"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.

"Who the hell do you think you are!?"

With this week’s post, I had planned on taking an overall look at identity in relation to the other factors I have examined in previous posts. However, after I had begun, I realised that much of it would be better placed in my final post, and also that there were other things that still needed to be said in relation to teenage girls’ identities before that could happen.

I originally hadn’t even considered Erikson’s work as something to explore in this project, as my focus was on Bauman and Goffman, but once I began delving into a more overall look at teenage girls’ identities, it seems almost inevitable. At this point, I’m almost literally smacking myself on the forehead saying “Idiot! Of course!”. So here it goes.

It has been firmly established that adolescence is a pivotal time for identity formation, and during this time teens often face an ‘identity crisis’ (Erikson, 1951; Erikson 1971). It is during this time that

the young adult through free role experimentation may find a niche in some section of his society, a niche which is firmly defined and yet seems to be uniquely made for him…for it is of great relevance to the young individual’s identity formation that he be responded to and be given function and status as a person whose gradual growth and transformation make sense to those who begin to make sense to him (Erikson, 1971: 156).

Erikson also states that

In general, it is the inability to settle on an occupational identity which most disturbs young people. To keep themselves together they temporarily overidentify with the heroes of cliques and crowds to the point of an apparently complete loss of individuality (Erikson, 1971: 132).

SO…

During this critical stage of identity formation, teenage girls ‘experiment’ with different roles and identities in order to find a ‘niche’ into which they can fit once they ‘grow up’, so to speak. Erikson suggests that adolescence is over once, and only once, this identity crisis has been resolved. Nothing has changed for teenagers since Erikson came up with all of this, except the mediums available for this experimentation. Girls now have the internet to help the process. Or does it perhaps hinder the process?

Gross’s research suggests that 51% of participants in their study had pretended at some stage during their internet use, but only 2% of these had “explicitly mentioned wanting to explore a new self or identity” (Gross, 2004: 644). From this, it would seem that teens do not in fact use the internet as an “identity playground” as much as it was first thought. However, this research is directed at identifying teens who pretended to BE someone else, rather than experimenting with different aspects of THEIR identity, and furthermore, many teens would not even realise that what they are doing online is ‘exploring a new self or identity’, and thus would not respond in that way. It is more about experimenting with different aspects of identity, rather than completely different identities.

As has already been established in previous posts, the internet, and in particular social networking sites such as MySpace, provide a space where teens can ‘try on’ different identities and be whoever they want to be. The fluid nature of the internet allows them to not only easily change their ‘identity’ whenever they feel like it, but to also perform it in an environment that allows them to do so anonymously if they wish. The anonymity gives them the opportunity to try out different identities that may not be deemed socially acceptable amongst their immediate peers. As Valentine and Holloway explain, teens “find it easier to take risks with their self-presentation on-line because of the anonymity and privacy afforded by ICT (“no one knows who you really are…)” and also that “ICT gives [them] more control over their identities than do spontaneous face-to-face encounters because they have time to think about what they want to say and how they want to represent themselves” (Valentine & Holloway, 2002: 308). It is these aspects of the internet and social networking sites that assist teens through their identity crises.

However, an article by the Royal College of Psychiatrists suggests that "it may be possible that young people who have no experience of a world without online societies put less value on their real world identities" ('Facebook Generation' Faces Identity Crisis, 2008), which can, so they say, have implications for their well-being. In response to this, it is important to point out that many of the people teens connect with through social networking sites such as MySpace are people they know primarily off-line, and so whatever their online identity may be, it will always be an extension of their offline identity, and very few teens will sever the ties between the two.

The problem of identity has always been around for teenage girls, it’s only their use of the internet to try and solve it that is new. The capabilities of the internet make identity construction and experimentation easier than ever before, and arguably provide teenagers with a powerful and useful tool for overcoming the identity crisis they face in their teenage years.

References:

Erikson, E (1951), Childhood and Society, Imago Publishing: London.

