Jim Liebelt's Youth Culture Watch

Technology Not Causing Social Isolation: Pew Study

Parents should keep in mind that although the modes of communication have changed since they were teenagers, today's social media platforms (texting, social networking sites, cell phones) are the preferred method teens use to communicate. Pew Internet's new study, though not specifically investigating teens, is a good reminder that technology use in communication isn't creating social isolation. Parents should also consider jumping on the bandwagon, if they've resisted, as it appears that contrary to popular belief, technology actually builds broader social interactions, which means there's opportunity for better communication and connection with their teens.

Contrary to popular belief, technology is not leading to social isolation and Americans who use the Internet and mobile phones have larger and more diverse social networks, according to a new study.

"All the evidence points in one direction," said Keith Hampton, lead author of the report by the Pew Internet and American Life Project released Wednesday. "People's social worlds are enhanced by new communication technologies.

"It is a mistake to believe that Internet use and mobile phones plunge people into a spiral of isolation," said Hampton, an assistant professor of communication at the University of Pennsylvania.
The authors said key findings of the study -- "Social Isolation and New Technology" -- "challenge previous research and commonplace fears about the harmful social impact of new technology."

"There is a tendency by critics to blame technology first when social change occurs," Hampton said.

"This is the first research that actually explores the connection between technology use and social isolation and we find the opposite.

"It turns out that those who use the Internet and mobile phones have notable social advantages," Hampton said. "People use the technology to stay in touch and share information in ways that keep them socially active and connected to their communities."

The study found that six percent of Americans can be described as socially isolated -- lacking anyone to discuss important matters with or who they consider to be "especially significant" in their life.

That figure has hardly changed since 1985, it said.

Source: Google / AFP
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5j4aQ3JneT8Z4Rws7Qd4UqY1FzXtQ

Teens Sue High School That Punished Them for Racy MySpace Pics

I was waiting to see an article along these lines show up, where teenagers end up suing someone or some entity for being punished over sexting...and here it is. I'm sure it's not the first case and I'm sure it won't be the last. In this case, there's no question about what the teens did. They posted racy photos to their MySpace profiles. Those pictures ended up in the hands of their high school's principal. The principal acted in accordance with school policy and punished the girls by not allowing them to participate from fall semester extracurricular activities.

The girls (with the help of the ACLU) have now sued the school and principal claiming that their rights of expression have been violated and that their actions had no effect or impact on the school.

What do you think should happen?

I do believe that some students who have sexted or posted racy photos of themselves on their social networking profiles have been treated too harshly (through criminal prosecution.) But, it does seem reasonable to me for schools to set behavioral expectations that apply to students whether or not they are on campus. Suspension from a semester's worth of extracurricular activities does not strike me as excessive punishment either.

And what might be the result to the broader culture should students who sue win cases like this one?

Two Indiana teenagers have sued their school district after they were punished for posting suggestive photos on MySpace.

The girls, 10th-graders at Churubusco High School in Churubusco, Indiana, say they were humiliated after the school banned them from fall semester extracurricular activities and forced them to apologize to the all-male Athletics Board (composed of varsity coaches). The girls also had to attend three counseling sessions.

The American Civil Liberties Union has filed the proposed class-action suit on behalf of the girls and all present and future students at the school who participate or may participate in extracurricular activities. The ACLU argues the district violated the girls’ First Amendment rights and should not have punished them for activities conducted outside school. The suit names the girls’ high school, school district and principal.

According to the school’s student handbook, the principal “may exclude any student-athlete from representing Churubusco High School if his/her conduct in or out of school reflects discredit” upon the school or creates a “disruptive influence on the discipline, good order, moral, or educational environment” at the school.

The ACLU says the photos were meant to be a joke shared among friends and had “no effect on the school whatsoever.” The girls’ self-expression has been curbed as a result of the school’s activity, the suit alleges.

Source: Wired
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/11/teen-pics/

Teens Think Drinking on MySpace, Facebook Is Real

Teenagers spend lots of time on MySpace, Facebook, and other social media sites talking about what they do. Often that talk is about underage drinking, risky sexual activity, and violence. But does it describe their actual activities, or is it just bragging?

