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February 27, 2006
Some more thoughts on MySpace
Technology social scientist danah boyd has published a thoughtful paper on the immense growth of MySpace among teen users. From her paper:
Teens have increasingly less access to public space. Classic 1950s hang out locations like the roller rink and burger joint are disappearing while malls and 7/11s are banning teens unaccompanied by parents. Hanging out around the neighborhood or in the woods has been deemed unsafe for fear of predators, drug dealers and abductors. Teens who go home after school while their parents are still working are expected to stay home and teens are mostly allowed to only gather at friends' homes when their parents are present.
Enter MySpace.
Stephen Abram has also written a post about his take on MySpace. The two key points I took away from his post are the absolute hugeness of MySpace (bigger than blogging) and its acceleration. Libraries cannot continue to ignore MySpace.
February 27, 2006 | Permalink
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Comments
Good for you Sandra! I don't often see teens in our library using it as a social space. There really aren't many places for teens to hang out in our community--the mall, the skate park, that's about it. And kids without transportation, who there are a lot of, find the virtual communities a much easier and perhaps safer place to socialize. It's something I can completely understand.
Posted by: Sarah Houghton (LiB) | February28, 2006
I heard Ms. Boyd speaking on NPR a couple of weeks back. Here's the URL for the show: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5182960
She did talk about MySpace filling the need for teens to have a place where they can socialize. I immediately thought of my branch where we are swamped with teens and pre-teens socializing like crazy every single day. There are still real physical places out there where teen socializing happens and the public library is definitely one of them. Third Space anyone???
Another issue that was mentioned in that NPR program was from a teen caller. MySpace is on the way out - it is "uncool" with the older teens. So with that in mind, we need to be looking for what the new "Big Thing" is. Facebook? hmmm...
I do have a MySpace account for my branch and a couple of other branches from SJPL have MySpace accounts too.
Posted by: Sandra Stewart | February28, 2006
