Danah Boyd is an american social media researcher who is considered one of the most influential woman in technology. She is well known for her studies of youth, and her article  Why The youth (heart) social media »

According to Danah Boyd’s article, the way teenagers and adults use social networking sites are different: although her use of MySpace primarily as an example is antiquated, she brings up the notion that the youth tend to use Social Media sites to keep in touch with their closest friends, where as adults are more prone to connect with strangers.

However, according to recent statistics on Facebook Usage, teenagers tend to connect with much more members than adults. In fact, current high school and college students have the most amount of connections on the largest social networks. However, this may be due to other factors.

So, what drives this? Let’s first understand the difference between privacy options when this article was published and now. When MySpace was the dominant social network, privacy settings were very limited, and it was fairly easy for people to visit the page of an individual from 1948. It’s interesting to note the amount of privacy issues that have changed since then: Current social networking sites are primarily used as photo-sharing applications. Current social networking sites also have very segregated privacy options.

What’s the teenage interest? Boyd claims that the main reason teenagers love social media is a power struggle between parents and child. On social networking sites, teenagers are given a “private space” which they are not otherwise given. This provides a strong explanation as to teenager fascination with social networking. The notion of teenagers having more connections however can probably be accounted to two factors then: more teenagers are on social networking sites and teenagers are probably more extroverted.

Edit: Facebook’s value on Photo Sharing