Re: [Air-l] teens and myspace

I think it is essential to remember that the history of personal media did not start with computer-mediated communication. Avid users of the telephone were hardly stigmatized, were they? Women chatting on the telephone were at least perceived as anything but anti-social

... My understanding is that there were actually a lot of concerns that women chattering on the telephone would lead to lesser participation in their communities/nation/etc. and that in fact the social use of the telephone was seen as a threat at the time. danah's point about reading is a good one too. Certainly there were moral panics of sorts surrounding women's reading novels in the 19th century. Nancy