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Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on DigitalMedia and LearningEngineering Play: A Cultural History of Children’s Software by Mizuko ItoHanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with NewMedia by Mizuko Ito, Sonja Baumer, Matteo Bittanti, danah boyd, Rachel Cody,Becky Herr-Stephenson, Heather A. Horst, Patricia G. Lange, Dilan Mahendran,Katynka Z. Martínez, C. J. Pascoe, Dan Perkel, Laura Robinson, Christo Sims, LisaTripp, with contributions by Judd Antin, Megan Finn, Arthur Law, Annie Manion,Sarai Mitnick, David Schlossberg, and Sarita YardiInaugural Series VolumesThese edited volumes were created through an interactive community reviewprocess and published online and in print in December 2007. They are the precursorsto the peer-reviewed monographs in the series.Civic Life Online: Learning How Digital Media Can Engage Youth, edited by W. LanceBennettDigital Media, Youth, and Credibility, edited by Miriam J. Metzger and AndrewJ. FlanaginDigital Youth, Innovation, and the Unexpected, edited by Tara McPhersonThe Ecology of Games: Connecting Youth, Games, and Learning, edited by Katie SalenLearning Race and Ethnicity: Youth and Digital Media, edited by Anna EverettYouth, Identity, and Digital Media, edited by David Buckingham

HANGING OUT, MESSING AROUND, AND GEEKING OUTKids Living and Learning with New MediaMizuko ItoSonja BaumerMatteo Bittantidanah boydRachel CodyBecky Herr-StephensonHeather A. HorstPatricia G. LangeDilan MahendranKatynka Z. MartínezC. J. PascoeDan PerkelLaura RobinsonChristo SimsLisa Trippwith contributions byJudd Antin, Megan Finn, Arthur Law, Annie Manion,Sarai Mitnick, David Schlossberg, and Sarita YardiThe MIT PressCambridge, MassachusettsLondon, England

© 2010 Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyAll rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by anyelectronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or informationstorage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher.For information about special quantity discounts, please e-mail special_sales@mitpress.mit.edu.This book was set in Stone Sans and Stone Serif by SNP Best-set Typesetter Ltd.,Hong Kong.Printed and bound in the United States of America.Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataIto, Mizuko.Hanging out, messing around, and geeking out : kids living and learningwith new media / Mizuko Ito.p. cm. — The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series in DigitalMedia and LearningIncludes bibliographical references and index.ISBN 978-0-262-01336-9 (hardcover : alk. paper)1. Mass media and youth—United States. 2. Digital media—Social aspects–United States. 3. Technology and youth—United States. 4. Learning—Social aspects.I. Title.HQ799.2.M352I87 2010302.23'108350973—dc22200900993210 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To the memory and ongoing legacy of Peter Lyman.His vision, passion, and leadership have guided this projectand animated its spirit of interdisciplinary, collaborative work.

ContentsSeries Foreword xiAcknowledgments xiiiNotes on the Text xviiINTRODUCTION 11 MEDIA ECOLOGIES 29Lead Authors: Heather A. Horst, Becky Herr-Stephenson, andLaura RobinsonBox 1.1 Media Ecologies: Quantitative Perspectives 32Christo SimsBox 1.2 Michelle 42Lisa TrippBox 1.3 “You Have Another World to Create”: Teens and OnlineHangouts 50C. J. PascoeBox 1.4 The Techne-Mentor 59Megan FinnBox 1.5 zalas, a Digital-Information Virtuoso 67Mizuko Ito2 FRIENDSHIP 79Lead Author: danah boydBox 2.1 Sharing Snapshots of Teen Friendship and Love 85Katynka Z. Martínez

viiiContentsBox 2.2 From MySpace to Facebook: Coming of Age in NetworkedPublic Culture 92Heather A. Horst3 INTIMACY 117Lead Author: C. J. PascoeBox 3.1 The Public Nature of Mediated Breakups 133danah boydBox 3.2 Bob Anderson’s Story: “It Was Kind of a Weird CyberGrowing-Up Thing” 142Christo Sims4 FAMILIES 149Lead Author: Heather A. HorstBox 4.1 The Garcia Family: A Portrait of Urban Los Angeles 158Katynka Z. MartínezBox 4.2 The Miller Family: A Portrait of a Silicon Valley Family 168Heather A. HorstBox 4.3 The Milvert Family: A Portrait of Rural California 186Christo Sims5 GAMING 195Lead Authors: Mizuko Ito and Matteo BittantiBox 5.1 Neopets: Same Game, Different Meanings 204Laura Robinson and Heather A. HorstBox 5.2 First-Person Play: Subjectivity, Gamer Code, and Doom 210Matteo BittantiBox 5.3 Learning and Collaborating in Final Fantasy XI 216Rachel CodyBox 5.4 Machinima: From Learners to Producers 224Matteo Bittanti6 CREATIVE PRODUCTION 243Lead Authors: Patricia G. Lange and Mizuko Ito

