Creating a Self, Online


MySpace profiles represent teenagers' online selvesnot so much an extension of who they are but who they see themselves to be at the moment, expressed in comments, photos, and music (Figure 2.1).

Figure 2.1. The MySpace profiles of 17-year-old "Cameron."


"With MySpace, you can get more creative about who you are," says Lisa, an 18-year-old MySpace user in California. "When you're a teenager, that's what you're trying to do."

Part of what forms those online selves, in addition to profiles, are friends' photos and comments that appear on the same page. The combination of all these elements, which is very much a group activity, presents a self defined in relation to others (Figure 2.2).

Figure 2.2. Friends' comments on Cameron's page.


A lot of thought often goes into these profiles, in what looks to adults like terse comments and crazy photos. This haphazardness is a natural byproduct of teens' making up who they are as they go along. Although it may look aimless and superficial, it's actually very productive, says Danah Boyd, a pioneering social-networks researcher at the University of California, Berkeley. MySpace is "not the waste of time adults think it is. What's happening in it is what academics call informal learning," Boyd says.

Hanging out has a lot of social value, adds Boyd. "It's where you learn social norms, rules, how to interact with others, narrative [writing a blog], personal and group history, and media literacy."

David Huffaker, a researcher of online social behavior at Northwestern University, agrees. "These activities are important for identity exploration, which is one of the principal tasks of adolescence," Huffaker he wrote in an academic paper, "Teen Blogs Exposed: The Private Lives of Teens Made Public" which he presented at the American Association for the Advancement of Science in February 2006.

Detective Frank Dannahey, a 15-year veteran Youth Division police officer in Rocky Hill, Connecticut, has worked and consulted on a lot of social-networking cases. He takes a pragmatic approach to MySpace, based on his conversations with teens: "For the most part, these [MySpace users] are just average, everyday, good kids... and this is part of their social life."




MySpace Unraveled. A Parent's Guide to Teen Social Networking from the Directors of BlogSafety. com
MySpace Unraveled: A Parents Guide to Teen Social Networking
ISBN: 032148018X
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2004
Pages: 91

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