it's complicated

the social lives of networked teens

Yale UNIVERSITY PRESS

Contents

identity

why do teens seemstrange online?

In 2005, an Ivy League university was considering the application ofa young black man from South Central Los Angeles. The applicanthad written a phenomenal essay about how he wanted to walk awayfrom the gangs in his community and attend the esteemed institution.The admissions officers were impressed: a student who overcomessuch hurdles is exactly what they like seeing. In an effort tolearn more about him, the committee members Googled him. Theyfound his MySpace profile. It was filled with gang symbolism, crasslanguage, and references to gang activities. They recoiled.

I heard this story when a representative from the admissions officecontacted me. The representative opened the conversation with asimple question: Why would a student lie to an admissions committeewhen the committee could easily find the truth online? I askedfor context and learned about the candidate. Stunned by the question,my initial response was filled with nervous laughter. I had hungout with and interviewed teens from South Central. I was alwaysstruck by the challenges they faced, given the gang dynamics in theirneighborhood. Awkwardly, I offered an alternative interpretation:perhaps this young man is simply including gang signals on hisMySpace profile as a survival technique.

Trying to step into that young man's shoes, I shared with the collegeadmissions officer some of the dynamics that I had seen in LosAngeles. My hunch was that this teen was probably very conscious ofthe relationship between gangs and others in his hometown. Perhapshe felt as though he needed to position himself within the localcontext in a way that wouldn't make him a target. If he was anythinglike other teens I had met, perhaps he imagined the audience of hisMySpace profile to be his classmates, family, and community—notthe college admissions committee. Without knowing the teen, myguess was that he was genuine in his college essay. At the same time,I also suspected that he would never dare talk about his desire to goto a prestigious institution in his neighborhood because doing sowould cause him to be ostracized socially, if not physically attacked.As British sociologist Paul Willis argued in the 1980s, when youthattempt to change their socioeconomic standing, they often riskalienating their home community. This dynamic was often acutelypresent in the communities that I observed.

The admissions officer was startled by my analysis, and we had along conversation about the challenges of self-representationin a networked era. I'll never know if that teen was accepted into that prestigiousschool, but this encounter stayed with me as I watched otheradults misinterpret teens' online self-expressions. I came to realizethat, taken out of context, what teens appear to do and say on socialmedia seems peculiar if not outright problematic.

The intended audience matters, regardless of the actual audience.Unfortunately, adults sometimes believe that they understand whatthey see online without considering how teens imagined the contextwhen they originally posted a particular photograph or comment.The ability to understand how context, audience, and identity intersectis one of the central challenges people face in learning how tonavigate social media. And, for all of the mistakes that they can anddo make, teens are often leading the way at figuring out how to navigatea networked world in which collapsed contexts and imaginedaudiences are par for the course.

Taken Out of Context

In his 1985 book No Sense of Place, media scholar Joshua Meyrowitzdescribes the story of Stokely Carmichael, an American civil rightsactivist. In the 1960s, Carmichael regularly gave different talks todifferent audiences. He used a different style of speaking when headdressed white political leaders than when he addressed southernblack congregations. When Carmichael started presenting his ideason television and radio, he faced a difficult decision: which audienceshould he address? No matter which style of speaking he chose, heknew he'd alienate some. He was right. By using a rolling pastoralvoice in broadcast media, Carmichael ingratiated himself with blackactivists while alienating white elites.

Meyrowitz argues that electronic media like radio and televisioneasily collapse seemingly disconnected contexts. Public figures, journalists,and anyone in the limelight must regularly navigate disconnectedsocial contexts simultaneously, balancing what they say withhow their diverse audiences might interpret their actions. A contextcollapse occurs when people are forced to grapple simultaneously withotherwise unrelated social contexts that are rooted in different normsand seemingly demand different social responses. For example, somepeople might find it quite awkward to run into their former highschool teacher while drinking with their friends at a bar. These contextcollapses happen much more frequently in networked publics.