About half of teenagers' social media posts refer to drinking, sex, or violence, according to Megan Moreno, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. That discovery, which was reported earlier this year, left Moreno wondering if all that chatter was reality or trash talk. She's still working on answering that question, but she has found out this: Kids do think that what they see on social media sites is real, and the younger they are, the more they believe it. That's important, because teenagers are powerfully influenced by the behavior of their peers.

"There is good data that if kids think their friends are drinking, they're more likely to drink," Moreno says. "The perception of normal is powerful." Teenagers' behavior also is influenced by seeing behavior on television and hearing about it on the radio and in music. Social media combines those two influences. "Say it's the most popular kid in your school, and they're [pictured] drinking. You might drink to be more like that kid," she says.

Moreno doesn't yet have hard data on how much of the teenage drinking on social media sites is real. She thinks some of it is, some is nonsense, and some is a "gesture of intention"—that is, a teen may be thinking of getting into the drinking scene and is testing the waters by putting up pictures or writing about it. That, she says, is good news for parents who want to know what's up with the kid. It's also a great time to step in.

Source: U.S. News & World Report
http://health.usnews.com/blogs/on-parenting/2009/10/30/teens-think-drinking-on-myspace-facebook-is-real.html

Grudgingly, Young People Finally Flock To Twitter

More young adults and teens — normally at the cutting edge of technology — are finally coming around to Twitter, using it for class or work, monitoring the minutiae of celebrities' lives.

It's not always love at first tweet, though. Many of them are doing it grudgingly, perhaps because a friend pressures them or a teacher or boss makes them try the 140-character microblogging site.

Their slowness to warm to Twitter comes in part from a fondness for the ease and directness of text messaging and other social networking services that most of their friends already use.

While Facebook's audience is aging, Twitterers are getting younger. Internet tracker comScore Inc. found that 18- to 24-year-olds made up 18 percent of unique visitors to Twitter in September, compared with 11 percent a year earlier.

Meanwhile, kids ages 12 to 17 accounted for 12 percent of Twitter visitors last month, about double the proportion of a year earlier.

Source: Associated Press
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jN8nohwnjEFrJLJhKB1JT09cNB9gD9BFN9FG6

Facebook, MySpace Divide Along Social Lines

Talk to students at The Urban School, an elite private high school in San Francisco, and they will tell you that they used to be on MySpace, but not anymore. Facebook is where it's at for them and their friends.

Facebook is taking over more and more of the social networking space in the U.S. It had an estimated 95.5 million U.S. visitors in September, according to marketing research company comScore. MySpace still has a healthy share — around 65.7 million people — but numbers don't explain it all. If you listen to young site users explain their social networking decisions, the story of the two sites gets more complicated.

"No one uses MySpace," says 17-year-old Halie Pacheco, a student at The Urban School. She likes Facebook. "It's safer and more high class," she explains.

"By 'high class' I think she means organized," adds 16-year-old Olivia Block. "With MySpace there's a lot of clutter."

MySpace pages do look busier than Facebook; on MySpace you can customize graphics and music while Facebook is limited to one spare blue-and-white design. The MySpace clutter seems to symbolize something more to these kids. Sixteen-year-old Nico Kurt lays out his view of the MySpace users this way: "It seems trashy to me. The only people who use it are trashy people."

Well, then there must be 65 million "trashy" people, all hanging out on MySpace. Some of them are teenagers who take an art class at a San Francisco community gallery called Southern Exposure. They are Latino and mostly lower-income. They have their own ideas about who uses which social networks. They are all on MySpace and some of them have Facebook accounts, too.

"I have friends who are white," says 19-year-old Diego Luna. "They are my white people friends and they are mostly on Facebook. That's why I use Facebook. My brown people are on MySpace."

Social media researcher danah boyd (she doesn't capitalize) has heard a lot of conversations just like this. She thinks the online social world is dividing up — just like the real world — into neighborhoods.

"Young people — and for the most part adults as well — don't really interact online with strangers," she says. "They talk to people they already know. You have environments in which people are divided by race, divided by class, divided by lifestyle. When they go online they are going to interact in the same way."

Source: NPR
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113974893

Chatting Online Boosts Lonely Teens' Confidence

Hours spent chatting online by the glow of the computer screen doesn't make lonely teens more isolated and unhappy, new research suggests - in fact, it may boost their confidence and self-esteem.

The study flies in the face of previous research and popular notions that a lot of Internet time breeds emotional and social problems, and the results surprised even the researchers.

