Jennifer Obee - Social Networking: The Ultimate Teen Guide

Jenna Obee is the teen services librarian for the Standley Lake Public Library of the Jefferson County Public Library system (Colorado). She has served as the chair of the Teen Advocates Round Table, a committee of teen services librarians, and is part of a Teen Advisory Board for librarians. Obee is currently a part of the Colorado Teen Literature Conference planning committee and the Colorado Blue Spruce Book Award planning committee. She has contributed to books, articles, and bibliographies, including More Than MySpace (2009) and The Continuum Encyclopedia of Young Adult Literature (2005).

Its to the point where you can have millions of friends and never leave your house. Bow, age 20

A social media site is any website that allows you to comment, share, like, friend, or otherwise interact with the other members of the site. Social media sites are the ones that let you socialize online with friends or strangers. The most obvious example is Facebook, but social media also includes websites such as YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, wikis, chat rooms, game sites, your school website, ringtone websites, blogs, and much more. Any time that you are interacting with people on a website, doing more than just reading whats on the screen, you are using a social media site.

Social media sites let you socialize with your friends online.

As with any cultural change between generations, people are arguing whether social media is a good thing. Some feel that sitting in front of a computer to socialize is deteriorating teens social skills and ability to communicate. Additionally, there are concerns that teens do not protect their privacy while online, and this is perceived as a serious problem for the future of the generation.

This issue is really about any use of the Internet as well as how culture changes. These are the activities that teens are doing more than adults; therefore, the alarm is in how teens are growing up differently from their parents. The major difference is that teens use the Internet and their electronic devices as tools to live their lives, using them to do things that their parents wouldnt think of. Most adults did not grow up using tools such as the Internet in that way and are therefore not as comfortable with the technology and have not integrated it as completely into their lives.

What Teens Are Saying

I dont know if its a good thing for our society. I mean this is, as far as I can see, where our society is heading and how you reach a mass majority of people. Theres so much emphasis on the online. It seems like everything is there, and sometimes it is really convenient, but I think it might be ruining society too. Ariel, age 18

I think my generations dependence on the Internet is pathetic. Ava, age 16

There are quite a few studies analyzing how teens use social media and how this is changing Western society. Overall, these studies are showing that social media is just another way of communicating and that teens are using it just as they communicate in their real-life interactions. Todays teens have grown up with daily Internet access and are therefore much more comfortable with the technology than previous generations are.

What Adults Are Saying

Far from hampering adolescents social skills or putting them in harms way, as many parents have feared, electronics appear to be the path by which children today develop emotional bonds, their own identities, and an ability to communicate and work with others. In fact, children most likely to spend lots of time on social media sites are... the healthiest psychologically, suggests an early, but accumulating, body of research. Melissa Healy, Los Angeles Times

What Teens Are Saying

The good thing is that you get more outgoing and I think Facebook kind of builds your social side. Priyanka, age 15

In May 2010,

The majority of youth use new media to hang out and extend existing friendships, says another study. The report urges parents to assist their children in using the tools of digital and social media, rather than attempt to block access to them, and it finds that the online world isnt nearly as frightening as parents may assume.

A task force of major players from many social networks as well as nonprofit organizations and universities wrote a report on the online safety of children in 2008. It found that the Internet is a positive and powerful space for socializing, learning, and engaging in public life. Additionally, minors who are most at risk online are the ones who are at risk in other parts of their lives as well.

The Internet can also give you the social interaction you need in a more comfortable setting. Friendships you maintain online can be very powerful. It is easier to say the hard things to people you cant see, so your online friends can get to you know you considerably better than your real-life friends. You also can overcome physical issues such as appearance to make friends as you have never been able to before. Someone exceedingly shy in real life can be gregarious and popular online. That kid who barely speaks in school may be the huge fan fiction, or