The dynamics that Meyrowitz describes are no longer simply thedomain of high-profile people who have access to broadcast media.When teens interact with social media, they must regularly contendwith collapsed contexts and invisible audiences as a part of everydaylife. Their teachers might read what they post online for their friends,and when their friends from school start debating their friendsfrom summer camp, they might be excited that their friend groupsare combining—or they might find it discomforting. In order to stabilizethe context in their own minds, teens do what others beforethem have done: just like journalists and politicians, teens imaginethe audience they're trying to reach. In speaking to an unknown orinvisible audience, it is impossible and unproductive to account forthe full range of plausible interpretations. Instead, public speakersconsistently imagine a specific subset of potential readers or viewersand focus on how those intended viewers are likely to respond toa particular statement. As a result, the imagined audience definesthe social context. In choosing how to present themselves before disconnectedand invisible audiences, people must attempt to resolvecontext collapses or actively define the context in which they'reoperating.

Teens often imagine their audience to be those that they've chosento "friend" or "follow," regardless of who might actually see theirprofile. In theory, privacy settings allow teens to limit their expressionsto the people they intend to reach by restricting who can seewhat. On MySpace and Twitter—where privacy settings are relativelysimple—using settings to limit who can access what contentcan be quite doable. Yet, on Facebook, this has proven to be intractableand confusing, given the complex and constantly changing privacysettings on that site. Moreover, many teens have good reasonsfor not limiting who can access their profile. Some teens want to beaccessible to peers who share their interests. Others recognize thatprivacy settings do little to limit parents from snooping or stopfriends from sharing juicy messages. Many teens complain aboutparents who look over their shoulders when they're on the computeror friends who copy and paste updates and forward them along.

To complicate matters, just because someone is a part of a teen'simagined audience doesn't mean that this person is actually readingwhat's posted. When social media sites offer streams of content—asis common on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram—people oftenimagine their audience to be the people they're following. But thesepeople may not be following them in return or see their postsamid the avalanche of shared content. As a result, regardless of howthey use privacy settings, teens must grapple with who can see theirprofile, who actually does see it, and how those who do see it willinterpret it.

Teens' mental model of their audience is often inaccurate, butnot because teens are naive or stupid. When people are chatting andsharing photos with friends via social media, it's often hard to rememberthat viewers who aren't commenting might also be watching. Thisis not an issue unique to teens, although teens are often chastised fornot accounting for adult onlookers. But just as it's easy to get caught upin a conversation at a dinner party and forget about the rest of theroom, it's easy to get lost in the back-and-forth on Twitter. Socialmedia introduces additional challenges, particularly because of thepersistent and searchable nature of most of these technical systems.Tweets and status updates aren't just accessible to the audience whohappens to be following the thread as it unfolds; they quickly becomearchived traces, accessible to viewers at a later time. These traces can besearched and are easily reposted and spread. Thus, the context collapsesthat teens face online rarely occur in the moment with conflictingonlookers responding simultaneously. They are much more likelyto be experienced over time, as new audiences read the messages in anew light.

When teens face collapsing contexts in physical environments,their natural response is to become quiet. For example, if a group ofteens are hanging out at the mall and a security guard or someone'smother approaches them, they will stop whatever conversation theyare having, even if it's innocuous. While they may be comfortablehaving strangers overhear their exchange, the sudden appearance ofsomeone with social authority changes the context entirely. Online,this becomes more difficult. As Summer, a white fifteen-year-oldfrom Michigan, explains, switching contexts online is more challengingthan doing so in the park because, in the park, "you can see whenthere's people around you and stuff like that. So you can like quicklychange the subject." Online, there's no way to change the conversation,both because it's virtually impossible to know if someone isapproaching and because the persistent nature of most socialexchanges means that there's a record of what was previously said.Thus, when Summer's mother looks at her Facebook page, she gainsaccess to a plethora of interactions that took place over a long periodof time and outside the social and temporal context in which theywere produced. Summer can't simply switch topics with her friends atthe sight of her mother approaching. The ability to easily switch contextsassumes an ephemeral social situation; this cannot be taken forgranted in digital environments.

Because social media often brings together multiple social contexts,teens struggle to effectively manage social norms. Some expecttheir friends and family to understand and respect different socialcontexts and to know when something is not meant for them. Andyet there are always people who fail to recognize when content isn'tmeant for them, even though it's publicly accessible. This is the problemthat Hunter faces when he posts to Facebook.

