We currently find ourselves in a society where youth are constantly entranced by social network sites that allow them to connect with others. Danah Boyd writes about this current culture in Why Youth (Heart) Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life, written in 2007 and published by MIT Press. Danah Boyd is currently a Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research, a Research Assistant Professor in Media, Culture, & Communication at New York University, a Researcher at Harvard Law School, a Fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Center, and an Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of New South Wales. As you can tell, she is very involved with the research of social media, along with youth practices, social network sites, and interactions between technology and society.

danah boyd
Source: dialogicalcoffeehouse.com

This paper that she has written is important to her line of research because she has great interest in how youth use social media and how this affects their everyday lives. She starts her paper with a quote by a thirteen year old girl stating how showing off her vacations on a social network site will help her to find people who would want to be her friend by how she presents herself.

In this paper, Boyd attempts to dive into the questions of why social network sites are highly valued by youth and what the content is that they wish to share with others. She does so by talking about the creation of social network sites and how music originally started this revolution of inviting others to be part of a site. She further analyzes the definition of “public” and how this may sometimes be confused when considering social network sites. Currently, Facebook is going through legal issues regarding this “public” issue, because they allow all data and personal information to be public to anyone who wishes to access the information.

Facebook
Source: Computer HelpDesk

It is interesting that these “public” social network sites are also used for private use. In Boyd’s paper, a seventeen-year-old child states that she writes online journals so that she can communicate with friends, without her mother snooping in on their conversations. This seems interesting to me since before Facebook came along, Myspace could be accessed to the public, and sometimes even to people who do not have Myspace accounts. This would allow parents and employers to view one’s Myspace and look at the “private” conversations that others are having on their comment section.

The question that finally arises is why youth feel like they need to use social network sites, such as Myspace. Boyd bluntly states that the root of why teens access these sites is the “power that adults hold over youth” (18).

 “In the United States, the lives of youth – and particularly high school teenagers – are highly structured. Compulsory high school requires many students to be in class from morning to mid-afternoon; and many are also required to participate in after-school activities, team sports, and work into the evening. It is difficult to measure whether today’s high school teens have more or less free time than previous generations, but the increased prevalence of single working parent and dual-working parent households implies that there are either more latchkey kids or more after-school programs watching these kids” (18).

These teens want privacy in a public setting. They feel as though their information and conversations are private because they are not physically surrounded by people, but they understand that others that may or may not know them will also be able to read this information.

There will always be tension between the private and public aspects of social network sites. Currently, Facebook is facing the problem of public access to private messages among friends. Although these messages are not possible for any others to see other than those involved in the message, Facebook has allowed other people, regardless of who they are, to see one’s conversations on their Facebook “timeline,” before a certain time. This has made people very distraught, and now Facebook users must systematically change their settings so that others may not access and see these private messages.

Currently I am a user of Facebook, although not religiously like many others. I use it to a minimal extent because I choose to communicate others in person, however when necessary it is convenient to use social network sites such as Facebook. Since I have also had private messages between friends, I hope that the privacy settings for Facebook will be reconsidered so that anyone will feel comfortable with using these sites.

Why Youth (Heart) Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life