check out danah boyd's research

So this post is about a study/speech that I wanted to use for the Pew report assignment but I wasn't sure if it was statistics-laden enough. I figured I should write about it anyway.

The woman who gave this speech/performed the research is really awesome. A friend turned me on to danah boyd's work a handful of months ago and I like what she's doing. She focuses on how teens use the internet and social networking to socialize and how it reflects their real life interactions.

I got really pumped when I saw this article on the root (an off-shoot of one of my top 3 sites, slate) because i saw danah's name.

what i gather from essays i've read by danah boyd is that the online social networks are often reflective of what the teens are trying to project in real life (meatspace) social circles. her argument with this research is that the same class and racial segregation that occurs in the cafeteria and study hall occurs online on myspace/facebook. she says in the root interview: "[Social media] is their hanging out after school. It reflects all kinds of things back at us that mirror and magnify what we like to pretend doesn’t exist."

and it's not just saying that only one race has a significant presence on one site and a different race has a significant presence on another site. she also looks at friending trends. online, as in real life, she has found a lot of segregation.

i have a 14 year-old niece and i keep a pretty vigilant watch over her myspace and facebook pages. it is smack-you-in-the-face clear that teens' online identities are a huge part of their real life identities. she is constantly begging for picture comments and posts about 7 versions of the same photo. she broadcasts who her best friend is that week and what boy she's in love with.

i think the research danah boyd is performing is really relevant and useful. this is a whole new animal for parents of teens to deal with, what with cyberbullying and cyberpervs and predators. since parents of today's teenagers didn't grow up with the internet, let alone facebook, they need all the insight they can get.