Many Little Worlds

Of course, all this socializing isn't one-on-one. It's happening in the many social groupstight and exclusive or random and easygoingthat form in middle school and high school. It helps to think back to our own high-school days. We had groups of various sizes and levels of intimacy. Even then, there were "jocks" and "freaks," maybe even "dweebs," but there were also Astronomy Club and the tennis team and the cheerleading squad. A person might've dipped into and identified with several groups, and found real support and validation in one, but the groups didn't really mix it up. They just coexisted. That's what it's like on MySpace (Figure 2.5).

Figure 2.5. MySpace has thousands upon thousands of social groups of every imaginable makeup.

Cameron's high-school friends talk about their school stuff in their MySpace profilespeople, events, parties, and so on. These discussions are separate from his soccer and politics groups. Boyd refers to this as "little communities... multiple publics" all coexisting in one giant space with zippo contactthe groups teens form and turn to for support and mutual learning in the process of learning about themselves.

"I found an entire community of Christian rock culture," says Boyd, "and they're hanging out on the same Web site [MySpace] with a whole group of gangsta kidsno interaction whatsoever. Adults come in and see and react to all this [together in one space] when there's actually nothing to react to, because [the teens] probably don't even know about each other."

Mom and Dad might browse the profiles of kids who go to Suzy's high school. They might see some pretty racy or compromising party photos and think, "Look at these people our daughter is associating with!" Yet more than likely, Suzy is not socializing with them at all. Her profile's just on the same site as theirs. That doesn't mean they'd be in the same physical space together. It's possible that they could be at the same place on a Saturday night, but for the sake of rational parentchild communication, it would work better (and be more realistic) if Suzy's parents didn't make that assumption.

What we're seeing when we browse MySpace is a whole lot of the little communities that teens naturally form, try out, and sometimes depend on as they work out who they are. Young people are very focused on these communities as they socialize online, and this is a much safer way to use MySpace than the way adults approach it or think that teens approach it.