I think this Q and A with Danah Boyd and Henry Jenkins about the many very subtle and significant aspects of MySpace should be a must read for any of us that are concerned with the general response that schools are taking and the recenty DOPA legislation. If nothing else, it should give us some great talking points for holding a discussion about the site and the dynamics surrounding it. Here are some of the highlights:
“Youth are trying to map out a public youth territory for themselves, removed from adult culture. They are doing so online because their mobility and control over physical space is heavily curtailed and monitored.”
I know this is a difficult argument for some to accept, that we did this out in the real world and our kids are forced to do it in the virtual world because the real one has become so scary. As a parent of two small kids, I struggle with this as well. When my children get old enough to, say, take their bikes and ride off on their own, how comfortable will I be with letting them go alone? Certainly, when I grew up around here, it was the norm to go and find a game or whatever outside. Now..? There is much more in this interview about this.
“In many cases, schools are being forced to respond to real world problems which only came to their attention because this information was so publicly accessible on the web. Schools are uncertain what level of responsibility they should have over what their students do online – some are worried about what they are doing on library computers and others seek to extend their supervision into what teens are doing on their own time and off school grounds. Much of the controversy has come not as a result of anything new that MySpace and the other social software sites contribute to teen culture but simply from the fact that adults can no longer hide their eyes to aspects of youth culture in America that have been there all along.”
This is an interesting point, I think. As parents, are we just now being confronted with behavior that we didn’t really want to deal with before?
“As a society, we are at a moment of transition when the most important social relationships may no longer be restricted to those we conduct face to face with people in our own immediate surroundings but may also include a large number of relationships which are conducted over vast geographic distances.”
You pretty much have to believe this in order to understand MySpace. And this is a tough one for most. It’s so different from what we’ve experienced. But, as with so many other things that change from generation to generation, who is to say that it is necessarily worse from what we are accustomed to?
There is much, much more…
Thanks for pointing to this. I find myself in a particularly interesting position. I left my job last August in order to go back to school & pursue a teaching certificate full-time. I’m also an independent musician, and have maintained a MySpace site for close to a year as a way of promoting my music.
Now that I’m getting closer to teaching, and starting to substitute teach, the collision of my personal life (which includes a MySpace site) and my professional life (which includes teaching middle school and high school students, many of whom have MySpace sites themselves) is starting to get interesting. I had a student I was substitute teaching last week ask me if I knew what MySpace was, and I said that I did. He asked if I had one, and without thinking through the consequences fully, I said that I did. He immediately asked me if I would addd him as a friend!
After giving it some thought, I come to the conclusion that there’s no way I put myself in that position, so I won’t add the student as a “friend” in my MySpace list. My thinking is that doing so would imply a relationship quite different from the teacher-student relationship that exists already. My personal site, and that of my record label, exists as publicly accessible information and, since anyone could view them, does not imply any relationship.
Still, it’s tricky ground, and I have a feeling the issues surrounding it won’t get any easier.
“our kids are forced to do it in the virtual world because the real one has become so scary.” Really? What are you afraid is going to happen? Anything that’s actually more likely, statistically, than it was in the 60’s?
Right, Tom. Statistically, we live in one of the safest times ever. There is less of a chance of abduction these days than in the 60s. That being said, the media has saturated the airwaves with over reporting of these terrible, isolated incidents, that we think there are monsters at every turn. So I agree, the reality is much better than the perception. But that still doesn’t make much difference if my kids show up at the playground and no one else is around…
I understand the stickiness of the collision you speak of Bill. I’ve seen various examples of instructors cloaking their identitiy or deleting their accounts to escape the issue you raise. This is a fascinating subject to me and I think I lean towards thinking the absence of faculty online is a bad thing.
I can’t help but ponder how social networks can be used to better the student-teacher relationship. Dual accounts come to mind, one teacher one personal, but why must we do this? What are the privacy issues under the surface here that keep us from feeling comfortable about participating in social networks with our students?
If one keeps a distance from students in a social network by not befriending them, how does this hurt or help their relationships with adults? How can discouraging an “add me” request, something students place very high value on, encourage or perpetuate an adverserial relationship between students and teachers?
Finally, I think we are an extension of the classroom into a social network space simply by our mere presence. As such, we could be quick to say that our actions online could hinder us in the classroom. But what if we were to look at it as our classroom reflecting upon the social network, that our actions in the classroom bear a positive weight by being encouraged to grow online by simply adding friends?
Will,
Thank you for posting this. We are doing a parent education workshop on June 13th at our school. This interview has not only helped me focus the message(s) but it also is the single most intelligent discussion of social networking I’ve seen yet. I intend to distribute copies at the session (I will request for permission to do so) and make it required reading.
While there is a lot to comment on, the one thing that strikes me is an analogy between personal PC monitoring/surveillance software and district filtering systems. These are technological “solutions” that don’t actually address the root problems. Let’s face facts: sadly, it’s easier for some people to install a piece of software than it is for them to have a meaningful conversation with their child … just as it’s easier (and perhaps less expensive) for a district to install a filter than it is to develop and implement a comprehensive internet safety curriculum.
I am extremely fortunate to work in a district that “gets it” in a community with parents who are largely now also “getting it.” Our workshop will hopefully keep things moving in the right direction.
The ‘governing philosophy’ near the end of the document (five points) is extremely powerful and in itself quite enough for some adults to digest in one sitting.
I’ll close with this thought. Ronald Regan is widely (mis)quoted as having said “Trust … but verify.” (See: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ronald_Reagan). To me, that is the real benefit of monitoring software in the home. You should HAVE the conversations with your kids and EDUCATE them as to the dangers, TRAIN them how to be safe online … and then … TRUST. But also VERIFY!
-kj-