Growing (up) on Facebook

In Growing up on Facebook, NYT writer Peggy Orenstein notes the increased use of Facebook by adults, who are posting old photos and connecting with long-lost childhood friends. She wonders about how younger people are using the site and suggests that Facebook's "most profound impact may be to alter, even obliterate, conventional notions of the past, to change the way young people become adults." In general, I think the article is useful in articulating the need for research that explores the impact of these self-presentational opportunities on identity formation, especially among young people who are growing up with, and on, social network sites, although I don't share her concerns.

Orenstein suggests that the connections to one's past resurrected by these sites will hinder, not enhance, identity development. Alternatively, I believe online spaces can be used to forward a vision of self that can serve as a roadmap forward, even with an audience of hundreds. Indeed, this ability to strategically self-present oneself online will be a critical skill (in both professional and personal contexts) for the young people Orenstein writes about. In my work on online self-presentation in online dating profiles, I've written about the ways in which users draw upon their ideal selves when constructing an online representation of self. In one instance, reported in our 2006 JCMC article, a user listed described herself as thinner than she was in "real life" - but then went on to lose weight so as to bring her actual self closer to the self represented in her profile. In these and other examples in the literature, online spaces can serve as a context for experimenting with roles and identities, and thus can enhance the development process. The difference between online dating profiles and Facebook profiles is, of course, the presence of hundreds of "friends" who are presumably acting as a deterrent for blatant mis-representation and, as Orenstein reads it, a tether to one's past life, thus constricting options for growth. I think this concern doesn't acknowledge the ability of younger users to manage their online presence and the extent to which we expect one another to change over time. An alternate perspective could see this expanded social network of people from one's history as a supportive presence that enables individuals to stretch, knowing that they have links to their past should they need them.

A second point: the article focuses on one aspect of these sites, which is to enable self-expression, and only briefly mentions the flip side of the coin: the ability to observe others. It is described in somewhat negative terms (the student who is uncomfortable hearing about the details of a "friend") but as anyone who has spent time with Facebook's series of "Less about this person" options knows, this is an easy problem to solve. The positive side of seeing others is found in the social learning that this enables and the exposure to diverse information and perspectives that it brings. Our JCMC article on Facebook and bridging social capital (which was briefly mentioned in the NYT piece) highlights the potential benefits we receive from being exposed to a larger network of weak ties. For emerging adults, like college students, exposure to different perspectives and new information is likely to be especially beneficial precisely because they are trying on different identities and figuring out whether and how to re-invent themselves. Not all of us have the ability to go away to college, or to move to New York City or San Francisco. For young people without these opportunities, perhaps the exposure to people, ideas, and information that is enabled by these sites can serve an important role in supporting, not hindering, identity development.

Social Network Site vs Social Networking Site

I read with interest the post and ensuing discussion on TechCrunch regarding Facebook's communication about intended uses of the site. Evidently, the PackRat application encourages rampant Friending, even with strangers, prompting the company to explain in an email that "Facebook is a social utility that connects you with the people around you, not a “social networking site.” I don't know whether Facebook is aware of the academic discussions surrounding the distinction between social "networking" sites and social "network" sites, but danah and I purposely use the term social network sites in our JCMC article, and explain the rationale behind our choice. We write:

While we use the term "social network site" to describe this phenomenon, the term "social networking sites" also appears in public discourse, and the two terms are often used interchangeably. We chose not to employ the term "networking" for two reasons: emphasis and scope. "Networking" emphasizes relationship initiation, often between strangers. While networking is possible on these sites, it is not the primary practice on many of them, nor is it what differentiates them from other forms of computer-mediated communication (CMC).

This seems to be very consistent with the distinction that Facebook is making when they say the site is a "social utility that connects you with the people around you." The research my colleagues at MSU and I have done addressing Facebook usage suggests that, at least among the population of undergraduates we study, Facebook is most commonly used to either a. articulate existing relationships or b. develop nascent relationships that are built on some shared offline connection. Although it does happen, we find that it is far less common for these users to friend complete strangers. Additionally, as we argue in a new paper, using Facebook to find out information about weak ties may be beneficial to users in ways that connecting with existing close friends or trying to friend total strangers may not be.

