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Citation:
boyd, danah. “Why Youth Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life."
Youth, Identity, and Digital Media 
. Edited by David Buckingham. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning. Cambridge,MA: The MIT Press, 2008. 119–142. doi: 10.1162/dmal.9780262524834.119
Copyright:
c
2008 Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Published under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works Unported 3.0 license.
Why Youth Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publicsin Teenage Social Life
danah boyd
University of California, Berkeley, School of Information
If you’re not on MySpace, you don’t exist —Skyler, 18, to her mom
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I’m in the 7th grade. I’m 13. I’m not a cheerleader. I’m not the president of the student body. Or captainof the debate team. I’m not the prettiest girl in my class. I’m not the most popular girl in my class.I’m just a kid. I’m a little shy. And it’s really hard in this school to impress people enough to be yourfriend if you’re not any of those things. But I go on these really great vacations with my parents betweenChristmas and New Year’s every year. And I take pictures of places we go. And I write about those places.And I post this on my Xanga. Because I think if kids in school read what I have to say and how I say it,they’ll want to be my friend —Vivien, 13, to Parry Aftab during a “Teen Angels” meeting
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During 2005, online social network sites like MySpace and Facebook became common desti-nations for young people in the United States. Throughout the country, young people werelogging in, creating elaborate profiles, publicly articulating their relationships with otherparticipants, and writing extensive comments back and forth. By early 2006, many consid-ered participation on the key social network site, MySpace, essential to being seen as coolat school. While not all teens are members of social network sites, these sites developedsignificant cultural resonance amongst American teens in a short period of time. Althoughthe luster has since faded and teens are not nearly as infatuated with these sites as they oncewere, they continue to be an important part of teen social life.The rapid adoption of social network sites by teenagers in the United States and in manyother countries around the world raises some important questions. Why do teenagers flockto these sites? What are they expressing on them? How do these sites fit into their lives?What are they learning from their participation? Are these online activities like face-to-facefriendships or are they different, or complementary? The goal of this chapter is to addressthese questions and explore their implications for youth identities. While particular systemsmaycomeandgo,howyouthengagethroughsocialnetworksitestodayprovideslong-lastinginsights into identity formation, status negotiation, and peer-to-peer sociality.
This work could not have been done without the support of and conversations with numerous peopleand groups. In particular, I would like to thank Peter Lyman, Mimi Ito, Marc Davis, and Cori Haydenfor their advice and unbelievable amount of support. I would also like to thank everyone on the DigitalYouth Project and especially Dan Perkel for sharing amazing insights into teen life. I would also liketo thank Irina Shklovski, Fred Stutzman, Nicole Ellison, and Tom Anderson for long nights spent dis-cussing social network sites and youth practices. Finally, I am forever grateful to the Berkeley School of Information and the USC Annenberg Center for Communications for giving me a home in which tothink crazy thoughts.
 
120 Youth, Identity, and Digital Media
To address the aforementioned questions, I begin by documenting the key features of social network sites and the business decisions that lead to mass adoption, and then seekto situate social network sites in a broader discussion of what I call “networked publics.”I then examine how teens are modeling identity through social network profiles so thatthey can write themselves and their community into being. Building on this, I investigatehow this process of articulated expression supports critical peer-based sociality because, byallowing youth to hang out amongst their friends and classmates, social network sites areproviding teens with a space to work out identity and status, make sense of cultural cues,and negotiate public life. I argue that social network sites are a type of networked publicwith four properties that are not typically present in face-to-face public life: persistence,searchability, replicability, and invisible audiences. These properties fundamentally altersocial dynamics, complicating the ways in which people interact. I conclude by reflectingon the social developments that have prompted youth to seek out networked publics, andconsidering the changing role that publics have in young people’s lives.
