WHY KIDS ARE ON MYSPACE

On BoingBoing, I found post about MySpace, probably the mose popular teen site among teens in this neighborhood and elsewhere. It’s always interesting to try to figure out what Teen Spirit and his friends are up to. I especially like the point about the lack of access to public spaces for teens to hang out. Ya gotta go to Cyberspace to get some privacy around here.

Posted by Cory Doctorow on BoingBoing: Danah Boyd has
published an excellent paper on the hows and whys of the explosive
growth of teen users of MySpace, the most popular social networking
site ever. Boyd, a high-tech social scientist who has an excellent
track-record for winkling out the important truths behind social uses
of tech. Her clear-eyed work on MySpace talks about the
youth-liberation aspects of the service as well as the response,
situating in history.

Adults with authority control the home, the school, and most activity
spaces. Teens are told where to be, what to do and how to do it.
Because teens feel a lack of control at home, many don’t see it as
their private space.

To them, private space is youth space and it is primarily found in
the interstices of controlled space. These are the places where youth
gather to hang out amongst friends and make public or controlled spaces
their own. Bedrooms with closed doors, for example.

Adult public spaces are typically controlled spaces for teens.
Their public space is where peers gather en masse; this is where
presentation of self really matters. It may be viewable to adults, but
it is really peers that matter.

Teens have increasingly less access to public space. Classic
1950s hang out locations like the roller rink and burger joint are
disappearing while malls and 7/11s are banning teens unaccompanied by
parents. Hanging out around the neighborhood or in the woods has been
deemed unsafe for fear of predators, drug dealers and abductors. Teens
who go home after school while their parents are still working are
expected to stay home and teens are mostly allowed to only gather at
friends’ homes when their parents are present.

Link