Over the last several days I've been working on my chapter about social
networking. In the chapter intro, I'm trying to put together a
discussion about the structural reasons for the rise of social
networks. Naturally, I've been going through danah boyd's treasure
trove of papers dedicated to the topic. She makes many compelling
arguments that revolve around the idea that young peoples' (meaning: teens)
public spaces are increasingly structured and mediated by adults. This
fact means that teens have few spaces (or time) in which to hang
out+explore/define identity without the watchful eye of an adult - or
at least the influence of an adult. She pegs this trend largely to
middle-class suburban teens and makes the point that poor teens don't
have access to public spaces in the first place. [ref. p20]
She summarizes this argument (and some others that she makes in the
paper) by saying that "collectively, four critical forces – society,
market, law, and architecture – have constructed an age-segregated teen
culture that is deeply consumerist but lacks meaningful agency"[p.21]
Thus,
social networks fill this void. They offer non-adult regulated spaces
in which teens can explore identity, socialize, and engage publicly.
And teens can do it from within adult-regulated places (eg:
home, school). She wraps up by stressing the importance of 'publics' to
society. A pithy quote: "Publics play a crucial role in the development
of individuals for, as Nancy Fraser explains, “they are arenas for the
formation and enactment of social identities.” By interacting with
unfamiliar others, teenagers are socialized into society. Without
publics, there is no coherent society. Publics are where norms are set
and reinforced, where common ground is formed. Learning society’s rules
requires trial and error, validation and admonishment; it is knowledge
that teenagers learn through action, not theory."[p21].
OK, I
buy it. But I have questions. And I think there might be more at work
here. This theory works for teenagers. But it doesn't do much to
explain the popularity of SNs among older people. What about the 29
year old who logs onto Facebook 3x daily? She owns a home and manages a
team of 5 people at work. I'm sure there's some identity definition
going on, but it's not the driving force behind her usage. She
regulates her own space. She is an adult. She didn't grow up with
social networks, but she loves Facebook. And what if she lives in San
Francisco or New York and has access to coffee shops, art openings,
wine tastings, and a vibrant street life? She's not turning to Facebook
to fill a connectedness void. She's not the poor soul alone in a
sub-division out in suburban Sacramento looking down the street at the
haunting blue flicker of her neighbors' television sets. She's more or
less defined her identity (do we ever finish?), found her place in
adult society and lives in a city with vital and accessible public
spaces. And she still loves Facebook. Why? What are the structural
reasons for her ongoing usage? They're not the same as for the teenager
- and yet, some may also apply to the teenager (just as a subset of the
teens' reasons apply to the 30something). And she's in good company. A
recent study found that over 60% of MySpace users are 25+; 6% of adult
web usage takes place on SNs. Adults spend more time on SNs than
reading news sites. [ref]
As
is often the case, after I take a good many hours thinking through an
issue, I find that boyd has already authored a paper/blog post on the
same topic, so I look forward to finding that probable piece, but in
case it doesn't exist, I'm positing some hypotheses. And still looking
for other authors who have written on the topic. It seems that analysis
of adult social usage (vs. business usage) of SNs is not as hot a topic as youth usage.
10 Minute Friending Fix
Young
adult lives are structured every bit as much as teen lives. Usually
it's the young adult that has structured their life, presumably by free
will. But it's busy - too busy. Wake up, feed dog, read paper, drive to
work, work, lunch at desk, commute home, gym, and maybe a couple hours
for something interesting. There's never enough time to see even the
best of friends - even those who live in the same area. In-person
friending is a matter of constant triage. There's some guilt associated
with triaging friends, but mainly a desire to have more time to spend
with good friends and at least some time to spend with acquaintances
(should they, perhaps, become good friends). SNs allow adults to get in
snippets of friendship. The call with boss is done, spreadsheet
finalized, and in 10 minutes you can get in some good QT friend time.
And you don't have to triage. You can spend 10 minutes updating your
profile, status, and photos - and through this low-effort act,
passively stay in touch with all of your friends.
Low Commitment, High Efficiency Friending
In a minimum of minutes, you can reach out to individual friends and
perform the crucial act of friend maintenance. You didn't need to drive
down to the bar, find parking, get 2 drinks, and come back home - just
to meet up with a friend or two. SNing
is efficient friending. As an additional boon, you don't have to feel
bad about cutting out after 10 minutes. Short time frames are an
expected dimension to SN-based friending (ps. I realize I'm bending the usage of the term 'friending', which has come to mean the act of becoming someone's
friend on a SN). You can cut out of chatting or of updating your
profile with little or no excuse. You just can't put in that kind of
minimal time at a bar. When you go to the bar or to a friend's house
for dinner, you're committed.
It's Not Boring
Online,
there's always something to do. If your chat with a friend starts to
drag, there are photos to tag, videos to browse, Amazon to shop, games
to play, new friends to make. Even the best of friends are boring
sometimes. They talk about their remodel or their kid's poop and for 5
minutes you want to be somewhere else. Online, you can be. You can
engage in a conversation either asynchronously or while multitasking.
Real life is stimulating and can engage all of your senses to the
highest degree,..but it usually doesn't. Hanging out online guarantees
that your mind will be engaged.