ContentsixBox 6.1 “MySpace Is Universal”: Creative Production in a Trajectory ofParticipation 257Dan PerkelBox 6.2 All in the Family 263Patricia G. LangeBox 6.3 Making Music Together 270Dilan MahendranBox 6.4 **Spoiler Alert**: Harry Potter Podcasting as CollaborativeProduction 285Becky Herr-Stephenson7 WORK 295Lead Author: Mizuko ItoBox 7.1 “I’m Just a Nerd. It’s Not Like I’m a Rock Star orAnything” 311Mizuko ItoBox 7.2 Technological Prospecting in Rural Landscapes 316Christo SimsBox 7.3 Being More Than “Just a Banker”: DIY Youth Culture and DIYCapitalism in a High-School Computer Club 320Katynka Z. MartínezBox 7.4 Final Fantasy XI: Trouncing Tiamat 326Rachel CodyBox 7.5 Eddie: Neopets, Neocapital, and Making a Virtual Buck 331Laura RobinsonCONCLUSION 339Appendix I: Project Overview 355Appendix II: Project Descriptions 361Appendix III: Project Index 371Bibliography 373Index 399

Series ForewordIn recent years, digital media and networks have become embedded in oureveryday lives and are part of broad-based changes to how we engage inknowledge production, communication, and creative expression. Unlikethe early years in the development of computers and computer-basedmedia, digital media are now commonplace and pervasive, having beentaken up by a wide range of individuals and institutions in all walks of life.Digital media have escaped the boundaries of professional and formalpractice, and the academic, governmental, and industry homes that initiallyfostered their development. Now they have been taken up by diversepopulations and noninstitutionalized practices, including the peer activitiesof youth. Although specific forms of technology uptake are highlydiverse, a generation is growing up in an era where digital media are partof the taken-for-granted social and cultural fabric of learning, play, andsocial communication.This book series is founded upon the working hypothesis that thoseimmersed in new digital tools and networks are engaged in an unprecedentedexploration of language, games, social interaction, problem solving,and self-directed activity that leads to diverse forms of learning. Thesediverse forms of learning are reflected in expressions of identity, how individualsexpress independence and creativity, and in their ability to learn,exercise judgment, and think systematically.The defining frame for this series is not a particular theoretical or disciplinaryapproach, nor is it a fixed set of topics. Rather, the series revolvesaround a constellation of topics investigated from multiple disciplinaryand practical frames. The series as a whole looks at the relation betweenyouth, learning, and digital media, but each might deal with only a subset

xiiSeries Forewordof this constellation. Erecting strict topical boundaries can exclude someof the most important work in the field. For example, restricting thecontent of the series only to people of a certain age means artificially reifyingan age boundary when the phenomenon demands otherwise. Thisbecomes particularly problematic with new forms of online participationwhere one important outcome is the mixing of participants of differentages. The same goes for digital media, which are increasingly inseparablefrom analog and earlier media forms.The series responds to certain changes in our media ecology that haveimportant implications for learning. Specifically, these are new forms ofmedia literacy and changes in the modes of media participation. Digitalmedia are part of a convergence between interactive media (most notablygaming), online networks, and existing media forms. Navigating thismedia ecology involves a palette of literacies that are being defined throughpractice but require more scholarly scrutiny before they can be fully incorporatedpervasively into educational initiatives. Media literacy involvesnot only ways of understanding, interpreting, and critiquing media, butalso the means for creative and social expression, online search and navigation,and a host of new technical skills. The potential gap in literacies andparticipation skills creates new challenges for educators who struggle tobridge media engagement inside and outside the classroom.The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on DigitalMedia and Learning, published by the MIT Press, aims to close these gapsand provide innovative ways of thinking about and using new forms ofknowledge production, communication, and creative expression.

