Thanks to e-mail, online chat rooms and instant messages, adolescents have at last succeeded in shielding their social lives from adult scrutiny. But this comes at a cost: teenagers nowadays are both more connected to the world at large than ever, and more cut off from the social encounters that have historically prepared young people for the move into adulthood. People allow low-quality relationships developed in virtual reality to replace higher-quality relationships in the real world. This essay doesn't have much to say about the promise of social software. MemeStreams should think about how it could be part of the solution. What Adolescents Miss When We Let Them Grow Up in Cyberspace | 
