Brown Symposium on Technology and Society

Today I traveled to blue and gold territory - the University of Michigan, cross-state rivals of my alma mater, Michigan State University.  U of M hosted the John Seely Brown Symposium on Technology and Society.  danah boyd was the keynote speaker.  danah (lack of capitalization is not a typo) is a social media researcher at Microsoft Research New England and a fell0w at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society.  

The setting: a beautiful auditorium at the Business School.  I arrived a few minutes late, just as the keynote was starting.  I ended up in the back row of the balcony.  I noticed that there were many college students in attendance and there were several hands on laptop keyboards all around the auditorium; I felt right at home.  As Ms boyd was speaking about her research about social networking, the two young adults sitting in front of me were checking email, and posting to Twitter and a Skype chat.  They were back-channeling; deeply engaged in sideline conversations that the presenter made them think about.  Others might have thought they were off-task, but I don't believe so, because I often do the same thing.

Ms boyd found that kids prefer to spend time with their friends face-to-face, but that the high amount of structured activities (clubs, sports teams, etc), and parental rules often keep them home.  So they tend to hang out on MySpace and Facebook out of convenience.   They don't  use social networking sites because of the technology; they use it because all their friends are there. 

Teens participation in online social networking sites is viewed upon by most adults as frivolous, unsafe, and a waste of time.  However, teens are learning how to live and interact in ways that are very important in today's world.  Just like most other human behaviors, there are "good" and "bad" examples of how social media is used.  I've seen awesome teen-generated digital media, created with a purpose and communicated with originality.  Some examples that come to mind for me include the teens who made the YouTube video of the water slide they constructed from the second story window (requiring advanced physics knowledge, the reaction of the 3rd grader to President Obama's speech, and the blog of a high school student trying to make positive changes in his school.

However, what is in the news more often is the negative; fear is used to spin a story... Teens sending pornography via their cell phones, writing inappropriate comments on Facebook, or meeting a stranger who turns out to be a predator.  Ms. Boyd is very concerned that the culture of fear of the "bad" is causing a lot of damage.  She believes that adults need to help guide teens into making good choices while using social networking tools, a significant part of their lives.  I agree with her. 

Read danah boy'd reserch here.  Warning: over 400 pages