"OMG - It's Over!?"

The final post – I can’t believe it has come to this already!! There has been so much to say, and so little space to say it all, so hopefully those who haven’t read everything I’ve read over the past 6 weeks have been able to keep up!

With this post, I wish to not only summarise what I have said so far, but to also attempt to draw some conclusions as to what my research has discovered about teenage girls and their identities online.

So, a brief recap: through the use of Web 2.0 applications, such as MySpace, teenage girls are able to create and control an online presentation of their self, and can manage the impressions others form of them more easily through this medium than in face-to-face interactions. These profiles and online identities can also be considered to be ‘liquid’, in that they can, and are prone to, change at the whim of the user, as a result of the liquidity of everything else in a teenage girl’s life. The liquidity of these online identities allows them to ‘try on’ as many different identities and play out different roles, which is imperative for the formation of their identity, as well as for overcoming the identity crisis faced during adolescence, as highlighted by Erikson.

With these profiles, teenage girls post information and photos of themselves, as well as a multitude of other things with which they wish to be identified, in order to create an online version of their offline self. The term ‘wikidentities’ is a useful one, which encompasses both the collaborative nature of teenage girls’ online identities, as they look to others for cultural cues as to what is appropriate, and also the fluid nature of all online content, so that once something is no longer ‘in fashion’, it can be removed from one’s profile. ‘Wikidentities’ is also useful in relation to both Bauman and Goffman, and how their theories apply to teenage girls’ online identities.

This blog has also demonstrated how and why teenage girls use elements such as ‘MySpace Angles’ amongst other things in order to present themselves in the best light, which helps control the impressions others form of them, in relation to Erving Goffman’s work on the presentation of self in everyday life. Additionally, how and why teenage girls change their profiles and identities “as often as they change clothes” (Rich, in Chandler, 2007: 4) was explained with the use of Zygmunt Bauman’s conception of liquidity. Without originally intending to, some of the theory behind how adolescents need to experiment with different identities in order to overcome identity crises as outlined by Erik Erikson has also been covered. "Adolescence is a time when people develop and construct identity and, notably, negotiate feelings of confusion as they straddle childhood and what most would consider some rather 'adult' concerns" (Stern, 2007: 2), and using social networking sites like MySpace can assist in this time of confusion.

There are so many different aspects of this project that have far more detail and information behind them than has been able to be accounted for in the limited space of this blog, as well as many other things that were discovered along the way that could very easily have been included if not for the restrictions. I take comfort in knowing that my behavioural studies honours thesis that will be underway next year will be able to cover these areas much more thoroughly, and delve even further into teenage girls’ liquid presentations of self online.

This blog is in some ways a part of my online identity. I used ‘kirstyleigh’ in the URL (my first and middle names) as it is how I like to identify myself on the internet, and stems from something my friends and I used to do when we first began using Web 2.0 applications (I had to add the –bhs to it because someone had already taken kirstyleigh.blogspot. I had a look at this site, and there was one post made in 2005 and it has never been updated since. Such is the nature of Web 2.0!). The background and layout of this blog are actually quite similar to my now disused MySpace profile, and is quite aesthetically pleasing to me, and also is a reflection of some of my ‘girly’ tendencies. (After some playing around, below is what my blog would look like with the same layout as my MySpace page). 

So I hope you have enjoyed reading this blog as much as I have enjoyed researching and writing it. :)

References:

Chandler, J (2007), 'The virtual generation', The Age, August 14, 2007. First accessed 13 September 2009.

Stern, S (2007), Instant Identity: Adolescent Girls and the World of Instant Messaging, Peter Lang: New York.