Danah Boyd writes about the connection between teenagers and social networking sites and how it all relates to the term “public”
Danah Boyd is a researcher at Microsoft Research and also a researcher/professor at New York University and Harvard Law School. Her main focus in her research is social media, youth practices, tensions between public and private, social network sites, and other intersections between technology and society.
In the study she does with teeneagers and their participation with social networking sites, she finds a lot of great data by interviewing the subjects as well as doing field research online on the actual sites.
She makes a lot of good points of mediated and unmediated publics and how these teenagers don’t really understand the difference between the two. I feel that as a young adult that has gone through the Myspace stage when you had to have a profile because it was the cool thing to do, audience and having yourself out in the public does not even cross your mind. For most people, it is hard to grasp the idea that everything you put on the Internet will be there forever. Teenagers, being their rebellious selves, would care less about the long term effects and more about what is happening in the moment. Boyd further investigates the situation by seeing how these teenagers are monitored and if there is a better way of doing it. Obviously, parents are going to want to know everything and anything that has to do with their child. However, is this right? Will this allow them to make a mistake and learn from it? With today’s technology, is it worth it for a teenager to make a mistake online that will last forever? I really don’t know. Today’s generation of teenagers growing up will experience things completely different than the next generation. With technology constantly updating and improving, it is really hard to tell what to expect, what is right, and what these kids should be allowed to do. One thing, though, that should be made clear is the risk of putting themselves in the public and what kind of consequences it may have in the future.
Read the study here.
I agree that not only teenagers but adults as well need to realize the consequences of how they present themselves on the Internet. It’s scary to think that online, we may be completely public. Then a new question arises: can privacy exist on the net?
You bring up a strong point in Boyd’s study that teenagers don’t understand the difference between mediated and unmediated publics. It definitely leads them to put tidbits of their life online without filtering them first. Thinking back on my own Myspace days, I agree that it is difficult to fully realize one’s personal activities and interactions are accessible to anyone who wants to know. Thank goodness for stricter privacy options!
Your point at the end about the ethics along with the evolution of technology and its effect on social interactions is very thought provoking.
Great post. I think it’s important to note, as you did in your blog, that there really isn’t any way of knowing what these social networked “online publics” are going to be like in the future. However one thing is certainly interesting, regardless of whether these sites continue to exist on the web or not, there is going to be a whole lot of personal information floating around in cyberspace for a long, long time. What are the implications of that?