These pressures aren't unprecedented, says Nancy Darling, an assistant professor in adolescent development and family studies at The Pennsylvania State University. She points to Margaret Mead's 1978 study of the generation gap, Culture and Commitment. Post-figurative societies describe relatively stable worlds where children are socialized by their parents with firm definitions of how life should be lived, like the Samoan tribes Mead studied in her classic Coming of Age in Samoa. But in pre-figurative societies, ones undergoing quick technological evolution, parents have less and less to offer the kids because their knowledge isn't relevant. Kids are forced to come up with their own life models, as Anopolsky has.
Peers socialize with each other in a destabilizing circuit.
Darling uses the examples of contemporary Vietnam and Russia. They have lots of specific knowledge but no context to put them in. Because of this, teen gurus may discover that their superior knowledge isolates them from their family and friends. Michael Patterson, a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon, studies the psychological effects of specialization and expertise. His work thus far, drawn mostly from analysis of the initial HomeNet sample group, indicates that gurus tend to feel more socially withdrawn, even independent of their Internet expertise.