Social networking sites are a vast part of youth’s social life and have big roles in the lives of youths. These social networking sites provide youth with a place to work out their identity and status, make sense of cultural cues, and negotiate public life; it is no wonder why 64% of teens age 15-17 have created profiles on these social networking sites (Boyd, 2007).
When teens were asked why this is the case, the reason tended to be to maintain connections with their friends and to make new ones. Another reason is for pure entertainment; social voyeurism passes time while providing insight into the society around the teens, which can be either good or bad (Boyd, 2007). The main goal for teens on these sites seems to be to look "cool". There are many unspoken guidelines on these sites and the most important one seems to be "You are who you know" because people judge others based on their associations (Boyd, 2007). Therefore teens are on a mission to master these sites in order to get acceptance from their peer groups.
These Social networking cites are typically public in the sense that friends are publicly made, profiles are publicly viewed, and comments are publicly visible (Boyd, 2007). Although, teenagers need their protection on these sites because of their age and vulnerability, a lot of teens already practice safe-guarding their identity, but not for protection from strangers. They tend to change their profile names and their locations to hide themselves from their parents, but they still interact with total strangers, which is not the safest idea.
There are two types of groups that have great interest in the profiles of teens, those who hold power over them and those who wish to prey on them (Boyd, 2007). Those who hold power over them are basically parents and teachers and those who prey on them are stalkers, predators, and marketers. To block these people from seeing their profiles, teens have the option to make their profiles private in order to restrict who can view their profile. They do this by adjusting privacy settings that are available to all users of social networking sites.
Most parents think that sites like MySpace and Facebook are nothing but trouble and they don't want their children doing anything on them. However, youth now-a-days need to access and be a part of these sites in order to mature as adults because of the way times have shifted. If everyone is doing it, you don't want to be left behind, especially while teenagers are developing themselves socially; but an argument can be made that teens are not well prepared to navigate these social sites that deal with invisible audiences (those who access your profile for whatever reason). There is no way of stopping teens from accessing these social networking sites, but as a society, the only thing we could do is figure out how to educate them to navigate these social structures safely (Boyd, 2007). In the end, one fact holds true, public life has become much more visible from what it used to be in the past and everyone must adapt.
