Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out : FRIENDSHIPBy: Hilary DionCMS 298

Social Media Presentation • CHOSEN TOPIC: Friendship • WHY: Social media has in many ways affected my life through

relationships, family or friend drama, or even work related issues.

• HOW TO ACCSESS MY PRESENTATION: I took a lot of the authors points and twisted them into my own point of view or analysis. Some of the slides have discussions highlighted in red. These are for you to answer or think about. I think it’s important that while you’re watching a slideshow to not only take it all in but also to be able to think about the issues and points at hand.

• MY GOAL: For you to enjoy and learn about friendships via social media site. I look forward to all of your presentations.

• CHEERS.

SOCIAL CITES THAT HELP YOU IN MAKING FRIENDS?

OVERVIEW of CONTENT • Boyd states, “For many contemporary teenagers,

losing access to social media is tantamount to losing their social world” (p. 79).

• Making friends on social sites has virtually become the new fad for being “cool” or “popular” for young teens of this generation.

• How many likes you receive on you Facebook status, how many retweets you get on twitter, or even how many people like your picture on instagram has now become a definition of worthy friendships with intertwined bonds in the social media networked world.

What This Chapter is Aiming For:• Everyday communication with teens has

essentially formulated the socially derived world of technology along with the obsession of being involved in daily activity with friends on twitter, Facebook, Myspace, or the newly found Instagram.

• “This chapter documents how social media are incorporated into teen friendship practices in the context of everyday peer groups (Boyd, pg. 80).

• “This chapter focuses on the role that technology plays in establishing, reinforcing, complicating, and damaging friendship-driven social bonds (Boyd, pg. 81).

Peers and Friendship:• The goals of how to make friends have shifted from face-to-face

activities after school to writing on someone’s wall to make plans or even have a conversation through messaging.

• This subcategory of my chapter explains the need/ wants of these teens to branch away from school derived norms. By doing this they are allowed to reach out to their “friends” via Facebook or twitter in order to stay in contact as well as independent from the functions or goals of the structured environments around them.

• Boyd notes, “Medicated teen social worlds began with the telephone and continue to today’s variegated palette of communications technologies and popular media. Teens use all that is available to craft and display their social identities and interact with their peers. Just as we see in the locker rooms and cafeterias in high schools, online spaces, introduce opportunities for kids to display fashion and taste, to gossip, form friendships, flirt, and even harass other peers” (p. 84).

My Discussion:• In short, I believe that the way teens in our era go about making

friends or even finding friends on these social media sites is out of society’s hands. Media and technology has taken over via cell phones and computers in so many ways that this format of how relationships are formed through peers is ever so growing.Analysis: The way that each and everyone one of us makes friends is a definition of who we are and how we contribute to society’s mirage and how we represent ourselves to other around us. It is true that social media guides us into letting the way we make friends through this formation make us who we are. But our way out is to not let these perceptions cast judgments on how we take advantage of technological advances.

• Discussion Question: When you were a teen, did you feel pressured into making friends through social media sites or was it just an addition into finding yourself at such a tough age?

Making friendships & Maintaining them• Danah Boyd continues in this chapter by

motioning that making friends is usually formulated around morals, cultures, or even economic features circled around each individual.

• My selective opinion is that wherever you are in the world making friends on Facebook is a choice strictly personally made. What’s to be determined is whether that friend is valuable or trustworthy enough to be on your page, follow your daily activities, or even see your pictures.

• Discussion: Why do you think Facebook suggests friends for you when you should already be friends with people who matter?

Boyd’s DEFENSE • Boyd notes, “This is not to say that teens do not

leverage social media to develop friendships. Teens frequently use social media as additional channels of communication to get to know classmates and turn acquaintances into friendships (p. 89).

• Later Boyd adds, “One of the ways in which social media alter friendship practices is through forced and often public articulation of social connections. From instant messaging “buddy lists” to the public listing of “Friends” on social networking sites, teens are regularly forced to list their connections as part of the social media participation (p. 94).

Do Teens Really Strive to make FRIENDS or NUMBERS?

• Yes, teens in this day and age may try to reconnect with acquaintances in order to make friends as Boyd explains. But are they looking for friends or increased number of friends on their pages?

• In order to become socially accepted or even becoming able to negotiate with social networking competition via LIKES, POSTS, RETWEETS, OR EVEN SHARES, I believe teens strive for numbers of friends versus valuable friendships.

• DISCUSSION: Agree or Disagree?

STRANGER DANGER: Are teens making friends or non-friends?

• The constant need of increasing your number of friends on your page can also increase the chances of having your privacy be revoked by strangers, hackers, or socially altered individuals looking for trouble. There are ways to enhance the neglecting of such people through upping your privacy features or simply hitting REJECT. It’s not that easy.

• Boyd notes, “While most teens who connect with strangers have no expectation of building a relationship out of this performed connection, there are teens who happily add people to whom they are attracted to in hopes that one of these connections might develop into something more” (p. 97).

“By and large, the social convention is to accept friend requests from all known peers, including friends, acquaintances, and classmates regardless of the quality of the relationship” (Boyd, pg. 97).

• Analysis: By this social convention teens are mutually expected to add anyone and everyone they may slightly know in order to follow or abide by social norms. But is it socially correct to push these gestures onto such a young age group? This constant pressure will eventually grow with them and social networking via building relationships from these flakey bonds on these sites will formulate actual relationships collegiately and professionally.

Friendship Hierarchies • Myspace originally came up with the idea of “top friends”. By doing this

this social media site forced teens to validate who their “real friends” were based off of a scale of 8 specific friends. Because teen years are the years where you find out how to make friends or even how to lose some, this way or formulating bonds with hierarchies only put a barrier between this learning process.

• Boyd notes, “Not all teens participate in the social dramas that result from top friends, but it does cause tremendous consternation for many. The top friends feature is a good example of how structural aspects of software can force articulations that do not map well to how offline social behavior works” (p. 103).

• Discussion: Did you have a top friends list? If so how did it affect your friendships as a teen?

Does one’s status on social media sites represent who you are?

• How you perceive yourself to the world can be equally equivalent to who you are on your Facebook or Twitter page. Or it can be a completely different version of you. Boyd wraps up this chapter by discussing the drama and attention that these sites provide for many of the users involved. The “struggle” of being accepted in a school or personal setting as well as on your page is a battle constantly fought. This balance becomes a fight between who you want people to see you as and also the person you wish to be for yourself. Boyd mentions, “Teens seeking to spread rumors or engage in drama often use social media. These acts may be lightweight parts of everyday teen life or they may snowball in magnitude and become acts of bullying. Regardless of the intensity, our research shows that the acts of drama involving social media are primarily a continuation of broader dramas” (p. 105).

Analysis and Discussion• I believe that the most prominent concern of

social media is the acts of bullying and cyber stalking. Although this chapter emphasizes on making friends or finding yourself through these social sites, it is faulty to say that negative effects do not formulate when such young children access their pages.

Conclusion: My thoughts and yours ~• As Boyd believes that there are positives and

negatives to social media involving the formation of friendships, I agree. Although friends and peers are allowed to connect at a technologically advanced level with each other, they are also lacking the actuality of face-to-face contact that is more traditional.

• “While social warfare and drama do exist, the value of social media rests in their ability to strengthen connections” (Boyd, pg. 113).

• Discussion: Do you believe that social media causes more positives or negatives for the growing generation of teen youth?

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