Erikson, E (1971), Identity: Youth and Crisis, Faber & Faber: London.

Gross, E (2004), 'Adolescent Internet use: What we expect, what teens report', Applied Developmental Psychology, Vol. 25, pp. 633-649.

'Facebook Generation' Faces Identity Crisis, Royal College of Psychiatrists (2008), accessed October 16th, 2009.

Valentine, G & Holloway, S (2002), 'Cyberkids? Exploring Children's Identities and Social Networks in On-line and Off-line Worlds', Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 92, No. 2, pp. 302-319.

"Your profile background is sooo five minutes ago!"

Last week, Goffman’s presentation of the self was explored and applied to teenage girls. This week, I will be looking at Zygmunt Bauman’s notion of liquid modernity, and how this concept and its connected ideas can be related to teenage girls’ online identities.


Bauman’s work is fascinating. He uses the metaphor of liquids to describe modern society. According to Bauman, liquids “do not keep to any shape for long and are constantly ready (and prone) to change” (2000: 2), and as such, life in liquid modernity is lived the same way. In Liquid Life, he explains that liquid modernity is “a society is which the conditions under which its members act change faster than it takes the ways of acting to consolidate into habits and routines” (2005: 1) and that “liquid life is a precarious life, lived under conditions of constant uncertainty” (2005: 2). Throughout his work on liquid modernity, the emphasis is on this idea of precarious uncertainty, and the need for the individual to keep up with the constantly changing world – or perish. Bauman also suggests liquid modernity is a society of consumers, and that everything, including identity and relationships, is commodified and treated as something to be consumed.


The teenage girls of today’s society have grown up surrounded by some degree of liquidity. This can especially be seen in the omnipresent technology that they could not bear to live without – almost the moment something is bought it becomes outdated and superseded by something bigger (or smaller) and better. The nature of the Web 2.0 technologies that are a large part of their everyday lives emanate liquidity – content can be, and is, constantly changing, and if you do not keep up with it you will undoubtedly fall behind with no hope of catching up.


Mallan and Giardina (2009) introduce the idea of ‘wikidentities’ to refer to the collaborative nature of identity creation in teens that goes on in online environments such as MySpace, comparing it to much of the content created on Web 2.0 platforms such as wikis.

A concomitant feature of Web 2.0’s ability for connectivity is its enabling approach to identity construction that extends notions of how identity is constructed within language and discourse. The collaborative approach to identity construction undertaken in SNS provides a space whereby an identity is “assembled” by drawing on a diverse set of materials and tools. When an individual or a group constructs an online profile, the resultant “identity” gives a particular interpretation or representation. Consequently, this “wikidentity” becomes a particular, collaborative process that changes according to purpose, context, and form. (Mallan & Giardina, 2009: 2-3)

This approach to understanding identity online assists explanations as to why and how teenage girls are “changing identities as often as they change clothes” (Chandler, 2007: 4). Mallan and Giardina go on to note that the content on girls’ profiles “offer temporary, contextualised accounts of the students at a moment in time. The ephemeral nature of their profiles, which [are] apt to change regularly or be disbanded, is in step with the nature of a wiki which can be changed, edited, culled or replaced” (2009: 5). Teenage girls’ identities online become liquid, temporary presentations, which can be changed, or even deleted, with the click of a button. In her article, Chandler spoke to teenage girls who reflected on their profiles. One stated it “reflects how I feel at a time”, and it was noted that another “changes her profile maybe once a month. It varies with her mood – colourful one minute, starkly monochrome the next” (2007: 6-7). A lot of this change also occurs as a result of changing attitudes and preferences amongst their peer group, which also fit the notion of liquidity.