AcknowledgmentsThe research for and writing of this book was a collective effort thatinvolved a wide network of individuals and institutions beyond thosenamed as authors and contributors. The late Peter Lyman was a principalinvestigator on the project on which this book reports, and he defined thevision and direction for this project as well as forming the team that startedit off. Michael Carter provided leadership as a principal investigator andas the heart and soul of the project, and he held the team together throughmany challenges. We are also grateful to Barrie Thorne, who stepped in asprincipal investigator, offering guidance and support including crucialinput on our writing and analysis.The project was funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthurFoundation as part of the digital media and learning initiative. We wouldparticularly like to thank our program officer and director of education atthe foundation, Constance M. Yowell, and vice president of human andcommunity development, Julia M. Stasch.This was a multi-institutional project that was guided by the administrativeand research staff at multiple research centers. At the Universityof California, Berkeley, the project was housed at the Institute for theStudy of Social Change and benefited from the technical support of UCBerkeley’s School of Information. At Berkeley, we would like to thankShalia McDonald, Janice Tanigawa, Diane Harley, Kathleen Kuhlmann, andEvelyn Wong for their help in administering and managing the project. Atthe University of Southern California, the project was housed at theAnnenberg Center for Communication and the Institute for MultimediaLiteracy at the School of Cinematic Arts. We are grateful to MarikoOda, Josie Acosta, Steve Adcook, Chris Badua, Willy Paredes, and ChrisWittenberg for guidance with and support for the project at USC.

xivAcknowledgmentsIn addition to the authors and contributors to this report, we hadmany research assistants and collaborators who enriched this projectalong the way. Max Besbris, Brendan Callum, Allison Dusine, Sam Jackson,Lou-Anthony Limon, Renee Saito, Judy Suwatanapongched, and TammyZhu were research assistants as well as vital informants and experts in allthings digital and youth. We also benefited from working with our collaboratorson this project, Natalie Boero, Carrie Burgener, Juan Devis, ScottCarter, Paul Poling, Nick Reid, Rachel Strickland, and Jennifer Urban. TheBerkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, the PewInternet & American Life Project, the LAUSD Arts Education Branch, andthe Wallis Annenberg Initiative also were institutional collaborators in thisresearch. Karen Bleske, in addition to careful copyediting of the entirebook, provided invaluable help in integrating the many different voicesand styles of the contributors. Eric Olive was our web guru who helped getour work out to the online universe. At the MIT Press, the book was in thecapable editorial hands of Doug Sery, Katie Helke, and Mel Goldsipe.Our work has benefited from the wise counsel of many colleagues, morenumerous than we can fully name here. We would like to acknowledgethose who participated in the occasions that we organized to get formalfeedback on our work in progress. An early draft of this book was reviewedby John Seely Brown, Paul Duguid, Jabari Mahiri, Daniel Miller, Katie Salen,Ellen Seiter, and Barry Wellman. Their comments resulted in considerablechanges to this document that have both sharpened the argumentsand made it more intelligible to diverse audiences. As we were conductingour research, we arranged for periodic meetings and conversations so wecould be in dialogue with scholars we knew would inform our work. Inaddition to those who reviewed this book, we would like to thank thosewho participated and generously shared their insights and perspectives:Sasha Barab, Brigid Barron, Suzy Beemer, Linda Burch, Lynn SchofieldClark, Michael Cole, Brinda Dalal, Dale Dougherty, Penelope Eckert,Nicole Ellison, James Paul Gee, David Goldberg, Shelley Goldman, JoyceHakansson, Eszter Hargittai, Glynda Hull, Lynn Jamieson, Henry Jenkins,Joseph Kahne, Amanda Lenhart, Jane McGonigal, Ellen Middaugh, KennyMiller, Alesia Montgomery, Kimiko Nishimura, John Palfrey, NicholePinkard, Alice Robison, Ryan Shaw, Lissa Soep, Reed Stevens, DeborahStipek, Benjamin Stokes, Pierre Tchetgen, Doug Thomas, Avril Thorne, andMargaret Weigel.

