There are many different perspectives on online social networking. Non-users such often look at and talk about social networking sites from an outsider’s perspective. These non-users are the news media, parents, teachers or other adults. They tend to be primarily critical and they fortify some of prejudices or moral panics that envelop youth’s use of new communication technologies. This is because of a lack of understanding of what online social networking for teenagers really is all about. In this blog I am going to explain how and why teens and youth use social networking as well as how they construct and co-construct their identities online.
Teens use social networking sites to communicate with their existing friends from their school or social environment. They also use the sites to make new friends online that they normally wouldn't have approached, or felt they had a chance to interact with face to face. Teens use these sites to find people to be their online friends, someone to be their "big sibling", a girlfriend/ boyfriend, or just someone to listen to them.
A lot of young people use their profiles to post testimonials about their friends, stating how much they mean to them and how important they are. Most people would not think about expressing themselves that way in real life, but these social networking sites provide them with a forum to do so. When asked why they do this, most teens said that they like seeing those messages about themselves. "It is nice to see what others think of you. I am happy that someone writes about me in their profile. It shows our feelings", as a 15 year old girl in the focus group stated (Larsen 2005). In that sense, these social networking sites are important because they allow young people to develop feelings of self-confidence, which is an important part of growing up and constructing your own unique identity (Larsen, 2007).
Young people also use others as co-constructors of their identity. They want others to know what their friends think of them, this is why they post things on public walls for everyone to see, rather then just sending private messages. Researchers have found comments are mostly positive and seldom negative because there is a reinforcing effect; if you leave a positive comment on someone’s page they are likely to do the same for you and vice versa (Larsen, 2007). Young people urge others for these reinforcing comments often because they seek positive recognition, which helps them form positive images of themselves.
A young person’s online identity is fragmented and socially constructed; they have the ability to totally define who they are (Larsen, 2007). However, "…studies show what young people do and talk about online is very close to their non-virtual lives and friends, for which reason the boundary between online and offline is typically blurred" (Larsen, 2007). Social networking sites do not completely form youth’s identities, but they are more like continuations of youth’s normal lives (Larsen, 2007). Non-users need to consider all of this before they reinforce prejudices’ and judge youth’s online social networking.
