Insider Look: Teenagers “Searching For A Public Of Their Own” 

In her novel It’s Complicated, Danah Boyd comprehensively analyzes a range of topics regarding social media use, including online safety, addiction, inequality, and more. Her validations are clear. Although social media remains prominent in modern society, older generations, especially parents, should understand that social media and technology are inevitable and will continue to be a fundamental resource for teenagers. Boyd also goes beyond the generalizations that claim teenagers are absorbing themselves into social media and instead, broadens her argument by looking exclusively at how teenagers are looking for spaces that cultivate a sense of freedom and belonging. These spaces also help teenagers enhance social communities and engage actively with the world around them. Boyd reassuringly elucidates how teenagers use networked public spaces, such as social media, to reconnect with their peers and consider themselves “being in public and being public. ” To demonstrate the role of this idea in our everyday lives, I decided to acquire different perspectives and opinions regarding how teenagers include themselves in networked public spaces, particularly from those who are the ones directly involved in these specific circumstances.

Nevertheless, in a different situation, I would normally choose people who I think would be cooperative and would rant about how ‘social media affects modern society,’ however, I decided to choose my interviewees based on how much these individuals utilize social media on a daily basis. I also incorporated the element of age range (12-18) to help authenticate similarities and differences that these different age groups sustain. The reason why I chose to include this particular component was essentially to provide variety and diversity in the responses I received from my interviewees based on the personal experiences that each age group had encountered in their life. Personally, the age difference is imperative to consider primarily in this case since middle school teenagers differentiate from high school and college teenagers in the manner in which they have learned to value and use different platforms based on the generation they each grew up in. For younger generations, in this case, middle and high school students, I acknowledge that their mindsets and experiences are now familiarized with social media applications such as “Musical. ly” where individuals are allowed to create their own music video by displaying different hand gestures and lip syncing to a song of their choice. On the contrary, older generations, i. e college students, started using MySpace as their very first social media platform, however, as they became older, these generations adapted to platforms such as Twitter and Snapchat, which are more predominantly used today.

I was very surprised to realize that many responses connected with Boyd’s ideas from her novel in the way that they provide insight on how these ideas can be depicted in real life. The work of Boyd hypothesizes that teenagers use social media platforms as a way to formulate “a sense of self as though they are a part of society. ” (Boyd 206) My fieldwork shows that most of my interviewees believed that there are actually individuals who genuinely like to use social media yet it has simultaneously become a social norm whereas anyone who does not obtain a social media platform is judged or considered an outcast for not “being cool” and standing out from those that own the latest Apple product. One of my college interviewees articulated the motive behind receiving her first digital device, which was because “everyone else has a phone. ” These outside influences would then impact the decision that would change their lives permanently. Boyd asserts that “At first blush, the desire to be in public and have privacy seems like a contradiction” (Boyd 67) which coincidentally, can be seen when I evaluated what my interviewees had to say in terms maintaining privacy and what type of information they made accessible to the public.

One of my high school interviewees mentioned how he posts his “mood” of the day, the food he is eating, and much more, however, he also shed light on the fact that “there is always a limit or an extent to what content is appropriate to post. ” Then he gave me examples of what would be considered ‘inappropriate’, such as someone posting on their Snapchat story of them “drinking and partying all night. ” This interviewee also shared that he puts a huge portion of the day into keeping updated with what is going on in people's’ lives and seeing how they’re doing. ”