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.