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.

I also think these issues are fascinating. A few more thoughts: From doing interviews with young people who frequently use the Internet and Cell Phones, I’m noticing that young people tend not to think of 'online', e.g.as a poor substitute for meaningful face to face interactions, but that they are in the process of integrating the technologies into their lives as different forms of interaction and communication. The opportunities and drawbacks are recognized and appreciated differently depending on who you talk to and their life contexts. Being together in a group was still talked about as a richer and preferred means of hanging out, with IM or cell communication often used to organize these. What communication medium to choose, when to use it, what to say and how to say it, seemed to emerge from the interaction of many different factors, like location (school, home, on the road, etc.), purpose, their relationships with the other people and their own personal preferences. Embarassment seemed to pop up, when the use didn't really "fit" - for example, when the cell phone goes off in class or movie theatre and everybody turns around and looks. It will be interesting to follow, how and if these situations will change. mechthild ********************************** Mechthild Maczewski Interdisciplinary PhD Student School of Child and Youth Care & Department of Computer Science University of Victoria, BC, Canada Nancy Baym wrote:

...

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. _______________________________________________ The air-l@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org

Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/

Sorry for this long response, but there's already been quite a lot to respond to! To Nancy's main point - it seems there IS still some stigma to online interaction that views it as not being entirely "real," even amongst heavy users, but I'm not sure how far down in age this goes. On sites like Friendster or Myspace, people use them emphatically but then often make explicitly negative commentary in their profiles, in testimonials/comments/wall posts, or more subtle commentary through use of ironic emoticons or sarcasm - to show that they *know* that what's online is not their *whole* world, or at least not their whole "REAL" world. I'm thinking of Alice Marlow's paper from AoIR in Chicago and what she called "authentic-ironic" as a kind of Friendster profile: these are people who use the system but for self-presentational purposes, also remain detached from it. Whether this applies to people younger than and equal to teens though, in addition to people in their 20s (my demographic), I'm not sure of. I have a hunch that it does apply to some extent - but if it doesn't, or if it applies less to younger age groups, it can have something to do simply with saturation and integration, as Nancy alluded to somewhere up in this discussion. People in their 20s have experienced life (however long ago it may have seemed, and however distant a way of life it now feels) without the internet, without email, IM, or Myspace. People in their teens and younger, for the most part, have not. I would expect that to have grown up immersed in a technology, rather than constantly working to integrate it, has a great effect on how one then views that technology's relationship to one's daily life and how one compares social interaction with/through it to other forms of interaction. Seems it also has to do with whether there's a sense of how connected online practices are to offline practices. Facebook, for instance, seems to be very connected (rooted, even) to the offline. LJ, probably usually less so. Nancy, you wrote: "Whether they were really stigmatizing their own internet use, or were responding to a sense that they *should* stigmatize it I don't know." I'm not sure there's a difference. If you think you *should* stigmatize it, then it seems it's stigmatized. The point about different applications is critical - for some groups, LJ may not be a "cool" place to hang out online whereas AIM is. Like Starbucks is not, but the mall is. And what you value (as Kevin said) or what your ideologies are (as Joshua said) also depend on your social networks - a particular group of users could think Myspace is cool but (as Demetri Martin so eloquently put it on the Daily Show) Friendster "got kinda gay." So many variables. Also, FWIW, there's much to look at with how Media's representation of new media affects/reflects users' perceptions of it. What other media are young people consuming, and what does that media tell them about internet spaces? (Demetri Martin piece on Myspace, example case in point.) Lauren -- lauren m. squires lx: http://polyglotconspiracy.net cmc: http://sociocmc.blogspot.com

