Mobile Identity

Gitte Stald (2008) from the University of Copenhagen writes about the role of the mobile phone in the lives of adolescents.  She writes that the mobile phone is, like so many pieces of technology, far more than a device.  Teens in her study describe their mobile phones as vital to how they conduct their lives.  The phone provides them with connectivity, identity construction, space for private and intimate interaction, a social lubricant or "bodyguard" (p.156) and a portable record of their lives. 
The equation of constant availability with being a true friend was interesting.  I remember this feeling from my own adolescence, though as a rural kid with no land-line in my room, let alone a mobile, my ability to respond instantly to friend in need was limited.  Adolescent identity is so peer focused that reliability as a friend is powerful social capital. 
It was also interesting that Stald found that many of her informants didn’t use the more complicated features of their phones very often and I would be interested to see if that has changed with the advent of the i-phone and the like.
None of the roles that mobile phones play in adolescent life were particularly surprising to me, but what did strike me about the piece was the level of sophistication with which her informants describe their relationships with their mobile phones. From the 16 year old girl who drew the distinction between the "communicative function and the social meaning" (p.143) to the 16 year old boy who wondered if mobiles have "deprived us of the possibility of being offline" (p.146), these young people are not unaware of the contradictions and pitfalls of a connected, mobile life and identity.  Very often, young people are posited as being swept along by social trends and changing technology and being incapable or unwilling to engage in self-reflection.  More than anything, what Stald’s (2008) piece said to me was that while they may not have the academic language to express it, the teens in her study were certainly concerned with the larger meaning of mobile phones in their own lives.  
The first link below is to a Pew Research Center Power Point Presentation about teens usage of mobile phones and the internet.  It addresses some common assumptions about teens and their phone and internet use.

Pew Slideshow

Reference

Stald, G. (2008). Mobile identity: Youth, identity and mobile communication media. In D. Buckingham (Ed.), Youth identity and digital media (pp. 119-142). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Adolescent networked publics

Danah Boyd’s Why Youth Love Social Networking Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life (2008) examines several questions about teenagers and social networking sites such as Facebook.  I am most interested in the dual public and private nature of interactions using these sites.

Boyd discusses what she calls “networked publics” (p.124).  She writes that to describe social networking communication as public is to fall victim to oversimplification.  She draws a distinction between unmediated publics, mediated publics and networked publics. 

Social networking sites are both mediated and networked and as such are perceived differently by different parties.  Adults may be concerned about what teens post about themselves, but teens are often quite comfortable with their imagined public viewing their pages; with “being able to limit access through social conventions” (p.131).  It is when network-outsiders (parents, teachers etc.) intrude that they feel that their privacy has been violated. 

Most users of Facebook etc. say that they enjoy the voyeuristic thrill of “lurking” profiles and pages (p.127) but are uncomfortable with that practice itself being “public”. In her essay The Fakebook Generation, Alice Mathias says that her generation (she is a 2007 graduate of Dartmouth) is “bizarrely comfortable with being looked at…reckless with our personal information.  But there is one era of privacy that we won’t surrender: the secrecy of how and whom we search” (Mathias, 2010. p.289).

As a former high school teacher, I find this attitude entirely consistent with a general adolescent tendency to wish for public privacy.  As Boyd points out, public physical places for teens have shrunk as digital spaces have grown (2008, p.134).  Teens often behave as if they live in “adult proof” bubbles.  Noisy, sometimes profane, talking about illicit behavior or personal relationships, they seem genuinely surprised when adults comment on what they overhear.  The tendency to view digital spaces in the same way should not surprise us. 

I also find that my college students are savvy about the potential artificiality of these spaces.  Most of them claim not to put much stock in them, but as one student said “Honestly, though…none of us are going to admit how much time we spend on Facebook.  It’s a little embarrassing and you don’t want to look like a loser.”

The links below are to three of the many YouTube parodies of the social networking phenomenon.  While created as comedy, they point a self-aware and sophisticated understanding of these networked public spaces.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSnXE2791yg&feature=related Facebook Song

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrlSkU0TFLs&feature=related  Facebook In Real Life

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHi-ZcvFV_0 Facebook Commercial Parody

References

Boyd, D. (2008). Why youth love social networking sites: The role of networked publics in teenage social life. In D. Buckingham (Ed.), Youth identity and digital media (pp. 119-142). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.           

Mathias, A. (2010). The Fakebook generation. In G. Miller (Ed.), The Prentice Hall Reader (9th ed., pp. 288-291). Upper Saddle River, AL: Prentice Hall.

Youth, Identity and Digital Media Response #1

 

Susannah Stern’s article Producing Sites, Exploring Identities: Youth Online Authorship explores the phenomenon of young people creating web-content.  She examines not what they create, but why they create it.  She points to the “curious mix of intrigue, disdain and apprehension” (p. 95) that many adults express about youth online authorship and attempts to bypass the question of whether these online expressions are ultimately positive or negative.  Stern, rather, attempts to ascertain the purpose that young authors themselves feel that their work serves. 

I was stuck by how her informants viewed their web-pages; as both fluid documents and as projects to be proud of.  The web page functions as diary, as scrapbook, as soapbox and as sounding board.  I found Stern’s admonition not to “exoticize” (p.114) teen web-expression helpful.  Teens are doing what they have always done; seeking to explore, reinvent and refine their identities. The internet is merely another, constantly-changing, place for them to do that.

I was left wondering, however, if the number of youth web pages and blogs has dropped as the popularity of social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter has risen. The danger of any research on teens and technology is that both technology and the informants change so fast,  that by the time something is published, its relevance may be suspect.  Data ages quickly when it concerns the intersection of adolescence and technology! 

I found an interesting article published this month in the Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy about an immigrant teen informant and her use of digital spaces (Myspace, Facebook etc.) to both maintain ties to her home culture and to navigate her new American identity.  The author, Cheryl A. McLean, draws on Anthony Giddens’s idea that new media contributes to “disembedding” us from physical space and that “social locations are carried out across long distances” (McLean, 2010, p.15).   McLean ends her article with the admonition that “Ultimately, literacy educators must respond to youth literacies as multiple, fluid and overlapping if we are to create “homes” for the diverse learners who make up contemporary classrooms. (McLean, 2010, p.20).  It seems to me that digital spaces are, increasingly, where teens construct identities and we, as educators would do well to embrace that reality.

The link to McLean’s article is below:

McLean, C. (2010). A Space Called Home: An Immigrant Adolescent's Digital Literacy Practices. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 54(1), 13-22. doi:10.1598/JAAL.54.1.2. https://catalog2.nmsu.edu:2104/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=2&hid=107&sid=3ebd4754-d88b-4545-a029-d3ed23a58dd6%40sessionmgr110

Brand New Blog!

Here it is...my brand new blog...created just for EDUC 610.  It is appropriate that I (a late adopter if ever there was one) wouldn't ever blog until required to in a technology class.