Who Doesn’t Love a Metamorphosis Reference? Seriously!
Silberman’s “We’re Teen, We’re Queer, and We’ve Got E-mail” was my first read and I enjoyed it initially from the play on words in the title and the Metamorphosis references. Silberman’s goal was not only to entertain but to garner understanding and sympathy for those teenagers who lived years projecting a perfect heterosexual lifestyle for their families while seeking to explore their true sexual identities and validate themselves online.
However, while the internet brought so many opportunities for youth to find acceptance, this was somewhat like the opening of Pandora’s Box. You could not “unsee” the possible dangers that awaited unsuspecting teenagers who fell into the trappings of predators. This makes me think of my experience teaching high schoolers and college freshmen. I have had students share that they have met people on line and have traveled across the country to meet random soul mates, sometimes ending in situations reminiscent of a Catfish episode. They are far braver than I was in high school.
The same song to a different tunewas my initial thought upon reading Boyd’s qualitative study “Why Youth (Heart) Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life.” Eons ago I imagine most adults, at some point during those awkward teenage years dreamed of attracting that popular boy or girl. We would infiltrate that it crowd by doing this amazingly cool thing or telling this hilariously funnyjoke and the legacy of our high school deeds and iconic love affairs would live on in the minds of our peers forever. Unfortunately for anyone who had to endure their teenage years during the social media age, their high school memories will not replay like an episode of The WonderYears or evoke a sense of nostalgia.
Instead, as Boyd reminds us, social media sites like Myspace and Facebook became playgrounds and parks at a rapidly growing rate in the 2000s and this number increased steadily. There were some interesting facts about social media and teenage usage and I appreciate the objectivity of the study; however, as someone who taught teenagers for 13 years through years of social media, I found some of the qualitative responses to be somewhat controlled, generic, or unlikely.
Or perhaps I am reading this study with more knowledge of their social media behaviors now that it is 2019 and this study is from 2007.
Silberman, Steve. 1994. “We’re Teen, We’re Queer, and We’ve Got E-mail.” Wired Magazine. https://www.wired.com/1994/11/gay-teen/
Boyd, Danah. 2007. “Why Youth (Heart) Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life.” Youth, Identity, and Digital Media. Edited by David Buckingham. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning. MIT Press. 119–142. doi: 10.1162/dmal.9780262524834.119 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1518924
that is an interesting response to boyd’s study– and one worth talking more about, I think. can you point to some specific excerpts that you found less-than-authentic or difficult to believe?
I also remember how crazy it used to seem to say you had made friends on the internet and how scary it sometimes was to make plans to meet them in person. today, it can still be scary but it also seems very normal. online dating and other online meet-up groups are part of how we socialize in the 21st century. it is almost hard to imagine those possibilities ever going away.