Self Expression, the Internet, and Risk Taking

By Josh and E.J.

What is this?

• Self expression– How one expresses themselves on social

networking sites.

• Risk Taking– The risk in sharing information

on the Internet.

Private vs. Public

• The Internet is public.

• Can profiles be private?

Generation Gap

• Older generation considers age, political stance, religion, sexual preference to be private

• Younger generation considers these facts to be basic information that doesn’t “give anyone too big a picture.”

Age Gap

• Age differences:– Younger teens use profiles to show off personality– Exemplified by MySpace and noisy backgrounds– “all about me”

Age Gap

• Age differences continued– Older teens use simpler profiles to demonstrate

social connections– Facebook– Friends list is more important

than your personality– About connectedness, not

“all about me”

Oversimplified Options

• Internet forces binary choice on privacy• Contacts are either “friends” or not• Is this an accurate representation of complex

social ties of information and trust?

Online Risks

• Consequences of sharing too much• “stranger danger” & pedophiles• Identity theft

• Emotional vulnerability– Cyber bullying– Hostile commenting by strangers (divorce,

anorexic supporters)

Potential Benefits

• Is this risk worth it?• Useful to have a support network, net good

for the people seeking help

Safety Measures

• Not actually that exposed to complete strangers

• Most social networking reinforces existing relationships

• Just “offline” and “online” no longer “captures the complex practices”

On the Internet

• Many of the previous points center around artifacts from using the internet as a medium– Binary nature of social network “friends”– public/private divide

• The anorexia example defines new possibilities due to the internet, how the younger generations are discovering positive ways to use the internet

Works Cited• (2010a) Bebo.• Boyd, Danah. 2008. “Why Youth Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked

Publics in Teenage Social Life.” Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.• (2010b) Facebook.• Gross, R. and Acquisti, A. 2005. Information Revelation and Privacy in Online Social

Networks.• Livingstone, S. 2008. “Taking risky opportunities in youthful content creation:

teenagers’ use of social networking sites for intimacy, privacy and self-expression.” New Media Society 10(3):393-411

• (2010c) MySpace.• Smith, D. 2009. ‘Web hit touches a chord with anorexics’

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/jan/04/you-tube-sophie-anorexia