teen spirit
Danah Boyd has written a summary ("crib") of a recent presentation, Identity Production in a Networked Culture: Why Youth Heart MySpace
Some quick notes:
MySpace ("a place for friends") is second on the web for page views, more than Google
There is moral panic!
It began with an age limit of 18+, which has since dropped to 14 yo.
Youth prefer IM (synchronous) to email (old, adult stuff)
Dana explores these issues: identity production, hanging out, digital publics
Profiles (identity production)
Adult practices (sex, smoking, drinking) are appealing to youth, who want to be mature.
Important to look cool and receive peer validation
Comments on each others blogs are an important aspect of cultural currency
Friends are important
All of this is essential for youth (status games)
Hanging out
Teens chat on IM for hours
Digital publics
Physical presence is preferable but not always possible!
There are public, private and controlled spaces - for everyone
Increasingly, due to the moral panic teen space is becoming more and more controlled
Teens have increasingly less access to public space
IM provides a new way for teens to have private space, MySpace provides for public space
Youth do rub shoulder with adults, including creeps, online
Teens rarely chose to go private. They just wish the adults would go away. All of them - parents, teachers, creeps
Conclusion
Youth need private space
Adults restrict their private space in the "real world" so teens are searching for new spaces in the virtual world
Youth will be youth
Some quick notes:
MySpace ("a place for friends") is second on the web for page views, more than Google
There is moral panic!
It began with an age limit of 18+, which has since dropped to 14 yo.
Youth prefer IM (synchronous) to email (old, adult stuff)
Dana explores these issues: identity production, hanging out, digital publics
Profiles (identity production)
Adult practices (sex, smoking, drinking) are appealing to youth, who want to be mature.
Important to look cool and receive peer validation
Comments on each others blogs are an important aspect of cultural currency
Friends are important
All of this is essential for youth (status games)
Hanging out
Teens chat on IM for hours
Digital publics
Physical presence is preferable but not always possible!
There are public, private and controlled spaces - for everyone
Increasingly, due to the moral panic teen space is becoming more and more controlled
Teens have increasingly less access to public space
IM provides a new way for teens to have private space, MySpace provides for public space
Youth do rub shoulder with adults, including creeps, online
Teens rarely chose to go private. They just wish the adults would go away. All of them - parents, teachers, creeps
Conclusion
Youth need private space
Adults restrict their private space in the "real world" so teens are searching for new spaces in the virtual world
Youth will be youth
posted by Bill Kerr at 11:42 PM
Listen to this article
1 Comments:
Thanks for this Bill - I have only just started thinking about the pervasiveness and subtlety of the surveillance that (e)learning offers the institution -
I never seem to get very far from those "freedom from and freedom to" arguments in my thinking nowadays
"Adults restrict their private space in the "real world" so teens are searching for new spaces in the virtual world" - is just what I was trying to get to in a more tortured way with the panopticon thing.
Post a Comment
<< Home