What my thoughts on the “A article” Why youth Social Network Sites” : The Role of Network Publics in Teenage Social Life.
Young people were logging in, creating, elaborate profile, pubicly articulating their relationship with other participants, and writing extensive comments back and forth. How this process of articulated expression support critical peer-based sociality because by allowing youth to hang-out amongst their friends and classmates, social network sites are providing teens with a space to work out identity and status, make sense of cultural cues, and negotiate public life. Young audiences are avid consumers of music and the cultural that surrounds it. Music junkies loved the fact that they could listen to and download music for free while celebrity watches enjoyed writing to musicians who are happy to response. And My Space allows participants to make their profiles Friend Only. While Facebook gives profile-access only to people from the same school by default.
Another common structural tactic involves the privacy settings. By choosing to make their profile private , teens are able to select who can see their content. This prevents unwanted parents from lurking, but it also means that peers cannot engage with them, without inviting them as friend. Teens face the same dilemma on My Space, with peer pressure and the need to conform to what is seen to be cool.Worse, they are faced with it in most public setting possible one that is potentially visible to all peers and all adults. The stakes are greater on both sides but the choice is still there: cool or lame? And many adults believe that these restrictions are necessary to prevent problematic behaviors or to prevent children from risks of society . While social interaction can and does take place in private environments, the challenges of doing so in public life are part of what help youth grow. Making mistakes and testing limits are fundamental parts of this. We are doing our youth a disservice if we believe that we can protect them from the world by limiting their access to public life. They must enter that arena, make mistakes, and lean from them. Our role as adults is not to be their policemen, but be their guide.
Perhaps instead of trying to stop them or regulate usage, we should learn from teens are experiencing? They are learning to navigate network publics; it is our better interest to figure out how to help them.
“Everything that appears in public can be seen and heard by everybody and has the wildest possible publicity”
