Danah Boyd’s has done extensive research on youth and their relationship with social media. Boyd, a Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research, wrote the article “Why Youth (Heart) Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life” which “examines how teens are modeling identity through social network profiles so that they can write themselves and their community into being” (2).
I found Boyd’s article to be a tad outdated to read now because of the article’s focus on teenagers using MySpace. Although I found the article outdated, I did find some of Boyd’s points interesting and relatable to modern day social media interaction. She points out the differences between adult and teens use of social media, noting how adults use social media to socialize with strangers, while teenagers use it to socialize with those closest to them. I find the bigger issue to be about how teenagers portray themselves online. Both adults and youth are responsible for creating false profiles and maybe at times stretching the truth, but the important question is why? Why do people, especially teenagers, feel the need to lie or create a false profile? Boyd notes that we create profiles for the purpose to “project information about ourselves”, which is a process called “impression management” (11). While social sites like MySpace and Facebook are convenient ways to communicate, they are also dangerous. The danger, to me, lies within the fact that young boys and girls feel the need to change their image because they’re concerned with how others perceive them. The way we look, where we’re hanging out, who we are with, what we are doing, etc. are constantly being publicized via social media sites. If it’s all about creating an impression, when do we know things are real? How can we tell what is being shown online is the actual truth from what is exaggerated? Quite frankly, I think there is too much pressure.
These sites are intended as a way to escape, yet there is no possibility for escape. The “old school” ways of escape by writing in a journal have drifted away from us into online databases where we can create new identities.
I agree with you that teens’ feeling the need to change their image is bad. I think however, that the danger lays not so much in the feeling of having to change their image, but in the easiness it is to do so. The feeling to change their image is already there even in real life (experiences). For example trying to fit into certain groups in high school; many teens try to change their image. But the problem is that social sites have allowed these teens to change their image more easily, which is the danger. One day they can be one person and the next day, someone completely different. Like you said how do we know what’s real.
I like the fact that you focus on an interesting aspect of the text, but you need to give a more complete summary first.
I think you provide a valid statement at the end of your post when you explain that methods we used to use as escapes from reality have been placed online (like Facebook) with the same intent. But in reality Facebook and other social media websites only create more stress in young people’s lives. You stated that “The danger, to [you], lies within the fact that young boys and girls feel the need to change their image because they’re concerned with how others perceive them”. I think that this is a very important observation. People no longer self analyze to make themselves better human beings, they self analyze in order to make themselves appear to be the most attractive, smartest, most popular person online. This is dangerous because it creates a generation fixed on superficial ideals instead of moral improvement.