The "generation" concept is interesting. We had a discussion last night in my New Com Techs and Society class about MySpace/Facebook. My students are grad students, but have gone straight to grad school from undergrad, so they're in their early/mid 20s. They admit being "addicted," but also considered it a juvenile pursuit; they were embarrassed to say they were members of that community.
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. It's the embarrassment factor that interests me. Do teens feel or express no embarrassment about their online socializing? If not, will they come to as they age or are the days of being embarrassed about online socializing over? I appreciate Andrea's comments about the granularity, that it's differentiating amongst online pursuits that is important, rather than online versus offline. I do think though that this is true for adults as well -- adults are less embarrassed or ashamed when they talk about maintaining mailing lists to keep the extended family in touch, for instance, than they are when they talk about, say, spending time on discussion boards with people they don't know offline. For most adults though, the online/offline distinction (false as we net scholars know it to be) is still perceptually salient. If that is not the case for youth, that's really interesting, and does raise the question of whether it's a distinction that will no longer be relevant to anyone in a few years time, or whether they will eventually come to see a difference as they age and the social norms surrounding their interactions evolve accordingly.