Teen angst in the digital age

Book review of Stoned Shamed Depressed: An Explosive Account of the Secret Lives of India's Teens

Neil Postman began his seminal book The Disappearance of Childhood with the words “children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see.” In her new book, Stoned, Shamed, Depressed: An Explosive Account of the Secret Lives of India's Teens, Jyotsna Mohan Bhargava calls upon the reader to re-evaluate the “living messages” of urban India.

Ms Bhargava chronicles the life of India’s well-to-do urban teens. She finds that they are traversing “[a] road that is full of temptations and easy adventure, where the boundaries get blurred and where what happens today can have repercussions for years to