If you're not on MySpace (or Facebook), you don't exist.

In 2005 , at the age of 23, I finally gave into peer pressure and joined Facebook, "only to look at pictures." Now, 4 years later, it is the main mode of communication between many of my friends and me.  A lot has changed in those 4 years. For example, I when I joined, Facebook was only for people with college email addresses, and only certain colleges were included. I was slightly troubled when High Schoolers were allowed to join, but utterly dismayed when it was opened up  to everybody. Especially when my parents (and in-laws) started to join!  Although I am an adult, married, financially independent,  and really not very scandalous, there are things on Facebook that I do not need or want my parents (and later my boss) to see. Because of this, I had to use lots of privacy setting on them.  Most of the stuff  I don't want certain people to see is pictures and comments that other friends post, what danah boyd, in her dissertation, calls "co-constructed"(p. 136) material on my profile. Other things are lived out loud and publicly. As soon as my husband and I got engaged, we rushed home, and "made it official" on Facebook. All of this is to say that although I am not and have never been a teenager on Facebook (or MySpace), I can still easily relate to many teens' situations involving social media and adults.

Social media sites are places to connect (or reconnect) with friends. They are a place to hang out with friends you don't see very often and to continue conversations with friends you see all the time.  And to share with both. Like I said earlier, I joined Facebook solely to look at and share pictures with my friends (specifically, pictures of a cruise we had just been on), but soon after joining, I was hooked, refining my profile, and checking others' to see what they were doing.  Like boyd's teens, I didn't want to let my profile get stale, because I thought this would leave a bad impression (p. 141). But then, like some of the other teens, I decided too much activity gave the impression that I have no life (whether or not this is actually true), and I stopped updating as much.

I refused (and still refuse) to join MySpace for several reasons, legitimate or not. First, because everyone else was dong it, and I was "too cool" (p.194).  Second, (whether this is fair or not) I felt that MySpace was for the less educated (p.202). Third, I felt that Facebook and MySpace serve the same social function, and so once I was on Facebook, I didn't feel the need to join MySpace (p.198). And fourth, I did not want to have to pick my "Top Friends" (p.222), bridesmaids were hard enough!

Although my husband and I are technically grown, independent adults, we still have some of the same teen fears and power struggles with our families, and these are reflected in the way we interact with them on Facebook. Both of us have our parents on the "Limited Profile" view on our Facebook accounts. For me, this means that they can't see pictures that friends have tagged me in and they can't see groups that I have joined or certain applications that I have on my profile. Why? Because our parents still feel the need to confront us and reprimand us on lifestyle choices that they don't agree with. For example,  about a year ago, my husband (who was 25 at the time) posted a comment on a friend's wall, referencing drinking wine. At the next family gathering, his dad pulled us aside to ask us if we drink from time to time, and to warn us about it.  Even in our mid twenties,  we still have to worry about our parents (and extended families) "misunderstanding (p.165) " and "not giving us enough credit (p.247)."

So, what makes a twenty something different from a teen, when it comes to social media and the way it effects our lives, and vice versa? Not much, except for actual society and parent's power over them.  As much as I hide certain things from my parents and other "adults" in my life, the main motivation is to avoid embarrassment and awkward situations.  Teens, on the other hand, have to deal with punishments varying from grounding all the way up the scale. According to boyd, adults seek to restrict teens' actions (both online and offline), because they are afraid of and for them.  "Teenagers are alternately viewed by adult society as a nuisance who must be restricted or an impressionable population who mist be protected; they are both deviant and vulnerable (p. 242)." Parents and schools can control whether a teen has easy access to the internet, which parts, and for how long. Both can punish a teen for "private" material posted on social media sites, like the two girls I mentioned last week (p.261). Although many of us may have bosses or workplaces that don't understand or don't subscribe to social media, much less allow it in the work place, were are still free to use it at home. Although we may not have the time or take the opportunity, as adults we are allowed to go out at all hours to hang out with our friends in public places. Not so for teens, who have curfews, anti-loitering laws, and other restrictions placed on when and where they can hang out with their friends. In many cases, social media sites have replaced the mall and parks as the place to hang out with friends for many teens (p.277). So teens live out their private lives in the "public" realm of the internet, knowing that others can look in, but focusing on their friends.