AcknowledgmentsxvFinally, we would like to thank the many individuals, families, organizations,and online communities that welcomed us into their midst andeducated us about their lives with new media. Although we cannot nameall the individuals who participated in our study, we would like to expressour gratitude to those whom we can name who facilitated our access tovarious sites and who acted as key “local” experts: Vicki O’Day for introducingHeather to Silicon Valley families; Tim Park, Carlo Pichay, andzalas for being Mizuko’s senpai in the anime fandom; Enki, Wurlpin,and all of KirinTheDestroyers for taking Rachel under their wing; TomAnderson, who helped danah get access to MySpace; the people ofYouTubia who spoke with Patricia and shared their videos; and all theyouth media, middle-school, and high-school educators who opened theirdoors to us.

Notes on the TextThis book is a synthesis of three years of collaborative, ethnographicwork conducted through a project funded by the John D. andCatherine T. MacArthur Foundation: Kids’ Informal Learning with DigitalMedia.Early in the planning of this book, we made a decision not to structureit as a traditional edited volume, nor as a book singly written by a principalproject investigator. Instead, this book was written in a highly distributedcollaborative process that aimed to integrate both the ethnographicmaterial and the analytic insights of all the project’s researchers involvedat the time of its writing. We thought this approach was most in linewith the spirit of collaborative, interdisciplinary inquiry that has guidedour project from its inception. Each chapter has one or more lead authorswho took responsibility for the writing, but every chapter incorporatesmaterial and input from a wide range of coauthors and the case studiesthat they represent. In line with this stance, we use a collective voiceto describe this work, even in chapters with only one lead author. Wedid not always reach complete consensus on all aspects of this book, butthere was agreement among the coauthors that we would take collectiveownership.Although Mizuko Ito took the lead in the writing of this book, the threeother principal investigators, Peter Lyman, Michael Carter, and BarrieThorne, provided indispensable leadership and support for this project. Inaddition, we have integrated ethnographic material from former projectmembers, who are named as contributors to this book. The full range ofpeople who have contributed to this three-year project and this book arementioned in the acknowledgments.

xviiiNotes on the TextThe case studies and approaches that the coauthors brought to thewriting have been diverse, but we have agreed on certain representationalconventions to provide some consistency in our writing:Unlike in more traditional forms of ethnography, the descriptions in thisbook draw from a wide range of case studies conducted by a large team ofethnographers. When a research participant is quoted or identified, weindicate which case study the material comes from and the name of thefieldworker who conducted the interview or the observation. We use shortidentifiers (e.g., Horst, Silicon Valley Families) for the studies to avoidcluttering the text. A table of short titles, full study titles, and studyresearchers is included in Appendix III.Full descriptions of the framework for the projects are described in theappendices. More detailed descriptions of the twenty-three individualresearch studies conducted by members of the Digital Youth Projectbetween the years of 2005 and 2008 are provided online at http://digitalyouth.ischool.berkeley.edu/projects.The various case studies were conducted using different data-collectionmethodologies, and we have varying degrees of access to contextualinformation about our participants. In every case, if we know the information,then we have indicated age, gender, and what each participantself-identified as his or her racial or ethnic identity. If this information isnot indicated, then it means that we did not know the information forthis participant due to the constraints of the particular case study. Forexample, in many of the studies that focus on online interest groups,interviews were conducted over the phone or through online chat. In mostcases, we derived this information from self-reports in backgroundquestionnaires we administered in advance of most of our formal interviews.Although we do not see race as a key analytic category in our work, thereare times when we think it is relevant to our description, and we thoughtthat if racial or ethnic identity were to be mentioned for some number ofparticipants, then we needed to be symmetrical in our treatment andindicate racial identity for all respondents for whom we did have thisinformation.We have used pseudonyms in most cases when referring to our researchparticipants. In many, but not all, cases our participants chose thesepseudonyms. In the case of some media producers, these names correspond

Notes on the Textxixwith their creator identities or screen names in their respective interestgroups, an approach that we think honors the reputations and investmentsof time that many of our participants work very hard to develop. Whenparticipants specifically requested it, we have used their screen names ortheir real-life names. When real names or screen names are used, weindicate this by a footnote in the text.

