[Air-l] teens and myspace

[Andrea Kavanaugh]

...regarding women on the telephone in the early days of diffusion, 
Claude Fischer (1992, America Calling: A social history of the 
telephone to 1940) makes the case that women were often using the 
telephone to *overcome the isolation* that was part of the context of 
being home during the day and not close enough physically to friends 
or kin to visit them in person.  Thus, the telephone more often 
served to keep women socially connected and involved in their 
community (between face-to-face visits and meetings) rather than to 
diminish their participation in community.

At 10:23 AM 3/1/2006, you wrote:
> >
> >I think it is essential to remember that the history of personal media
> >did not start with computer-mediated communication. Avid users of the
> >telephone were hardly stigmatized, were they? Women chatting on the
> >telephone were at least perceived as anything but anti-social
>...
>
>My understanding is that there were actually a lot of concerns that
>women chattering on the telephone would lead to lesser participation
>in their communities/nation/etc. and that in fact the social use of
>the telephone was seen as a threat at the time.
>
>danah's point about reading is a good one too. Certainly there were
>moral panics of sorts surrounding women's reading novels in the 19th
>century.
>
>Nancy
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