A lot has changed in the 13.5 years since I was 13.5, but one thing has stayed the same; teens need a place to hang out with their friends, in a social setting, away from school, and as society changes, so will the places they find to congregate.  Adults and teens aren't that different, but in many ways, they are miles apart.

Visibly Invisible

When I was 13 years old, I got on my Dad's computer and found my way into a chat room online.  I met people online who would immediately message me "a/s/l" for "Age/Sex/Location," and I realized that online, I could be anything I wanted to be. Of course, as a 13 year old girl, what I wanted to be was a 16 year old girl, which nearly got me in trouble with some gross online stalkers who wanted to meet me in real life. 

I've heard more than one story from friends meeting someone from a dating site, only to find out that they were not exactly "as advertised."

The point is, that online, people can be anything that they want to be. And they often are. They can be a different age, sex, race, religion, nationality, etc. all with a little bit of imagination and typing. Lisa Nakamura found that "when [online] users are free to choose their own race, all were assumed to be white. And many of those who adapted non-white personae turned out to be white male users (p. 391)."

According Lisa Nakamura in cybertyping and The Work of Race in the Age of Digital Reproduction, the phenomenon of stereotyping has made its way online into what she calls "cybertyping." Specifically, the word cybertype describes "the distinctive ways that the Internet propagates, disseminates, and commodifies images of race and racism (p.318)." In theory, the Internet could and should  be a place above and beyond race and gender. However, in reality, this has ended up not being the case. Even when race and gender are not specified online, white male is almost always assumed. "One of the symptoms of cybertyping is this convenient 'disappearance of awareness' of American racial minorities, a symptom that 'multiculturalist' Internet advertising and the discourse of technology work hard to produce (p. 327)."   If a certain race is not shoved in our faces, most Americans will not see or think about it, especially online, where that person is not easily seen.

The irony of this is that in today's society we are seen by more cameras and observers than ever before. If you go out in public you can bet that you will be seen by at least one camera. If you run a red light or a tollbooth, you may be sent a picture of yourself in the mail. We are living in a version of Bentham's Panopticon or even Orwell's Big Brother society. Whether or not we are actually being observed at any particular time, there is a chance that we are.  Under the Patriot Act, the government can even check our emails and phone calls if they think we may be doing something illegal.  At the end of his essay, Discipline and Punish, Foucoult asks, "Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons? (p.486)"  The regimented, disciplined, observed way of life, which started in government and prisons has now come to dominate other institutions which effect our daily lives. 

Has this quest for discipline and observation reached into our homes though the internet?  I have already suggested that the government can monitor communications if it thinks that you are a terrorist, but what about more daily regiments online for the "regular" user?  

On the way home from work the other day, I heard a familiar story. A couple of teenage girls took some provocative pictures over Summer break and put them on their MySpace pages.  Someone at the school started passing the pictures around, and now the girls are suspended from participation in sports and have to make a public apology. These girls did something (questionable or not) on their own time in their own homes, but the act of putting pictures of the event online made them a part of the public system and subject to its rules. The sports team at those girls' school has rules about behavior both inside and outside of the classroom.  Their actions became known and punishable because of the publicness of people's lives now on the internet. The system can now reach into our lives like never before and change them for better or worse.

With all of the positive things that the internet can bring: organization, communication, digitization, and more, it is far from a perfect place. It is not accessible to everyone. The poor and many minorities have not seen the saturation that white middle class America has.  But even if and when that saturation does catch up as did television, the internet may still not be as diverse or equal as people might think. "Mainstream film and television depicts African Americans in consistently negative ways despite extremely high usage rates of television by African Americans. Hence, the dubious goal of 100% 'penetration' of African American communities by Internet technologies cannot by and of itself, result in more parity or even accuracy in representations of African Americans (Nakamura, p. 330)." 

Although the internet has vastly changed society in many ways, we still have a long way to go as a culture to catch up in racial equality and in finding a balance of power and privacy.