Hunter is a geeky, black fourteen-year-old living in inner-city Washington,DC, who resembles a contemporary Steve Urkel, complete with ill-fittingclothes, taped-together glasses, and nerdy mannerisms. Helives in two discrete worlds. His cousins and sister are what he describesas "ghetto" while his friends at his magnet school are all academicallyminded "geeks." On Facebook, these two worlds collide, and he regularlystruggles to navigate them simultaneously. He gets especially frustratedwhen his sister interrupts conversations with his friends.

When I'm talking to my friends on Facebook or I put up a status,something I hate is when people who I'm not addressing inmy statuses comment on my statuses. In [my old school], peoplealways used to call me nerdy and that I was the least black blackperson that they've ever met, some people say that, and I saidon Facebook, "Should I take offense to the fact that somebodyput the ringtone 'White and Nerdy' for me?" and it was a joke.I guess we were talking about it in school, and [my sister] comesout of nowhere, "Aw, baby bro," and I'm like, "No, don't saythat, I wasn't talking to you."

When I asked Hunter how his sister or friends are supposed to knowwho is being talked to on specific Facebook updates, he replied,I guess that is a point. Sometimes it probably is hard, but I thinkit's just the certain way that you talk. I will talk to my sistera different way than I'll talk to my friends at school or frommy friends from my old school, and I might say, "Oh, well, Ifell asleep in Miss K's class by accident," and they'll say, "Oh,yeah, Miss K is so boring," and [my sister's] like, "Oh, well, youshouldn't fall asleep. You should pay attention." I mean, I thinkyou can figure out that I'm not talking to you if I'm talking abouta certain teacher.

Hunter loves his sister, but he also finds her take on social etiquetteinfuriating. He wants to maintain a relationship with her and appreciatesthat she's on Facebook, although he also notes that it'shard because of her priorities, values, and decisions. He doesn't wantto ostracize her on Facebook, but he's consistently annoyed byhow often she tries to respond to messages from his friends withoutrealizing that this violates an implicit code of conduct.

To make matters worse, Hunter's sister is not the only one from hishome life who he feels speaks up out of turn. Hunter and his friendsare really into the card game Pokémon and what he calls "old skool"video games like the Legend of Zelda. His cousins, in contrast, enjoy first-personshooters like Halo and think his choice of retro videogames is "lame." Thus, whenever Hunter posts messages about playingwith his friends, his cousins use this as an opportunity to mockhim. Frustrated by his family members' inability to "get the hint,"Hunter has resorted both to limiting what he says online and tryingto use technical features provided by Facebook to create discrete listsand block certain people from certain posts. Having to take measuresto prevent his family from seeing what he posts saddens him becausehe doesn't want to hide; he only wants his family to stop "embarrassing"him. Context matters to Hunter, not because he's ashamed ofhis tastes or wants to hide his passions, but because he wants to havecontrol over a given social situation. He wants to post messages withouthaving to articulate context; he wants his audience to understandwhere he's coming from and respect what he sees as unspoken socialconventions. Without a shared sense of context, hanging out onlinebecomes burdensome.

The ability to understand and define social context is important.When teens are talking to their friends, they interact differently thanwhen they're talking to their family or to their teachers. Televisionshow plotlines leverage the power of collapsed contexts for entertainmentpurposes, but managing them in everyday life is often exhausting.It may be amusing to watch Kramer face embarrassment whenhe and George accidentally run into Kramer's mother on Seinfeld,but such social collisions are not nearly as entertaining when theyoccur without a laugh track. Situations like this require significantmonitoring and social negotiation, which, in turn, require both strategicand tactical decisions that turn the most mundane social situation into a high-maintenanceaffair. Most people are uncomfortable with the idea that their worlds might collide uncontrollably, and yet,social media makes this dynamic a regular occurrence. Much ofwhat's at stake has to do with the nuanced ways in which people readsocial situations and present themselves accordingly.

Identity Work in Networked Publics

In her 1995 book, Life on the Screen, psychologist Sherry Turklebegan to map out the creation of a mediated future that resembledboth the utopian and dystopian immersive worlds constructed in sciencefiction novels. Watching early adopters—especially children—embracevirtual worlds, she argued that the distinction betweencomputers and humans was becoming increasingly blurred and that anew society was emerging as people escaped the limitations of theiroffline identities. Turkle was particularly fascinated by the playfulidentity work that early adopters engaged in online, and with a psychoanalyst'seye, she extensively considered both the therapeutic andthe deceptive potential of mediated identity work.