Hi Nancy and others I think the answer to this has to be more nuanced. For an example, my interviews with both families and young people between between 12 and 18 suggest that it depends on the application. For instance, use of chat rooms is thought to be 'sad' due to the suggestion that you have no offline friends of your own to talk to, whilst IM is 'cool' particularly having a large contact list. Also, there's a useful chapter which touches on this in Cyberkids - Sarah Holloway and Gill Valentine, specifically about how young girls may perform gender by positioning themselves as being for/against internet use (if my memory serves). I've seen this in my own research too. Sue -----Original Message----- From: air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org [mailto:air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Lauren M. Squires Sent: 28 February 2006 18:18 To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org Subject: Re: [Air-l] teens and myspace Sorry for this long response, but there's already been quite a lot to respond to! To Nancy's main point - it seems there IS still some stigma to online interaction that views it as not being entirely "real," even amongst heavy users, but I'm not sure how far down in age this goes. On sites like Friendster or Myspace, people use them emphatically but then often make explicitly negative commentary in their profiles, in testimonials/comments/wall posts, or more subtle commentary through use of ironic emoticons or sarcasm - to show that they *know* that what's online is not their *whole* world, or at least not their whole "REAL" world. I'm thinking of Alice Marlow's paper from AoIR in Chicago and what she called "authentic-ironic" as a kind of Friendster profile: these are people who use the system but for self-presentational purposes, also remain detached from it. Whether this applies to people younger than and equal to teens though, in addition to people in their 20s (my demographic), I'm not sure of. I have a hunch that it does apply to some extent - but if it doesn't, or if it applies less to younger age groups, it can have something to do simply with saturation and integration, as Nancy alluded to somewhere up in this discussion. People in their 20s have experienced life (however long ago it may have seemed, and however distant a way of life it now feels) without the internet, without email, IM, or Myspace. People in their teens and younger, for the most part, have not. I would expect that to have grown up immersed in a technology, rather than constantly working to integrate it, has a great effect on how one then views that technology's relationship to one's daily life and how one compares social interaction with/through it to other forms of interaction. Seems it also has to do with whether there's a sense of how connected online practices are to offline practices. Facebook, for instance, seems to be very connected (rooted, even) to the offline. LJ, probably usually less so. Nancy, you wrote: "Whether they were really stigmatizing their own internet use, or were responding to a sense that they *should* stigmatize it I don't know." I'm not sure there's a difference. If you think you *should* stigmatize it, then it seems it's stigmatized. The point about different applications is critical - for some groups, LJ may not be a "cool" place to hang out online whereas AIM is. Like Starbucks is not, but the mall is. And what you value (as Kevin said) or what your ideologies are (as Joshua said) also depend on your social networks - a particular group of users could think Myspace is cool but (as Demetri Martin so eloquently put it on the Daily Show) Friendster "got kinda gay." So many variables. Also, FWIW, there's much to look at with how Media's representation of new media affects/reflects users' perceptions of it. What other media are young people consuming, and what does that media tell them about internet spaces? (Demetri Martin piece on Myspace, example case in point.) Lauren -- lauren m. squires lx: http://polyglotconspiracy.net cmc: http://sociocmc.blogspot.com _______________________________________________ The air-l@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/

Holloway and Valentine are referring to gender in the ideological or performative sense - gender being seen as something you accomplish socially rather than some inherent quality about you. Hence the 'doing' a gender rather than, say, 'being' a gender. It cuts the assumption that one's phenotypal sex (physiology, hormones, chromosomes) is tied directly to one's gender identity. That was oversimplified as anything, but hopefully it helped? Joshua Joshua Raclaw Dept of Linguistics University of Colorado Quoting Andy Roberts <aroberts@gmail.com>: * On 28/02/06, Sue Cranmer <sue@jcranmer.freeserve.co.uk> wrote: * > Also, there's a useful chapter which touches on this in * > Cyberkids - Sarah Holloway and Gill Valentine, specifically about how young * > girls may perform gender by positioning themselves as being for/against * > internet use (if my memory serves). I've seen this in my own research too. * * Please could you explain what is meant in this context by 'perform gender' ? * _______________________________________________ * The air-l@listserv.aoir.org mailing list * is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org * Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: * http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org * * Join the Association of Internet Researchers: * http://www.aoir.org/ *

Thanks Joshua, hopefully that makes what I meant clearer, Andy. Sorry if I was being woolly- just spent a hard day interviewing teens about their internet, mobile phone and computer gaming! Fascinating but exhausting. Sue -----Original Message----- From: air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org [mailto:air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of joshua raclaw Sent: 28 February 2006 21:19 To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org Subject: Re: [Air-l] teens and myspace Oh, I should probably put that more into context. So based on that conceptualization of gender, what the analysis is saying is that the girls are indexing femaleness (or 'performing' a female identity) by adopting a stance that's for or against internet use. Joshua Joshua Raclaw Dept of Linguistics University of Colorado Quoting joshua raclaw <Joshua.Raclaw@colorado.edu>: * Holloway and Valentine are referring to gender in the ideological or * performative sense - gender being seen as something you accomplish socially * rather than some inherent quality about you. Hence the 'doing' a gender * rather than, say, 'being' a gender. It cuts the assumption that one's * phenotypal sex (physiology, hormones, chromosomes) is tied directly to one's * gender identity. * * That was oversimplified as anything, but hopefully it helped? * * Joshua * * * * Joshua Raclaw * Dept of Linguistics * University of Colorado * * Quoting Andy Roberts <aroberts@gmail.com>: * * * On 28/02/06, Sue Cranmer <sue@jcranmer.freeserve.co.uk> wrote: * * > Also, there's a useful chapter which touches on this in * * > Cyberkids - Sarah Holloway and Gill Valentine, specifically about how * young * * > girls may perform gender by positioning themselves as being for/against * * > internet use (if my memory serves). I've seen this in my own research * too. * * * * Please could you explain what is meant in this context by 'perform gender' * ? * * _______________________________________________ * * The air-l@listserv.aoir.org mailing list * * is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org * * Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: * * http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org * * * * Join the Association of Internet Researchers: * * http://www.aoir.org/ * * * _______________________________________________ * The air-l@listserv.aoir.org mailing list * is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org * Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: * http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org * * Join the Association of Internet Researchers: * http://www.aoir.org/ * _______________________________________________ The air-l@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/