After reading Gary Hayes profile I felt he was worth adding to the other ICT experts and commentators I follow through Twitter. I was pleasantly surprised to discover two days later that after exchanging a couple of ‘tweets’ with Gary, he is now following me – a teacher librarian ‘at the coalface’.
With over 300,000 new members joining the existing 500 million Facebook members who upload a total of over 30 billion photographs yearly, it is clear that social networking is here to stay. What is also apparent is that teenagers are particularly drawn to social network sites where the online space can be used to ‘work out identity and status, make sense of cultural cues, and negotiate public life’ ( boyd, 2007, p. 2).
boyd’s research involved the social network ‘MySpace’, whose popularity peaked in Australia around 2006 and was overtaken by Facebook in number of members in April 2008. Whilst teenagers were originally attracted to MySpace through their interest in music, the site began attracting a larger following through ‘social voyeurism and the opportunity to craft a personal representation in an increasingly popular online community’ (boyd, 2007, p. 4). Teenagers were particularly keen to modify and personalise their profiles, which was possible using MySpace. I was aware of my own teenage daughters spending hours trawling around other profiles as they built and continually redesigned their own. It seemed everyone’s pages were distinctly individual, with great care going into projecting the desired image, or ‘impression’. I also saw first hand the drama created by the ‘top friends’ dilemma, where my daughters found continual conflict trying to keep all their ‘besties’ happy when the feature insisted you assigned a ranking to your friends, with those falling below top eight not showing on the profile page.
Whilst Facebook now has more members than MySpace, is it true to say that teenagers also prefer Facebook? How active are teenagers on Facebook, given that the Facebook profile page is impossible to alter or ‘pimp’. Users can add pages, groups, photos and videos but the main template is the same for all. The Facebook friends displayed are random, and change each time you log in. This saves the awkwardness of assigning favourites. Has this helped attract users to Facebook? Anecdotally, my students say it is a big plus.
To increase my awareness of the social networking preferences and habits of the students at my school I conducted a survey covering Year levels 5 – 12. From this data I hoped to learn more about which networks were being used, and the reasons that students chose not to participate. I also asked about the prevalence and perceptions of cyberbullying – particularly in relation to social networks.
The first graph of data shows MySpace vs. Facebook users. It is clear that Facebook is favoured by all Year levels, although the MySpace data has only been collated from 3 year levels so far. Data not displayed here shows that blogging becomes more popular as students are older, the most common sites mentioned being tumblr and Twitter. One site mentioned frequently by upper secondary students was ‘Formspring’. Explanations of its purpose and how it works seem unclear, but since several students commented that they had been bullied through Formspring I have signed up to learn more.
To sign up for Facebook and MySpace participants must be 13 – Year 8 at school in Queensland. Clearly, being underage is no barrier to participating. Having younger students active on sites designed for teenagers and adults brings a raft of extra concerns, such as cybersafety, protecting identity and ethical issues.
Another area that interested me was the reasons students gave for not joining social networks, regardless of these network’s popularity level amongst other students. Boyd describes non-participants as either disenfranchised teens or conscientious objectors. The former group consists of students who have no reliable access to the internet, or have been prevented from participating by their parents. The disenfranchised teens either respect or agree with their parent’s moral or safety concerns, feel they aren’t ‘cool’ enough to join in, or feel they are ‘too cool’ to take part (boyd, 2007, p3.). My surveys turned up interesting results.
The graph below show the different year levels and the % of students not involved in social networking.
The next graph shows the reasons for their lack of participation – bright red indicates disenfranchised teens and the other three columns denote those who are classified as conscientious objectors.
The vast majority of our students are 'conscientious objectors'ie they have access but choose not to participate for a variety of reasons.
The graphs show the most frequently cited reason is 'not interested' followed by 'not allowed'.
The ‘other’ reasons given from across year levels included (in order of frequency)
- Safety reasons
- Waste of time
- Too little time
- Can’t be bothered
- Too young
- ‘it’s for people who have no life’
The Head of Secondary has nothing but praise for students who are not active in social networking sites. He feels that the addictive nature of the sites, and the activities and games the students’ take part in steal valuable time from their studies. ‘…kids cannot be on Facebook and follow what’s happening elsewhere when they are trying to do homework and study. It’s almost impossible’ (Head of Secondary, 2010).
The growth and popularity of social networking amongst students means that it is crucial for students to develop behaviours and practices that ensure they are acting safely and ethically, and protecting their privacy online. Schools are beginning to recognise that relying on parents to model and teach cybersafety, digital literacy, and the legal aspects of online participation is unrealistic. The protocols and pitfalls of social networking are complex. For example ‘…many (young people) do not understand that personal information they exchange online is not private; it is stored, it is accessible to strangers and it will always be’ (Kitchen, 2010, p. 16). One of the best ‘Digital Citizenship Continuums’ I discovered was developed by the Living Sky School Division in Canada, and although not Australian based, it contains all of the relevant topics that need addressing. The continuum can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/2eh3qsq.
Below is a screenshot of the layout.
The content is organised under the headings of Responsible Use of Information, Safety, Communication, Education and Access. This document would make an excellent starting point at our school for developing a thorough policy that encompasses all aspects of operating effectively online and in social network environments. As an experiment I googled myself using Google Images, and although my name is fairly common, and others with my name promote their photography and marriage celebrant businesses, I found a photo of myself on page 5 – taken from my Twitter account! Not much shocks me any more, but this certainly did.
References
boyd, d. (2007) “Why Youth (Heart) Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics
in Teenage Social Life.” MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Learning – Youth, Identity, and Digital Media Volume (ed. David Buckingham). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Kitchen, T. (2010, July 19). Why the net demands vigilance. The Age, p.16. Also available online at http://www.tinyurl.com.au/wv0
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