Danah Boyd's keynote about social networks on Wednesday morning should be exported as mandatory for all library staff and parents. I got a whole new "aha!" understanding of the role of social sites like MySpace and Facebook, and a new appreciation for the place it has in the culture of today's young people.
Kids today have decreased mobility, are not allowed outside like they used to be a generation ago, or are over-scheduled. Their hangouts are no longer the mall, the park, the roller rink - partly due to situations where both parents work and are not available for transportation, or it's not safe to be outside. In order to exist in peer groups, kids have to have an account with MySpace, or whatever social group their friends are using.
Characteristics of social networks are: a profile (compared to a "bedroom", which kids then "decorate" with digital artifacts), articulation of friends (most have 20-50 real friends, but may have hundreds of "friends" from groups like school, church, work, etc.), chat ("social grooming", important to the social ritual), status updates (peripheral awareness of what's going on around you and in your circle of friends.) Kids online are visiting friends, conversing, hanging out, flirting, just as if they were meeting face to face at the mall.
Some properties of online public spaces: persistence - what you say sticks around; replicability - content can be cut and pasted into different contexts, and you may not know if it's original or a copy, or whether it's been modified; scalability - the average blog is read by 6 people. What spreads? Why?; searchability - you can be found by those you don't want to associate with, but you can "hide" by finessing your profile; audience invisibility - public articulation of friends is an attempt to define your audience; collapsed contexts - you know how to behave at church, weddings, graduations, etc. This "scripted" behavior is absent online; public = private - the lines are blurred or nonexistent.
This represents a radical change in the way information is structured and spread. Tagging organizes information in new ways, and contributes to the creation of public knowledge. There is no longer a distinction between consumption and production.
You can take your friends with you, regardless of where you go.
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You can take your friends with you, regardless of where you go.
This is spot-on. And it's not just kids who can't go outside, it's those many many people whose real-life friends and family are flung across the globe for whatever reason. I'm sure most of us have helped a customer who's getting an account of some sort just to see/communicate with/brag about the grandkids!
Danah Boyd is a very compelling speaker; I'm sure a lot of people in the audience changed their minds about social networks that morning, as did I.
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