"Compared with real, everyday contact with the outside world," writes Kantor, "ten letters seemed like nothing. But in the White House, it was something, and the president referenced them constantly."

Isolated? Misunderstood? Overwhelmed by the sense that someplace, anyplace, is better than here? Sound familiar? Actually, it sounds an awful lot like the teens and tweens discussed in this New York Times piece from over the weekend about the work of Dr. danah boyd, a digital researcher at who studies the online practices of young people (and who does not capitalize her name):

"Children's ability to roam has basically been destroyed," Dr. Boyd said in her office at Microsoft, where a view of the Boston skyline is echoed in the towers of books on her shelves, desk and floor. "Letting your child out to bike around the neighborhood is seen as terrifying now, even though by all measures, life is safer for kids today." Children naturally congregate on social media sites for the relatively unsupervised conversations, flirtations, immature humor, and social exchanges that are the normal stuff of teenage hanging-out, she said.

[B]oyd goes on to argue that rather than worrying so much about kids and teens being preyed upon by online predators, we should recognize that the Internet might be a way for kids abused in offline life -- where serious abuse is more likely to occur -- to connect with adults in a safe and easy space.

None of this is to infantilize Obama. It's just that as forces (scare tactics, suburbanization) have conspired to make American kids circa 2012 structurally isolated, the modern White House is an isolating place. If political Washington is removed from the rest of the country, the White House is all the more so. At the center of the public consciousness, it's also something of a fortress. Metal detectors, gates, and guest lists mean that few people are popping over just to chat, chew ideas, and challenge your basic premises. The effect on a person can be strange: Kantor writes that upon visiting Obama in the Oval Office to discuss sustainable architecture and New Orleans, professional actor Brad Pitt was rendered nearly totally mute. Meanwhile, digital spaces tend to break down hierarchies and formalities; author Susan Cain recently wrote, "The protection of the screen mitigates many problems of group work." In that context, if 10 letters is a lifeline, it's difficult to see hanging out in a livestream chat as insignificant -- particularly when the people you're hanging get to talk back in living color.

In that context, a Google+ Hangout becomes a tool not just for output, but for input -- not only for the president, but for the rest of those in and around the White House, too.

It might all seem very trivial. But it has to seem somewhat less trivial this week of all weeks. This past Friday, the Senate backed off pursuing its Protect IP Act after a huge outpouring of digital push back. A trio of White House officials responded only after petitions on the topic gained momentum on "We the People," the White House's public platform for digital social engagement, which has been derided as some by gimmicky but managed to force the controversial yet heretofore obscure topic right into the White House bubble.

Image: Reuters

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