Nancy Baym wrote:
Is Facebooking just another thing that "kids" grow out of? JS
This adds a whole other dimension to the issue -- for instance, many of the students I interviewed described instant messaging disdainfully as "so teenage" and were proud of themselves for maturing enough to use it less, which I think sheds a different light on recent findings that young people are using IM and not email.
My undergrad seniors in an Advanced Research Methods seminar meet on Monday evenings, and we are working on a facebook study. Last night they were lamenting the announcement by facebook.com that the barrier between high school and college facebook domains is being brought down. Their consensus is that a bunch of high school kids running around among the college crowd, making "friend" requests is going to be the death of facebook. The college crew will move elsewhere to avoid the younger participants. So there's a generational component, a desire for a certain exclusivity, but I wonder if there isn't also a fad component. Facebook is "in" right now. Everyone on campus is doing it. But once it goes mainstream and is no longer a site of campus identity (and, God forbid, once faculty start showing up), it's time for a new fad. -- Mark D. Johns, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Department of Communication Studies Luther College, Decorah, Iowa http://academic.luther.edu/~johnsmar/ ----------------------------------------------- "Get the facts first. You can distort them later." ---Mark Twain