(Thanks, Eszter!)

Some updates

A quick update about some of my recent activities:

• Last March I participated in a session on SNS at iConference in Los Angeles with danah, Fred, and Alice Marwick. I presented some of our work on social capital and Facebook.
• I spoke at my alma mater, Annenberg (USC) in March as well. As part of the Virtual Communities Speaker Series associated with their APOC program, I spent a day speaking with faculty and students. The Annenberg Program on Virtual Communities is a new Master's Program being offered by the school which is innovative in many ways.
• This summer I'll be in Northern California for a few weeks, working and visiting with family here. On Friday I spoke to HP's Social Computing Lab and Tuesday (July 1) I will visit Facebook and present the research I have been doing with Charles Steinfield and Cliff Lampe. I am also planning to speak at a panel on Web 2.0 technologies at the CRA Conference at Snowbird.

I blame twitter

I have been abysmal at blogging recently, and I blame twitter. Now that summer is here, I am going to try to be more active. Fred Stutzman has posted some thoughtful insights about twitter, and I'll echo some of his ideas here. I think the two reasons I have been twittering and not blogging boil down to:
1. Knowledge of who my audience is when I blog
2. Limited amount of text on twitter
Not having a sense of who is reading is disconcerting and makes me less likely to try to fit blogging into an already busy day. Which relates of course to point 2 - the time commitment needed to maintain a vibrant blog seems beyond my capacities at the moment. Especially when it would take time away from actually getting research published. 140 characters is just so addictive and so effortless. On the other hand, twitter posts are ephemeral in two ways - they disappear (for the most part) and don't seem to be indexed by google. Thus my decision to try to maintain both modes of broadcasting, plus the occasional facebook status update, and to focus on the blog as a way to update folks about my activities and engage in pre-scholarship that will lead to published, peer-reviewed research. Wish me luck!

Freakonomics on the Benefits and Pitfalls of Social Network Sites

The Freakonomics blog over at the nyt has posted a set of responses to the question, “Has social networking technology (blog-friendly phones, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) made us better or worse off as a society, either from an economic, psychological or sociological perspective?” My response is there, as are others by danah, Judith Donath, Will Reader, Martin Baily and Steve Chazin.

Overall, I found the range of opinions was surprisingly narrow, with most of us agreeing that the SNSs had both positive and negative potential outcomes depending on how they were used and who was using them. The demonization of SNSs (Myspace abductions and the like) that I expected did not materialize, and many of Chazin’s comments weren’t really SNS-specific, but rather concerns about mediated communication replacing f2f (which have accompanied the introduction of the telephone and every communication technology since).

Two points struck me:

Few would disagree with Will Reader’s claim that “Face-to-face contact is, I believe, very important for the formation of intimate relationships.” I do disagree, however, with his suggestion that college students are using SNSs to manufacture friendship networks before arriving on campus and thus insulating themselves from friends who don’t mirror their beliefs and preferences (similar to the concept of the “Daily Me”). Reader writes, “It might be if, by choosing potential friends via their Facebook profiles, it means that folk cut themselves off from serendipitous encounters with those who are superficially different from them, ethnically, socio-economically, and even in terms of musical taste.” I haven’t seen Reader’s SNS papers as none are publicly available, so this may be true for the population he is studying. But our data suggest that students typically do not use Facebook to meet new people. (This is based on our 2006 survey data as reported in the JCMC article and is reinforced in our 2007 data, which we are currently writing up.) Rather, they use the site to learn more about people with whom they share some kind of an offline connection (e.g., live in their dorm, in the same class). This information-seeking can result in a f2f conversation, a casual friendship, or may go nowhere. Although we haven’t probed the specific case of what students do the summer before they begin college, I think Reader’s concerns about students using Facebook to create social echo chambers before setting foot on campus are unfounded.

Secondly, although I agreed with many of Judith’s points (and love her work on SNSs and other social media), I did wonder about one of her statements: “[SNSs] devalue the meaning of “friend.” Our traditional notion of friendship embraces trust, support, compatible values, etc. On social network sites, a “friend” may simply be someone on whose link you have clicked.”

