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=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.
Jesse,
ReplyDeleteWoww – what a great post! I especially liked your personal experiences and additional information about teens and online social netfriending. Do you think that MySpace and Facebook are social fads that will eventually go the way of legwarmers and middle-aged men with pony tails?
Kevin
P.S. The humor was an additional treat; but what’s up with the beard?
Jesse,
ReplyDeleteI really was enlightened by the public/private realities of teenage life and how social networks fit this need in a time of experiencing, expressing and reacting. As a high school teacher, the non-stop public display of supposedly private verbal and gesticulated conversations just beg adult reactions so that teenage reactions can be publicly witnessed and judged.
When I asked my 14 -18+ year-old students if they used MySpace, I was amazed at the overwheming affirmatives, and a majority also maintained a Facebook site. My 22 year-old daughter has more recently focused on Facebook after elaborate MySpace posts that lasted up until around her 21st birthday. I have seen this trend among her peers as Facebook also becomes a place to post event and other information.
Ha ha!! Oh Jesse. This was so great!!
ReplyDeleteI loved the videos.
I read your blog after posting my own (which in contrast takes itself way too seriously).
I thought your source (Alice Mathias) and recognition of the levels of privacy was very provocative. Thanks!
Kevin,
ReplyDeleteI wondered about the beard as well...perhaps a commentary on the contrast between digital life and that of the Amish? I wonder about it as a fad as well...all of this gnashing of teeth and academic and social focus and it might not be a long term change in how teens behave.
Jill, what you wrote about interactions that "beg adult reactions" is interesting! I wonder if there is some of that at work online as well? Do teens, on some level, need adults to observe this mediated, networked space? I wonder.
Gwen,
You aren't too serious! I so appreciate your critical thinking! Interestingly, in my parody search, I found many many many student-produced videos about social networking. Most of them were a little tedious to watch (long..poorly edited..full of 15-year-olds who find themselves HILARIOUS, but I was very interested in how sophisticated their analysis was.