Methodology and Demographics
Theargumentsmadeinthischapterarebasedonethnographicdatacollectedduringmytwo-year study of U.S.-based youth engagement with MySpace. In employing the term ethnogra-phy,Iamprimarilyreferencingthepracticesof“participantobservation”and“deephangingout”
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alongside qualitative interviews. I have moved between online and offline spaces, sys-tematically observing, documenting, and talking to young people about their practices andattitudes.While the subjects of my interviews and direct observations are primarily urban youth(differinginage,sex,race,sexuality,religion,ethnicity,andsocioeconomicclass),Ihavealsospentcountlesshoursanalyzingtheprofiles,blogs,andcommentaryofteenagersthroughoutthe United States. Although I have interviewed older people, the vast majority of people thatI have interviewed and observed are of high school age, living with a parent or guardian.There is no good term to reference this group. Not all are actually students (and that rolesignalsidentitymaterialthatisnotaccurate).Vaguetermslike“youth,”“youngpeople,”and“children”imply a much broaderagerange. Forthesereasons, andin referenceto thehistoryof the term “teenager” in relation to compulsory high school education,
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I have consciouslydecided to label the relevant population “teenagers” even though the majority of individualsthat I have spoken with are between the age group of fourteen to eighteen. While strictlyspeaking, there are teenagers who are not in high school, the vast majority of those fourteento eighteen are high school students; I will focus primarily on that group.In examining the practices of teenagers on social network sites, I focus primarily onMySpace. This will be my primary case study, although my discussion of these sites is ap-plicable more broadly; I will reference other sites as appropriate. I should note that priorto studying teen practices on MySpace, I did a two-year ethnographic study of Friendster,another social network site. While it is unlikely that MySpace will forever be the main desti-nation site for teenagers, I use this site because its mass popularity offers critical insight intoparticipation patterns that do and will exist on other sites.Although news media give the impression that all online teens in the United States areon MySpace, this is not the case. For this reason, I want to take a moment to discuss who isnot participating. In 2004, PEW found that 87 percent of teenagers aged twelve to seventeenhave some level of Internet access.
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In a study conducted in late 2006, they found that
 
Why Youth Social Network Sites 121
55 percent of online teens aged twelve to seventeen have created profiles on social networksites with 64 percent of teens aged fifteen to seventeen.
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While these numbers are most likelylow,
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it is very clear that not all high school students participate in online communities thatrequire public content creation like social network sites.Qualitatively, I have found that there are two types of nonparticipants: disenfranchisedteensandconscientiousobjectors.TheformerconsistsofthosewithoutInternetaccess,thosewhose parents succeed in banning them from participation, and online teens who primar-ily access the Internet through school and other public venues where social network sitesare banned.
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Conscientious objectors include politically minded teens who wish to protestagainst Murdoch’s News Corp. (the corporate owner of MySpace), obedient teens who haverespected or agree with their parents’ moral or safety concerns, marginalized teens who feelthat social network sites are for the cool kids, and other teens who feel as though they are toocool for these sites. The latter two explanations can be boiled down to one explanation that Iheard frequently: “because it’s stupid.” While the various conscientious objectors may denyparticipating, I have found that many of them actually do have profiles to which they log inoccasionally. I have also found numerous cases where the friends of nonparticipants createprofiles for them.
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Furthermore, amongst those conscientious objectors who are genuinelynonparticipants, I have yet to find one who does not have something to say about the sites,albeittypicallysomethingnegative.Inessence,MySpaceisthecivilsocietyofteenageculture:whether one is for it or against it, everyone knows the site and has an opinion about it.Interestingly, I have found that race and social class play a little role in terms of accessbeyondtheaforementioneddisenfranchisedpopulation.Poorurbanblackteensappeartobejust as likely to join the site as white teens from wealthier backgrounds, although what theydo on there has much to do with their level of Internet access. Those who only access theiraccounts in schools use it primarily as an asynchronous communication tool, while thosewith continuous nighttime access at home spend more time surfing the network, modifyingtheir profile, collecting friends, and talking to strangers. When it comes to social networksites, there appears to be a far greater participatory divide than an access divide.Gender also appears to influence participation on social network sites. Younger boys aremore likely to participate than younger girls (46 percent vs. 44 percent) but older girls are farmore likely to participate than older boys (70 percent vs. 57 percent). Older boys are twice aslikely to use the sites to flirt and slightly more likely to use the sites to meet new people thangirls of their age. Older girls are far more likely to use these sites to communicate with friendsthey see in person than younger people or boys of their age.
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While gender differences doexist and should not be ignored, most of what I discuss in this article concerns practices thatare common to both boys and girls.Fundamentally, this chapter is a case study based on ethnographic data. My primary goalis simply to unveil some of the common ways in which teenagers now experience social lifeonline.
The Making of Social Network Sites
Although a handful of sites predated it, Friendster popularized the features that define con-temporary social network sites—profiles, public testimonials or comments, and publicly ar-ticulated,traversablelistsoffriends.Launchedin2002asanewfangleddatingsite,Friendsterquickly became popular amongst mid-twenty/thirty-something urban dwellers living in theUnited States. Although some used the site for its intended purpose of meeting potential
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