Why Youth ♥ Social Networks - and HOW we should respond…

Michelle’s Commentary on Danah Boyd’s 2007 article “Why Youth ♥ (heart) Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teen Social Life”

The rapid and widespread adoption of social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter (which are suggested to be among the Top 15 most popular sites) amongst high school age teenagers requires consideration from educators and parents.  Social networking sites have played an important part in teen life since their rapid adoption by teens[i] in 2005 (Boyd, 2007, p.119), and it is clear they aren’t going to disappear any time soon.  The biggest question facing us as educators then is, “How should we respond to this?” In contemplating this question, and Danah Boyd’s two year ethnographic study of US-based youth engagement with the popular social networking site MySpace (Why Youth (heart) Social Networks), it is my opinion that we must consider issues of youth identity construction and the social and ethical implications of this, along with educational issues including digital media literacies and regulation and access to these sites.

Boyd explores youth identity formation through engagement in social networks, and maintains that identity is a social process that is adaptable and dependent on situation and context, which on social networking sites is framed by a perceived or imagined audience (2007, p.131). In the situation and context of a social networking site, setting up a “slick profile”, involving viewing others’ profiles for a sense of what is socially appropriate and valued by their peers, acts to socialize teens into the social protocols of that network (Boyd, p.131).  In creating these online identities, teens must make the choices as to which aspects of their personality they wish to express for others to see and in doing so they are engaging in impression management and identity formation (Boyd, p.128 – 129).  While the formation of social identities might be a valued and important part of growing up, social and ethical implications and problems become more obvious when you consider the properties of the “networked publics” (Boyd, p.120) in which these teens are participating.

Teens might argue that their privacy should be respected and that their social networking spaces should be a place where they can be themselves (Boyd, 2007, p.132), but problems arise when their audience is not who they expected.  While there are multiple ways in which teens can create privacy on social networking sites (such as using false names or information, using privacy settings and creating mirror networks to hide material from parents and others), these same methods may interfere with their peers locating them also, which in turn can lead teens to either not making use of these settings, or to a willingness to accept friend requests randomly and promiscuously (Boyd, p.132).  These “networked publics”, of which social networking sites are a type, have properties of persistence, searchability, replicability and invisible audiences, all of which complicate social dynamics and interactions (Boyd, p.120), and these properties are, in my opinion, a basic part of what we should be teaching teens about social networking sites.  Peers and offline friends are not the only people interested in tracking teens online, although these groups come with complications (such as bullying) of their own; parents, teachers and officials have an interest in checking up on teens online, while marketers and predators look for teens who are open to their marketing of products or promises (Boyd, p.133).

So when a teen, who may not be as proficient in online literacies as popular opinion would have us think (Asselin & Doiron, 2008, p.3), begins interacting on a social networking site, there are a multitude of things they need to consider such as:

• Who can really see/read/share my profile and comments?
• What is appropriate for me to share with my audience?
• Do I know the person I am accepting as a ‘friend’?
•  Are the ‘friends’ on my social networking site really who I think they are?
• What will happen if someone copies something I have said/written/shared and spreads it around in the wrong context?
• Will this ‘identity’ come back to haunt me someday?

These teens are in many cases socializing and hanging out online, without considering the implications, both short and long term, of their actions.  These implications range from potentially life threatening, such as cyber-bullying by peers, often through fraudulent profiles, and malicious harassment or threats by adults, and the possibility of being targeted by sexual predators posing as peers, to consequences of outsiders or authority figures who may judge teens on what they have posted on their social networking sites.  Judgement by others, which may either misconstrue the information of a teen’s profile by taking it out of context, or which may dig up long forgotten online comments or actions, could have an effect on teen’s future success, with some US teens expelled, suspended, put on probation, grounded or potentially denied college admission all based on their online profiles and interactions through social networking (Boyd, 2007, p.133-134).

             Users of these sites must constantly keep in mind that unlike conversations and actions taken while hanging out in the face-to-face world, interactions online are not ephemeral; they persist, they can be searched for, they can be copied and stored any number of times and may be replicated out of context while still appearing to be original or genuine, and they are being shared with a potentially unknown public.  Is it any wonder then that schools and departments act to block social networking sites? I can imagine the thought processes behind the decision to block the potentially explosive minefield which these sites represent, however decisions and legislations to block access to social networking sites in schools and public libraries are not going to help our teens (Jenkins, Clinton, Purushotma, Robison & Weigel, 2006, p.13).

 Instead we should be working towards teaching teens to use social networking effectively, and giving them the digital media literacy skills to analyse, judge and reflect critically on the contexts and information they find online (Jenkins et al., 2006, p.51).  Indeed the social and ethical implications which teens face while interacting on social networking sites mirror almost identically the ethical implications recognized by Jenkins et al. as part of the ‘Ethics Challenge” identified in their White Paper: Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21^st Century (p.17); that is

• privacy issues and the potential for unwelcome attention from strangers
• deciding between what and what not to post
• interpreting unwritten norms for governing acceptable and unacceptable conduct
• masked identities and the reality that not everyone is who they claim to be

            I believe that the bottom line is this: teens require appropriate skills in order to safely, responsibly and effectively navigate the online ‘networked publics’ which they inhabit, and it is up to each of us as educators to make a choice – are we going to teach our youth the skills they need, or are we going to bury our heads in the sand and ignore the entire situation?

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[i] Boyd uses the term ‘teens’ to refer to youth of high school age who are the target of her research.  To maintain consistency and clarity, this term has been used in the same way for this commentary.

References:

Asselin, M., & Doiron, R., (2008). Towards a Transformative Pedagogy for School Libraries 2.0. School Libraries Worldwide, 14(2), 1-18.  Retrieved August 21, 2010, from ProQuest Education Journals.

Boyd, D. (2007). Why Youth ♥ (heart) Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life [Electronic Version]. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Learning – Youth, Identity, and Digital Media Volume (Ed. David Buckinham), Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Retrieved September 20, 2010 from http://www.danah.org/papers/WhyYouthHeart.pdf

Jenkins, H., Clinton, K., Purushotma, R., Robison, A. J. & Weigel, M. (2006). Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21^st Century [Occasional paper]. Retrieved August 20, 2010 from http://digitallearning.macfound.org/site/apps/nlnet/content2.aspx?c=enJLKQNlFiG&b=2108773&ct=3017973&notoc=1