Social Media- Any Website that allows social interaction
See 2 minute video below (photo above enhanced with SuperLame.com)
SOme Background:
With 500 million users, Facebook is used by 1 in every 13 people on earth (Hepburn, 2011).
75% of US teens have a Facebook account and 90% of teens have some sort of social media presence (Teens and Social Networks, 2010).
95% of US teens are online (Lenhart et al., 2011)
They spend over 2 hours a day online with 80% of that on social media (Teens and Social Networks, 2010).
27% of teens go to Facebook multiple times per day (Greene, 2011) and 51% say they visit at least once a day (Vivo, n.d.).
Online activity still mimics behavior seen in the offline teen world (O’Keefe & Clarke-Pearson, 2011, p.800)
Digital doesn’t replace physical, just enhances it (Boyd, 2006).
“For some teens … social media is the primary way they interact socially, rather than at the mall or a friend’s house,” stated Gwenn O’Keeffe (Marc, 2011).
In teen years, identity production moves from parents to peers / peer pressure.
Adolescents tend to care more about peer opinions than those of adults.
“Their egos are fragile, their beliefs in transition, their values uncertain. They inhabit a rigorous world of consumerism and conformity, of rebellious poses and withering good judgments” (Bauerlein, 2009, p.133).
This is a period to establish relationships, share intimacy, question values, build identity, understand abstract ideas and mature (Mannheim, 2011).
Youth has less access to the public meeting spaces that allow them to meet these development milestones.
Adults control almost areas of teen life: “As a society we seem to allow very little public space for young people; it seems that we would really rather they did not exist” (Jones, 2009, p.30).
Online, teens feel that they are in the ones in control/ recreate a public space online.
Social Networking and Youth Identity section: Jennifer Bowden