Last week I participated in the session "Why Youth Love MySpace" on the TappedIn site. I have to admit, it was a really cool experience. It's amazing that professional development can be so global and versatile. It was so interesting to hear all of the different perspectives in the group. There were University students such as myself, teachers, counsellors, and parents from a wide background covering a very wide age range.
Karen Connaghan lead the discussion. She dispelled a lot of the myths parents and educators believe about MySpace and tried to focus on the purpose and benefits of it. Something that came up again and again from the "paranoid" parents in the session were comments such as "it's not safe", "they don't know how to communicate in real life" and "it's just a tool for cyber-bullying". Ironically, I don't think any of these people have a MySpace or really understand how it works. Karen responded to these comments by saying that "moral panic is a common reaction to teenagers when they engage in practices not understood by adult culture". And that sums it up right there! Adults do not understand MySpace, so they are very quick to determine it's evil and should be banned from schools. This is a myth that needs to be addressed in our society! There are good and bad things that come with almost everything in life but sometimes we have to just accept some bad things to get the good.
So, what does MySpace really do for youth? It gives them a tool for socialization, hanging out and shaping their identities. It allows them to form their own culture and way of communicating. On MySpace, youth can express themselves through photos, fashion, music, media and the written word. This gives youth a tool to explore their identify at an influential age.
Something that I found interested was the idea of using the word "friend" as a verb and not as a noun. I became to think about this and how the term friend has change and how with these sites allow you "befriend" other people, when is essence who have just meant that person. Many of the adults at the dissusion do not understand how the "friend" has changed and when they look at the daughter's/son's friends list, they fear that these "friends" might be pretators. For my me I feel that these sites are a way to connect to other people that live across the world and can be useful. Although, I do believe that you have to teach your kids to be aware of what do on these sites and to teach them that there are people out there that can hurt you and to be save.
