Frances Jacobsen Harris has an excellent understanding of teen activity on the Internet, and in this book, she provides a thorough review of social and technical issues in teen Internet use. Additionally, she includes an appropriate level of focus on how the relevant technologies work (including mobile wireless, instant messaging, web browsing, etc.), and she supports her assertions with extensive citations of influential research studies. Most importantly, Harris extends her review of the issues and looks further into how librarians can better interact with today’s teens by understanding their learning behaviors and the role that the Internet plays in their lives.

One of the most effective ways she achieves this is through her use of anecdotes from the students at her school. From the perspective of a librarian in a university research library, this reviewer has found the anecdotal material to be incredibly useful in developing a better understanding of how teenagers learn today and what we should expect from the students who will attend our universities in the coming years. The characteristics highlighted in this book can be applied immediately to the development of information literacy programs for incoming university students, course-integrated sessions, and other efforts to increase the value of research and instructional support services for students.

This book complements important anthropological studies on student learning behaviors, such as Nancy Fried Foster and Susan Gibbons’s Studying Students: The Undergraduate Research Project at the University of Rochester (ACRL, 2007). Recommended for librarians who work with teenage and college-age students, whether in high schools, colleges, universities, or public libraries.