As I turn my attention to teens, I can’t help but see the ironies in their identity creation through information communication technology.
“American society has a very peculiar relationship to teenagers – and children in general. They are simultaneously idealized and demonized; adults fear them but they also seek to protect them…youth have very little access to public spaces. The spaces they can hang out in are heavily controlled and/or under surveillance” (414-415) which is why according to boyd, teens are drawn to social media. The idea of networked spaces as ideal places for teens, are made in comparison to the metaphoric “mall”…as the place to be seen in public. The internet allows teens to loiter in the spaces of the internet.
Interestingly, “…what teens are doing with this networked public is akin to what they have done in every other type of public they have access to: they hang out, jockey for social status, work through how to present themselves, and take risks that will help them to assess the boundaries of the social world. They do so because they seek access to adult society. Their participation is deeply rooted in their desire to engage publicly” (415). While hanging out online is all for show of social status, not having online presence can be seen as social suicide.
In a Ryerson mediated presentation about privacy policies and social media by University of Western Ontario professor, Jacquelyn Burkell, the question of our honesty on Facebook is raised. She found there was a common thread of projection on what she calls Facebook insiders (as opposed to the conservatives): who are younger, with larger social capital, lots of usage, lots of pics of them drinking, perhaps a sense of naiveté that they may later regret and reconsider their image. However, she also points out that these images and portrayals are carefully contrived and engineered. They know what they are doing because they post with the understanding that it will be looked at, and as such, they post it to look good.
In understanding and misunderstanding of what our audience, and who are selected audience is, it may seem that we can pick and choose our followers. The reality is, the entire world has access to our online profiles and identities whether we like it or not. While employers can look at a potential hire’s Facebook page, teens argue otherwise that it’s private only to them. But such is the nature of posting online. It’s an unwritten agreement of sharing it with the entire online world.
Burkell also touched on an idea of a “biographical record” as being scary and complicated. As stated, stories are told and re-told. But in re-telling stories, like the game of broken telephone, or embellishments of narrators, things can get misconstrued along the way. Thus, can people misinterpret my online identity thus understanding my real being as something entirely different from what I set out to construct?
samvscomputer 