It's Highly Controllable
Unless
you're Winston Churchill, you're witticisms often fall flat. Your
friends understand - that's why they're your friends. But wouldn't it
be great to say the right thing all the time? To have that zinger at
the ready? And what about fashion? To be the debonair casual dresser
always in style. Or the hipster with appropriately ironic t-shirt?
Whatever the verbal or sartorial style, identity on SN can be carefully
considered, cross referenced, and researched. While teens may be
exploring their identity, young adults are finding just the right
refinement. Online, time and resources are available to become an
identity perfectionist. For the young adult, the SN identity
complements offline success.
Maintaining Distant Relationships - Sewing Career Seeds
Teens
typically use SNs to build relationships with their proximate peers.
Young adults, on the other hand, often have friend networks that span
states and countries.Anecdotally, the long-time long-distance relationships usually fade in time. In a previous post I quoted Ganz
who said that in-person meetings are the single most important element
that galvanizes activism. The same holds true in ongoing friendships.
But SNs extend fade-time by providing a degree of proximity. You hear
that your old college friend Jan is getting married through her
Facebook status update. You never would have thought to ask Jan, nor
would she have contacted you. Yet, you're now connected as if you were
actually better friends than you are. Or perhaps, you have now become
better friends as a result. I think there's a twofold incentive here
for young adults. 1) Maintaining distant relationships feels good. You
feel more connected. 2) Friends can be useful. Most careers thrive on
real-life social networks. Next year when you're looking for a new job,
Jan may know someone who knows someone and you can call in the favor
without feeling guilty for staying in touch only when you want
something. After all, you are in
touch - you know important things about Jan. You've seen her Hawaiian
wedding and vacation photos. You may have sent her a "congrats" online
greeting card. With a minimum of work, your SN has helped you to sew
the seeds for future career success.
So those are a few types of value that a SN adds to young adult/adult
life (I recognize that I'm talking mainly about post-college career
life and that these values don't apply to every young adult). What are
the structural reasons? If diminishing public spaces is the groundwork
for the popularity of SNs among teens, what's happening with young
adults? A few ideas:
Global Mobile Lives
Decades
ago (and in many other countries) young adults live near their
families. By and large, my generation and those subsequent does not. We
move. We travel to college across the country and settle hundreds of
miles away. Our jobs sometimes take us across the globe. When we're
lucky we take time off to explore foreign destinations. We live
disconnected from the communities that raised us and we miss them. We
miss home. We're nostalgic for the sports teams, the foods, and even
the highschoolers of our teenage years. We meet new people on our
travels. We like them. We want to be their friend. But they live afar
and we don't have the time or money to visit all of these people. Our
social networks were scattered, weakening, and haphazard. The SN makes
these loose ties stronger - we didn't expect that they would ever be
stronger. But with high efficiency friending, we can reach back out to
the acquaintances who may have been otherwise lost. We can reconnect
with family and friends of old. We'd never give up our global mobile
lives - and suddenly we haven't lost so much in deciding to live this
way.
Overscheduling
Just as some teens are overscheduled by their parents, we overschedule
ourselves. We laugh at the French for their efforts to maintain the
35hour work week. If only we could work 35 hours, we'd have a four day
weekend every week. We laugh out of unrequited envy. And yet, we'd
never give up trying to fit it all in. My 30yr old sister wakes up at
5:30am to leadbootcamp in Dolores park, takes the train to Berkeley for
her PhD classes, goes to an afternoon job, babysits in the early
evening (b/c it's the best money around for a starving student), and
then either falls dead asleep or heads to the bar to meet friends. It's
a busy life. SNs fulfill our socialization desires while fitting into
our self-imposedoverschedule.
The Green Movement & Our Precious Moments
Saccharine
Hallmark phrase aside, since time is so precious, every moment must
count. If one moment drags, better to multi-task than let it waste. We
can do this. We were raised on music videos. SNs make our social
interactions more efficient. They free us from all-consuming face to
face interactions (I say "free us" with a light intonation of ironic
cynicism). We love this efficiency. We love thePrius. Leo bought it. It's green. We love green. We hate waste.
SuperSize Friending
The
American obsession with size was canonised by Morgan Spurlock's movie
Supersize Me. The same concept applies to our social lives. SNs give
us more friending.
Despite seeing Spurlock turn pallid as he supersizes, even as we value the
Prius for consuming less fuel, we still believe that more is better.
With SNs, we're able not only to friend more efficiently, but to friend
more widely. While we're not into friend accumulation in the same way
that teens aggregate unknowns on MySpace, we do value a wider network
of somewhatknowns. Supersizing our friending improves our career
horizon while fulfilling our desire to maximize our experiences and
consumption.
These ideas off the top of my head. Must do more
research in this area. If you're reading and have been thinking about
this topic, I'd love to hear what you think - or to be directed to
further writings. There's a whole other argument to be made for the
sequestered suburban young adult. This person's reasons may be similar
to those of the teen. At the same time, teens may experience some of
the lifestyle effects listed above as well as some of the same benefits
from SNs.
References
boyd, danah. (in press) “Why Youth (Heart) Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked
Publics in Teenage Social Life.” MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Learning, Identity Volume (ed.
David Buckingham).
9/9/07: added: a nod to older people in this article: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20227872/site/newsweek/page/0/, but doesn't say a whole lot.