This echoes a common set of concerns I’ve noticed around SNSs, involving the ease with which SNSs allow individuals to link to others as “friends” and the belief that this will somehow dilute the meaning of this term. As noted by “Stacy” in her comment on the NYT blog, Facebook users we’ve surveyed are very savvy about the wide range of relationships that are described by the term Facebook “Friend.” In fact, we’ve asked users in surveys and interviews about how many Facebook “Friends” they have and how many of these are “actual” friends. Our respondents can articulate how many of their "Facebook Friends" are "actual friends" - about one-third, on average. This suggests to me that

1. Facebook users are able to distinguish between the term used by Facebook to indicate one’s contacts and “friendship” as traditionally conceived.
2. Many of these “non-actual” friends are “weak ties” and thus the source of perspectives, information, and opportunities that Judith and I reference.

This is a small point, though, and overall I thought her summary of the benefits of weak ties as enabled by SNSs was excellent, as were danah's examples of SNSs in action. I also enjoyed the comments by readers, although I'll admit I found a few of them rather crytic.

Facebook Friends

So, word on the street has it that friends lists privacy controls are on the way. I believe allowing Facebook users to specify who has access to which information will allow them to take advantage of the self-presentational opportunities afforded by the site without having to use workarounds, such as a dull, dull profile or rejecting friend requests. Grouping people and then being able to control the kinds of information they have access to makes perfect sense. Unfortunately for me and all the other dozens of FB researchers, all those papers on FB Friending will have to be rewritten, trashed, heavily marked "At the time data were collected...." or otherwise tweaked. If only the academic publishing cycle wasn't so incredibly long! Or the technology didn't change quite so quickly!

Pew Study on Social Media and Teens

Amanda et al. at Pew have released a new report, "Teens and Social Media." As I'm in Kauai with a (sick) 5-month old, I haven't had a chance to read the entire report. I did look through the topline findings and had a few initial reactions.

Overall trend appears to be that more teen users are participating in creating digital media, not just consuming it. As I remarked to the San Francisco Chronicle, I believe being able to successfully engage in online self-presentation is a facet of digital literacy and that these media production skills will be increasingly important as these teens become young adults who will use social media in many aspects of their professional and personal lives.

The report finds that girls are more likely to blog than boys; I see this as a positive development in that it reverses trends articulated almost a decade ago in a AAUW report called Tech Savvy which argued that although more girls were on the train but they "weren't the ones driving." That is, more girls were using software (such as productivity tools), but they weren't "technologically literate" (able to or interested in getting under the hood). However, the Pew report did note that boys were more likely than girls to upload videos - a task which requires more technical skills than posting textual blog entries - so let's not break out the champagne quite yet.

I found it interesting that email was less utilized among this group, but not surprising. Our interviews last spring with MSU undergraduates revealed a similar trend. Email for many of those we spoke with was a more formal communication technology reserved for situations in which its affordances were needed (for instance, sending directions) or for certain kinds of communication, such as with instructors or parents.

According to the report, 93% of US teens are online. I believe this finding should make us attend to those who don't have access more closely. As the digital divide closes, those who aren't online will find themselves in a more precarious situation. As more people come online, more processes and tasks will move exclusively online. For instance, currently MSU accepts print applications although they encourage online applications. But eventually, once the penetration rate is high enough, it makes sense that they won't accept print applications because of the added time and expense required to process them. Obviously, this example is geared towards a teen-aged population, but there are many other examples (e.g., job applications, tax forms, telephone directories, etc.). The 7% of US teens without access to the Internet deserve our attention, as every year without access puts them farther behind their online peers.

A tale of two articles

Last week two mainstream media outlets - the New York Times and the Washington Post - published articles on SNSs. I, like many others, was surprised by the difference in tone and approach. The NYT article,
On Facebook, Scholars Link Up With Data, was a solid overview of a few slices of Facebook-centric academic research and a discussion of related issues, such as IRB concerns. The Washington Post piece, About Facebook! Forward March!, was, on the other hand, a rather cynical, mocking critique of SNS studies, with special vemon singled out for danah boyd (who I adore professionally and personally). I understand the importance of being able to laugh at oneself, and I enjoyed the clever wordplay of the article, but overall I just couldn't get past the cruel, snide treatment of academe in general and SNS studies in particular.