Boyd – Why Youth (Heart) Social Networks

Boyd – Why Youth (Heart) Social Networks

This article discusses social networking websites as they relate to teens and other young people. The article focused mainly on myspace, but can be applied to facebook as well. The difference between myspace and facebook was that myspace seemed to be more personalized. I remember learning basic HTML coding so that I could change my myspace layout. I even still remember some of it! (</img src=”” for image, I think #FFFFFF is black or white?) I remember myspace as a personalized page where you can put pictures of all of your favorite bands, movies, and interests.

I liked how Boyd described the concept of a public network with this example, “Thus when I say that I embarrassed myself in public by tripping on the curb, the public that I am referencing includes all of the strangers who visually witnessed my stumble.” I think that it is important to remember that everything you put on the internet is public, and can be found. I think that if you are going to have the profession of a teacher, that you should either not have a Facebook or change your name and keep it extremely private. I do not want my students trying to look me up on the internet and finding pictures of me or any information about my personal life. I know somebody who upon completing her student teaching, added all of her high school students to her Facebook, which is basically just an online log of the fact that she is an alcoholic. I would never do such an unprofessional thing. I also think that it is important to educate students about online privacy as many students tend to overlook the seriousness of sharing personal information over the internet.

Some art making concepts which relate to this article are:

-Web design

-Lesson about sharing information online

-Create a MySpace profile for a famous artist. (art history)

-Identity performance online vs. real world