News for the Week of September 23, 2007
In youth-tech news this week, a look at two views on social networking's place in our culture...
'The Naked Generation'?
"We are the Naked Generation," writes Caroline McCarthy of herself and her peers born in "1980-something." She blogs at CNET that - unlike Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie - "we didn't have 'socialite' already on our resumes, so we turned to the Web." It is "more than just our stage; it's our dressing room, our cocktail lounge and, most notably, our PR department."
The Naked Generation, she adds, is smart and knows it, "so they think they can use online exhibition as an advantage rather than an embarrassment. The word to highlight there is 'think'." A lot of adults reflexively believe her - adults who don't understand the full scope of what's going on in MySpace, Facebook, Xanga, Bebo, and so many other blogging and social-networking sites.
Despite her eye-catching phrase, McCarthy's not actually talking about a whole generation. She's talking about one group of social networkers and bloggers - those who, for whatever reason, are into self-exposure - and one aspect of Web 2.0.
Naked Generalizations
The problem with McCarthy's view and that expressed in a more academic article on online self-exposure - "Virtual Friendship and the New Narcissism" by researcher Christine Rosen - is that they generalize way too much, and fuel parents' fears because they continue to fix our attention on only one aspect of the social Web.
Rosen asserts that "the creation and conspicuous consumption of intimate details and images of one's own and others' lives is the main activity in the online social networking world." Certainly there is over-self-exposure in social sites. Some users do use them as popularity contests, for self-marketing, and toying with lightweight "relationships." But to say those are basically what social networking's all about is a massive generalization because social networking is whatever any user wants it to be. A profile or blog is a reflection of oneself, or whatever persona a user is projecting in a given moment. That can be good, bad, or anything in between, but it's highly individual.
For the bigger picture, see "25 perspectives on social networking," by Malene Charlotte Larsen, a PhD student in psychology and communications at Aalborg University in Denmark.
In other news...
- Teen name calling becomes federal case. This is a story parents and teens should know about because it clearly illustrates how a student's mean comment in a public blog can literally become a federal case. US District Judge Mark Kravitz in Connecticut last week "ruled that Avery Doninger was outside her legal bounds when she used derogatory language on the Internet to describe school administrators," the Hartford Courant reports. Last May Avery, then a junior, called school officials "douchbags" (sic) in a blog post she wrote from her home. After the school stopped her from seeking reelection as her class secretary, her mother filed a lawsuit against two school district official saying they'd violated her daughter's right to free speech. In his ruling, Judge Kravitz said school officials were within their rights because Doninger's writing related to school and was likely to be read by other students.
- Videogames increasingly social. Experts are saying that banning a teen's use of social networking is like banning (or more likely inhibiting) his or her social life. That's increasingly true with videogames too. "People tend to play with friends and family more often than they play by themselves, contrary to the stereotype of the anti-social gamer that stays in their room all day," the Tehran Times (Iran's English-language paper) reports in "7 steps to make videogames good for your kids" (the article's actually a reprint of About.com's Guide to Nintendo Games but illustrates how universal videogaming is). The tips are great - they include: "Buy some active games" (like Dance Dance Revolution or games for the Wii), "buy extra controllers so you can join in," "keep the system in the open," and "don't be afraid [from all the media about violence in videogames]."
- Very connected Oz. A just-released study in Australia found that 90% of Australians have both cellphones and landline phones and 80% have Internet access, mostly broadband, Australian IT reports. According to the study, by Australian Communications and Media Authority, "parents believe broadband is important to aid their children's schooling, and mobile phones were a useful safety aid."
- Hate on the social Web. It's just another example of how the social Web mirrors the "real world," with all that's good and bad in it - not that hate sites weren't a presence on Web 1.0, nearly from the beginning. "The Internet has become both a social gathering place and a pulpit for the current generation of neo-Nazis," the Edmonton Sun reports. It cites experts saying that people have become inured to hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan because of its "more sedate but just as powerful presence on the Web." It takes the forms of white-supremacy forums, blogs, and social sites, such as "a European-American online community for whites that bears an uncanny resemblance to the popular networking site Facebook."
