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

danah boyd's 2007 article “Why Youth (Heart) Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life” takes a look at the reasons why so many teenagers use social networking sites, in what ways are they using these sites, and what implications this has for youth identities. boyd specifically focusses on MySpace use amongst teenagers, with the majority of individuals she interviews for her research being between the ages of 14 and 18. The teenagers interviewed gave a general answer as the reason for using MySpace as “'cuz that's where my friends are” (pg 7) and boyd attributes MySpace's popularity to its support of “sociality amongst pre-existing friend groups” (pg 8).

Apart from “that's where my friends are”, or as in Liam's example of his friend, not being kept up to date with social events otherwise, what reasons do you think teenagers have to join these social networking sites? And what reasons do the conscientious objectors have – is their objection as much a part of their identity as those who do sign up to these sites?

boyd talks about the construction of a MySpace profile as an expression of identity and of making appropriate impressions on their peers. Teenagers can see what is socially appropriate and what details they should put on their profiles by viewing their friends' profiles. One can not only add details about themselves, their hobbies, favourite music, books, or movies, who they'd like to meet, and personal details, but can also change how their overall profile layout looks. All these changes allow teenagers to personalize their profiles to best suit their identity.

It also allows teenagers to learn how to manage impressions – how to “define social situations by using contextual cues from the environment around them.” (pg 12).

Teens want to present the side of themselves that they think their peers will look most favourably upon, and thus create their profile accordingly. They are acting for a perceived audience – who they think will be looking at their profile and thus judging it influences what they display on their profiles.

If you have MySpace/Facebook/etc, do you feel like you've consciously edited your profile in order to seem as, say, cool as you can? Do you feel that because of this aspect – users wanting to be seen in the best light & thus creating their profiles accordingly – these social networking sites are more limiting, rather than the liberating spaces they could be seen as (allowing people to open up to people all throughout cyberspace)?

boyd also discusses teenagers' privacies and publics, and stresses throughout the article the concept of multiple publics, rather than one single public. She concentrates on privacy issues between parents and their children, rather than the importance for privacy for teenagers in order to protect them from online predators, as is a big issue regarding the internet in today's society. However, if you consider the fact that boyd's article focusses mainly on the reasons why teenagers use MySpace and their development of their identity through it, this focus on parent-children privacy can be seen as reasonable as it's no doubt one of the main concerns for teenagers on MySpace, rather than online predators, which seems more of an issue that would concern parents instead.

In boyd's discussions of privacy, she also comments on the fact that what is on the internet is going to be publically accessible and easily searchable, and how this can arise as a problem, such as for university applications, as per her example.

Do you think it's fair, or appropriate, for potential universities or employers to check up people by googling them, or searching for their Facebook or MySpace? Like in boyd's example, their online persona could be entirely different to their professional persona, so is it fair to potentially write an applicant off based on this? Do you think anything you have on the internet could be used against you in such a way? Should it be your own responsibility to ensure there is nothing online that could be used against you, or do you feel that its not right for employers to judge staff on their online interactions and thus one shouldn't have to censor themselves?