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Teen angst in the digital age

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

Book cover
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Book cover of Stoned Shamed Depressed: An Explosive Account of the Secret Lives of India’s Teens

Roohi Narula
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