In a guide for parents, MySpace Unraveled suggests that the profiles of teenage girls “present a self defined in relation to others” (Magid & Collier, 2007: 15) and also a self that is composed partly of who or what they want to be identified with (Mazzarella, 2005). With the proneness to change inherent in the many fashions that apply to the life of a teenage girl, they seek validation from their peers in order to ensure their profile does not ‘fall behind’. The instantaneous nature of the internet grants them greater control over these aspects of their identity. The precarious nature of liquid life that Bauman talks about also applies to teenage girls’ sense of self online. If something on their MySpace profile goes out of fashion, they can, and must, change it immediately, in order to ‘keep up’ with everyone else.

Fashions come and go with mind-boggling speed, all objects if desire become obsolete, off-putting and even distasteful before they have time to be fully enjoyed. Styles of life which are ‘chic’ today will tomorrow become targets of ridicule (Bauman, 2005: 162).

The consuming nature of liquid life not only means that everything is treated as something to be consumed that has a limited useful life, but also that people’s identities are also determined by their consumption. Due to the truly liquid nature of the internet, teenage girls are more able to maintain an acceptable identity online than would be possibly in ‘reality’ - a liquid identity that is temporary are prone to change. This aspect will be discussed further in my post next week, which will examine the notion of teenage girls’ identities online in relation to both Bauman and Goffman’s ideas in order to come up with a more rounded idea of the nature of these identities.

References:
Bauman, Z (2000), Liquid Modernity, Polity: Cambridge.

Bauman, Z (2005), Liquid Life, Polity: Cambridge.

Chandler, J (2007), 'The Virtual Generation', The Age, 14 August, 2007, accessed on 13/9/09.

Magid, L & Collier, A (2007), MySpace Unraveled: A Parent's Guide to Teen Social Networking, Peachpit Press: Berkeley.

Mallan, K & Giardina, N (2009), 'Wikidentities: Young people collaborating on virtual identities in social network sites', First Monday, Vol. 14, No. 6, 1 June 2009.

Mazzarella, S (Ed) (2005), 'Claiming a space: The cultural economy of teen girl fandom on the web', in Girl Wide Web: Girls, the Internet, and the Negotiation of Identity, Peter Lang: New York.

"So like, what's this Web 2.0 thing?" "It's what you're using RIGHT now, and every day..."

What would we do without Web 2.0? For starters, you wouldn't be reading this assignment on your computer screen right now! And I wouldn't be writing it about how teenage girls use Web 2.0 applications to create and re-create their online identities. Despite the inescapable nature of Web 2.0, and the prominence of it in the lives of teens, many are unaware of exactly what it is (Chandler, 2007).

It has been noted that 'Web 2.0' is a rather loose term, evading any strict definitions (Whittaker, 2009; Cormode & Krishnamurthy, 2008). The term was popularised by Tim O'Reilly in 2004. Whittaker (2009: 2) suggests that it "refers to a collection of platforms, technologies and methodologies that represent new developments in web development". The crux of these new developments is the idea that Web 2.0 is a participative web, where the producers of content are also the end users, often referred to as User Created (or Generated) Content (UCC/UGC) (Wunsch-Vincent & Vickery, 2007). In a guide for parents on their children's use of MySpace, Magid and Collier (2007: 1) refer to Web 2.0 as "the everywhere, all-the-time, multimedia, multidevice, downloadable and uploadable, user-driven Internet", which encapsulates the many and varied ways teenage girls are using Web 2.0 applications.

As indicated in my previous post, Web 2.0 applications include social networking sites such as MySpace and facebook, as well as sites with a more specific function, such as YouTube (video sharing) and Flickr (photo sharing), blogs (such as this one!) and wikis (the most famous of which is Wikipedia). 





This video is a great demonstration firstly of what different Web 2.0 applications are available, as well as showing the extent to which they are used, and by whom.

SO, the question must then be addressed, how are teenage girls using these Web 2.0 sites? One of the main sites that girls aged 12 to 17 use, and which will be the main focus of this assignment, is MySpace.

