boyd connects our fears of the Internet, of teenagers encountering adult situations, or explicit material, or interacting with strangers to the history of moral panics, which often center around technology and sexuality and young people. Her favorite moral panic, she tells me, is the panic over sewing machines, which concerned itself with women rubbing their legs on the machines as a threat to their purity.

via Kids on the Internet: danah boyd’s controversial idea that kids should be allowed to roam free. – Slate Magazine.