culture? While libraries wring hands in moral panics and exaggerations over “youth crime,” “peer pressure” (it’s always peer pressure), and developmental needs (and it’s always needs) –
