Adolescence is a time for children to move away from parents and express their own pre-adult independence. Filtering self-expression can be a frightening problem for youths and for adults.
Susannah Stern says,
“Cognitively, young people move through adolescence with an increasing preoccupation with how they appear to others. Trying to understand themselves and their role in the greater society (who am I?), Adolescence frequently look to their social world for cues about what principles and traits to internalize, although the mixed messages they inevitably encounter can be bewildering as they figure out which to incorporate.” (Stern, 2008, p.97)
“Cognitively, young people move through adolescence with an increasing preoccupation with how they appear to others. Trying to understand themselves and their role in the greater society (who am I?), Adolescence frequently look to their social world for cues about what principles and traits to internalize, although the mixed messages they inevitably encounter can be bewildering as they figure out which to incorporate.” (Stern, 2008, p.97)
As more and more teenagers are turning to the Web to express themselves, one has to wonder who is providing feedback. Webpages provide the opportunity to create an “online presence” to interact with (counteract with?) daily life. By creating an online self, young people are able to create mass media messages about anything. Moreover, these messages are free, and available to the world at the touch of a keystroke. The Web can be a critical avenue for young people to express themselves freely and without censor – an online double-edged sword.
Let me express why I find this personally frightening. When I am nervous, I try to be funny. It's gotten me into a lot of trouble over the years. In college, my nickname was “Mr. Rude.” Even now in my mid-forties, driving home from a party, inevitably, my wife will comment, “Why did you say that? You really put your foot in your mouth” And she’s right, I can be an idiot. She is my social filter… my censorship board… my vocal coach as I try to hold my uncooperative tongue. Now, transition that to the online level where I post things my wife has banned me from saying in public and what have we got? Trouble for me.
This phenomenon of self-expression is exactly what researchers have been studying with young people’s personal web pages. There must be a “rightness” or “wrongness” within online self-expression that provides feedback with some regularity and in some similar fashion to face-to-face communication. Without feedback, adolescents would fail to receive adequate confirmation for appropriate roles and behaviors (Stern, 2004, p.220)
Do youth receive this type of feedback? How do social cues and filters affect online self-expression?
The research provided by Susannah Stern is already out of date according to my friend Michael Alvidrez. Michael, a techno geek, :) says
“Stern points out that 1/5 of online teens kept a personal website and 19% of those kept a blog. According to a 2010 study conducted by the Pew Research Center, blogging for teens has actually gone down. What is growing rapidly is what they have listed as “micro blogging”. Which are the status updates on social networking sties. 73% of wired American teens us a social networking site, and 8% use Twitter. With technology constantly changing so does you online authorship. Youth aren’t creating webpage’s anymore; they are posting to their Facebook wall.”
“Stern points out that 1/5 of online teens kept a personal website and 19% of those kept a blog. According to a 2010 study conducted by the Pew Research Center, blogging for teens has actually gone down. What is growing rapidly is what they have listed as “micro blogging”. Which are the status updates on social networking sties. 73% of wired American teens us a social networking site, and 8% use Twitter. With technology constantly changing so does you online authorship. Youth aren’t creating webpage’s anymore; they are posting to their Facebook wall.”
Michael provides this resource: http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1484/social-media-mobile-internet-use-teens-millennials-fewer-blog
Michael’s full text can be read at: http://alvidreznmsu.blogspot.com/2010/09/producing-sites-exploring-identities.html
Reflection:Past failures and social faux-pas influence our interactions. My worry is the progressive levels of online faux-pas “fallout” for youth authors – the larger failure due to the larger media audience. Further research should be conducted to understand young people’s reactions to instantaneous critique from online commentors. Research should also address online levels of proximity of commentors to youth authored webpages. Levels might include: 1) school audience – youths that attend the same school as the author, 2) peers – youths that are the same age but whom the author will probably never meet, and 3) everyone out there – people who are not closely connected to the author.
References:Stern, S. (2008). Producing sites, exploring identitites: Youth online authorship. In D. Buckingham (Ed.), Youth, identity, and digital media (The John D. and Catherine T. Macarthur Foundation series on digital media and learning ed., pp. 206). Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Stern, S. (2004). Expressions of identity online: Prominent features and gender differences in adolescents' world wide web home pages. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 48(2), 218-243.
