[Air-l] teens and myspace

[Andrea Forte]

I'm in the middle of a Facebook study myself right now and one of the
things I find fascinating is the ways that students integrate these new
channels into an "ecology" of communication technologies. For example,
apparently there are things you can say on Facebook in a message that you
can't say in email or IM, and that you wouldn't write on someone's
Facebook wall.

The ways that young people (these are generally late teens) appropriate
communication channels is quite nuanced. It occurs to me that "online" or
"the Internet" may not be the appropriate level of granularity here.

			-Andrea Forte (aforte at cc.gatech.edu)

On Tue, 28 Feb 2006, Andrea Kavanaugh wrote:

> 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/
>