The Digital Street

This book delves into the street-level experience of a set of African American and Latino teenagers and adults worried about or after them. It argues that the risks and opportunities associated with a poor urban neighborhood get filtered through smartphones and popular social media sites like Twitter and Facebook. The book shows that street life in Harlem plays out on and across the physical street and the digital street among youth, neighborhood adults, and the authorities. Each chapter examines the parallels, differences, and crossovers between these two layers of social life that bear out the “effects” of a neighborhood. From roughly five years of firsthand research as an outreach worker and in other roles in the community, the author illustrates the online and offline experiences of girls and boys of color coming of age in the shadow of the Harlem Children’s Zone and sweeping gentrification when social media came to permeate all aspects of life. The Digital Street addresses the role of communication and technology in the transformation of an urban neighborhood.