[Air-l] teens and myspace

Tue Feb 28 09:30:16 PST 2006

The "generation" concept is interesting. We had a discussion last night 
in my New Com Techs and Society class about MySpace/Facebook. My 
students are grad students, but have gone straight to grad school from 
undergrad, so they're in their early/mid 20s. They admit being 
"addicted," but also considered it a juvenile pursuit; they were 
embarrassed to say they were members of that community.

Is Facebooking just another thing that "kids" grow out of? JS

On Feb 28, 2006, at 8:45 AM, Nancy Baym wrote:

> My sense if that if it is dependent on all these things, then the
> notion that "kids today" view online interaction as completely
> nonstigmatic is a problematic notion.
>
> I'm not suggesting that youth don't USE all this stuff -- it's
> evident that they do and that they are into it. My 9 year old son
> lives on Runescape whenever he can (playing, for the most part, with
> the playground crowd from his school).
>
> What I am talking about is more like this -- when I interviewed
> college students a few years ago (before they were all "addicted" --
> their own term -- to facebook), the people who rarely used the net
> socially were very happy to say that those who did things like IM
> with roomates were "pathetic." The ones who did IM roomates said they
> did it, but viewed themselves (or at least said they did) as "geeky,"
> "pathetic," and other derogatory terms for doing so. Whether they
> were really stigmatizing their own internet use, or were responding
> to a sense that they *should* stigmatize it I don't know.
>
> Were these college kids the last generation to think there was
> anything wrong with what they did (and enjoyed doing) online?
>
>
>
>
>
>> Don't want to play the killjoy here, but aren't our answers related to
>> [and dependent on]:
>>
>> - age [teen is broad]
>> - technological proximity [demand] and design [offer]
>> - gender [relatively self-explanatory]
>> - size and nature of existing social networks [directly related to
>> Andrea's point]
>> - topic and nature of discussion [soap talk vs. sport talk vs. me 
>> talk]
>> - class [oh, yes, kids form different classes use and think of the
>> Internet, and other ICTs, in different ways]
>>
>> La differance?
>>
>> Cheers
>>
>> Wainer
>>
>> PS My bongo-bongo students seem pretty uncomfortable with online 
>> chats,
>> but well into other electronic mediations [but hey, this is CH1 
>> Britain]
>>
>>>  -----Original Message-----
>>>  From: air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org
>>>  [mailto:air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Andrea 
>>> Kavanaugh
>>>  Sent: 28 February 2006 15:24
>>>  To: air-l at listserv.aoir.org
>>>  Subject: Re: [Air-l] teens and myspace
>>>
>>>
>>>  I think kids are comfortable because they are generally more likely
>>>  to be writing to people they know from face-to-face relationships
>>>  than are adults.
>>>
>>>  At 10:10 AM 2/28/2006, you wrote:
>>>> I have a question for those of you working with youth culture,
>>>> particularly but not just around MySpace.
>>>>
>>>> I have been interested recently by what I perceive as a gap between
>>>> the ways in which most of us *use* the internet socially (ie, often
>>>> without big issues about it) and the way we *think* about using the
>>>> internet socially (ie, a poor substitute for more meaningful
>>>> face-to-face interaction). Recently a number of adults have said to
>>>> me that this gap between action and perception, which they
>>>> acknowledge in themselves, is completely gone with teens, what with
>>>> myspace and all.
>>>>
>>>> My question is whether youth really perceive their online
>>>> communication to be completely non-problematic compared to
>>>> face-to-face communication, or if even amongst teens there is a 
>>>> sense
>>>> that it might be a little pathetic or embarrassing to use the
>>>> internet socially (even amongst those who do). Is the stigma around
>>>> online socializing really completely gone for youth? Of course,
>>>> adults always perceive kids as way better and more comfortable with
>>>> the net than they are, which makes me wonder if this sense that kids
>>>> have no sense of stigma is adult perception vs youth reality.
>>>>
>>>> Thanks for your thoughts,
>>>> Nancy
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> The air-l at listserv.aoir.org mailing list
>>>> is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers
>> http://aoir.org
>>> Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at:
>>> http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
>>>
>>> Join the Association of Internet Researchers:
>>> http://www.aoir.org/
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> The air-l at listserv.aoir.org mailing list
>> is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org
>> Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at:
>> http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
>>
>> Join the Association of Internet Researchers:
>> http://www.aoir.org/
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> The air-l at listserv.aoir.org mailing list
>> is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org
>> Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at:
>> http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
>>
>> Join the Association of Internet Researchers:
>> http://www.aoir.org/
>
> _______________________________________________
> The air-l at listserv.aoir.org mailing list
> is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org
> Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: 
> http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
>
> Join the Association of Internet Researchers:
> http://www.aoir.org/
>

---------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Jamie S. Switzer
Assistant Professor
Department of Journalism and Technical Communication
Colorado State University
Fort Collins, CO  80523-1785
970.491.2239
fax 970.491.2908
jamie.switzer at colostate.edu