MySpace launched in 2003, off the back of popular social networking site Friendster, but differing in that it allowed bands to post content, attracting a new demographic of younger users, bringing with them slightly different ways of utilising the features of the site (boyd, 2007). MySpace allows, or rather is centred on, users creating a profile about themselves, which can be viewed by friends (and strangers, depending on privacy settings). Initial profile setup consists of inserting details and information in pre-determined forms, such as age, sex, location and interests. Subsequently, users can post photos to their profile, and customise just about anything, including fonts, layouts, content and often most importantly, backgrounds. A few examples of what these profiles can look like are here, here and here. Further to this, users can comment on other people's profiles (and photos, and just about anything else), post bulletins, update their status and mood at any particular time, post and share blogs, videos, music and much more. Most importantly, and the thing that I am aiming to highlight the most with these blog posts - is that sites such as MySpace allow teenage girls to constantly change their online identities. This is exemplified in the fact that the profiles linked above could look COMPLETELY different when you view them to how they looked when I linked them (and in fact, they look different now than earlier in the week when I first found them!).

It is this aspect of teenage girls' use of Web 2.0 applications that I wish to examine with this blog - how the different applications facilitate, and encourage, the creation of an online identity. One that can be changed at the whim of the user (or even deleted completely!). With the media saturation surrounding teens in the crucial years of their personal development, it is almost inevitable that social networking sites such as MySpace will play a large role in how they go about discovering and constructing who they are. Thiel (2005: 180) recognises that "adolescence is a time when people develop and construct identity...a time of experimentation with different styles of communicating and articulating identity". In the same volume, Mazzarella highlights how teenage girls today, in constructing their identities, are not really doing it any differently than generations before them - it is merely the environment and medium upon which it occurs that has changed (2005: 144).

The simple user interfaces of sites like MySpace enable teenage girls to 'play' with their identities, and change aspects which they tire of, or become 'uncool' amongst peers. As Valentine and Holloway (2002: 308) explain, the online environment where this identity construction occurs "gives [teenage girls] more control over their identities than do spontaneous face-to-face encounters because they have time to think about what they want to say and how they want to represent themselves". This notion of representing themselves will form the focus of my blog next week, where I will be examining Erving Goffman's notions of impression management and all that lies therein, and how teenage girls unknowingly (to an extent) engage in these practices when they present their identities on Web 2.0 platforms.


References:
boyd, d (2007), 'Why Youth [heart] Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life', MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Learning – Youth, Identity, and Digital
Media Volume (ed. David Buckingham). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Chandler, J (2007, August 14), 'The Virtual Generation', The Age, retrieved from 
http://www.theage.com.au/news/in-depth/the-virtual-generation/2007/08/13/1186857409896.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap2

Cormode, G & Krishnamurthy, B (2008), 'Key differences between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0', First Monday, Vol. 13, No. 6, 2 June, 2008 http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticle/2125/1972


Magid, L & Collier, A (2007), MySpace Unraveled: A Parent's Guide to Teen Social Networking from the Directors of BlogSafety.com, Peachpit Press: California.


Mazzarella, S (2005), 'Claiming a Space: The Cultural Economy of Teen Girl Fandom on the Web' in S Mazzarella (Ed), Girl Wide Web: Girls, the Internet, and the Negotiation of Identity, Peter Lang: New York, pp. 141-160.

Thiel, SM (2005), ' "IM Me": Identity construction and gender negotiation in the world of adolescent girls and instant messaging', in S Mazzarella (Ed), Girl Wide Web: Girls, the Internet, and the Negotiation of Identity, Peter Lang: New York, pp. 179-202.

Valentine, G & Holloway, S (2002), 'Cyberkids? Exploring Children's Identities and Social Networks in On-line and Off-line Worlds', Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 92, No. 2, pp. 302-319.

Whittaker, J (2009), Producing for Web 2.0: A Student Guide, 3rd Ed, Routledge, London.

Wunsch-Vincent, S & Vickery, G (2007), ‘Participative Web and User-Created Content: Web 2.0, Wikis and Social Networking’, Report for Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), OECD Publishing: Paris.