Maarten Selfhout-van Zalk, a researcher with the youth and society research group at Orebro University in Sweden, says that for teens with few friends and weak friendships, more time spent online is a good thing.

"We found if they chat more, with strangers specifically, they increase in their well-being over time," he says. "They gain positive feelings from that; they actually experience better self-esteem."

He said they expected Internet usage to have detrimental effects on lonely teens who were investing more time in online friendships than real ones. Instead, their research suggests the Internet acts as a social training ground, where such teens can meet people, create support networks and build their confidence and social skills for real-world interactions.

The study is published in the Journal of Adolescence.

Source: Canada.com
http://www.canada.com/health/Chatting+online+boosts+lonely+teens+confidence+study/1968364/story.html

40 Percent of Twitter Messages "Pointless Babble"

My only surprise is that the percentage is so low. By the way, I'm sipping my morning coffee right now from my stainless steel mug. Mmmmm.

Forty percent of the messages on Twitter are "pointless babble" along the lines of "I am eating a sandwich now," according to a study conducted by a US market research firm. Pear Analytics, based in San Antonio, Texas, said that it randomly sampled 2,000 messages from the public stream of Twitter and separated them into six categories.

The categories were: news, spam, self-promotion, pointless babble, conversational and pass-along value. The breakdown was as follows:

Pointless babble: 40.5%
Conversational messages: 37.55%
Pass-along value: 8.7%
Self-promotion: 5.85%
Spam: 3.75%
News: 3.6%

Source: Breitbart.com
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.80c182849ca932a32a5eda49e4fe1b02.3b1&show_article=1

Social Networks: Not Just for Teens Anymore

I remember the uproar a few years back as students complained at the notion of allowing adults on Facebook. But, it seems now that the discussion was SO 2007.

A new study reveals that 59% of all U.S. Internet users, ages 16 - 54, who access the Internet every day or every other day, have a social networking profile somewhere. This is up from 43% in 2008, 40% in 2007, and 39% in 2006. The 16% increase in 2009 from 2008 reflects a trend of significant numbers of adults jumping onto the social netowrking bandwagon.

Source: eMarketer
http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007232

Parents Underestimate Kids' Social Networking Usage and Behaviors

Parents may be unsettled by what their kids are doing on social networking sites, according to a survey recently released by Common Sense Media, a San Francisco advocacy group.

The survey polled 1,013 teens and 1,002 parents. The bottom line: Parents consistently underestimate how much time their kids spend on social networks and how often they engage in risky behavior, such as posting revealing photos of themselves, bullying other kids or hacking into their friends' accounts.

Among the findings:

37% of teens said they used social networks to make fun of other students, but only 18% of parents believe their own angels do so.

13% of teens said they posted naked or semi-naked photos or videos of themselves. Only 2% of parents said their kids have done that.

24% of teens said they signed on to someone else's account without permission, while only 4% of parents said their kids have done that.

28% of teens posted personal information that they normally would not have revealed in public, but 16% of parents said their kids did that.

Source: Los Angeles Times
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/08/teens-on-social-networks.html

For more information on online safety, check out my parenting articles on the topic:
Sexting: A Parent's Guide to Keeping Your Teens Safe

Online Predators: Separating Fact and Fiction

Dismissal In MySpace Suicide Case Could Spark Cyberbullying Crackdown

A federal judge's recent decision to dismiss charges against Lori Drew in the "MySpace suicide" case is already fueling an attempt to enact a new federal cyberbullying law.

"This decision is disappointing, but is a direct example of why we need laws to address new crimes like cyberbullying," Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.) said in a statement issued after the case was dismissed. Sanchez recently proposed a law, the "Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act," that would criminalize online harassment.

Drew, an adult Missouri resident, was prosecuted for allegedly violating a federal computer fraud law by helping to hatch a plan to create a fake profile of a boy, "Josh," who sent messages to 13-year-old Megan Meier. The messages, flirtatious at first, eventually turned hurtful. Megan hanged herself after receiving a final message from "Josh" that the world would be a better place without her.

Sanchez's bill would make it a crime to send electronic communications "with the intent to coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress to a person." The bill would also require that the sender exhibit "severe, repeated, and hostile behavior."

Source: Online Media Daily
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=109153