INTRODUCTIONDigital media and online communication have become a pervasive part ofthe everyday lives of youth in the United States. Social network sites,online games, video-sharing sites, and gadgets such as iPods and mobilephones are now well-established fixtures of youth culture; it can be hardto believe that just a decade ago these technologies were barely present inthe lives of U.S. children and teens. Today’s youth may be engaging innegotiations over developing knowledge and identity, coming of age, andstruggling for autonomy as did their predecessors, but they are doingthis while the contexts for communication, friendship, play, and selfexpressionare being reconfigured through their engagement with newmedia. We are wary of the claims that there is a digital generation thatoverthrows culture and knowledge as we know it and that its members’practices are radically different from older generations’ new media engagements.At the same time, we also believe that current youth adoption ofdigital media production and “social media” 1 is happening in a uniquehistorical moment, tied to longer-term and systemic changes in sociabilityand culture. While the pace of technological change may seem dizzying,the underlying practices of sociability, learning, play, and self-expressionare undergoing a slower evolution, growing out of resilient social structuralconditions and cultural categories that youth inhabit in diverse ways intheir everyday lives. The goal of this book is to document a point in thisevolutionary process by looking carefully at how both the commonalitiesand diversity in youth new media practice are part of a broader social andcultural ecology.We write this book in a moment when our values and norms surroundingeducation, literacy, and public participation are being challenged by ashifting landscape of media and communications where youth are central

2 Introductionactors. Although today’s questions about “kids these days” have a familiarring to them, the contemporary version is somewhat unusual in howstrongly it equates generational identity with technology identity. 2 Thereis a growing public discourse (both hopeful and fearful) declaring thatyoung people’s use of digital media and communication technologiesdefines a generational identity distinct from that of their elders. In additionto this generational divide, these new technology practices are tied to whatDavid Buckingham (2007, 96) has described as a “‘digital divide’ betweenin-school and out-of-school use.” He sees this as “symptomatic of a muchbroader phenomenon—a widening gap between children’s everyday ‘lifeworlds’ outside of school and the emphases of many educational systems.”Both the generational divide and the divide between in-school and outof-schoollearning are part of a resilient set of questions about adult authorityin the education and socialization of youth. The discourse of digitalgenerations and digital youth posits that new media empower youth tochallenge the social norms and educational agendas of their elders inunique ways. This book questions and investigates these claims. How arenew media being taken up by youth practices and agendas? And how dothese practices change the dynamics of youth-adult negotiations over literacy,learning, and authoritative knowledge?Despite the widespread assumption that new media are tied to fundamentalchanges in how young people are engaging with culture andknowledge, there is still relatively little research that investigates how thesedynamics operate on the ground. This book reports on a three-year ethnographicinvestigation of youth new media practice that aims to develop agrounded, qualitative evidence base to inform current debates over thefuture of learning and education in the digital age. Funded by the John D.and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation as part of a broader initiative ondigital media and learning, the study represents a $3.3 million investmentto contribute to basic knowledge in this emerging area of research. Theproject began in early 2005 and was completed in the summer of 2008,with the bulk of fieldwork taking place in 2006 and 2007. This effort isunique among qualitative studies in the field in the breadth of the researchand the number of case studies that it encompasses. Spanning twenty-threedifferent case studies conducted by twenty-eight researchers and collaborators,this study sampled from a wide range of youth practices, populations,and online sites, centered on the United States. This book has a broad

Introduction 3descriptive goal of documenting youth practices of engagement with newmedia, and a more targeted goal of analyzing how these practices are partof negotiations between adults and youth over learning and literacy.This introduction sets the stage for the body of the book, which is organizedby domains of youth practices that cut across our various casestudies. We begin with a discussion of existing research on youth newmedia practice and describe the contribution that our project makes to thisbody of work. We then introduce the conceptual frameworks and categoriesthat structure our collective analysis and description.Research ApproachAlthough a growing volume of research is examining youth new mediapractice, we are still at the early stages of piecing together a more holisticpicture of the role of new media in young people’s everyday lives. In theUnited States, a number of survey-based studies have been documentingpatterns of technology uptake and the spread of certain forms of newmedia practice (Griffith and Fox 2007; Lenhart et al. 2007; Rainie 2008;Roberts, Foehr, and Rideout 2005), and they provide a reference point forunderstanding broad trends in media engagement. We understand fromthis work that youth tend to be earlier adopters than adults of digital communicationsand authoring capabilities, and that their exposure to newmedia is growing in volume, complexity, and interactivity (Lenhart et al.2007; Lenhart et al. 2008; Roberts and Foehr 2008; Roberts, Foehr, andRideout 2005). Research across different postindustrial contexts also suggeststhat these patterns are tied to broader trends in the changing structuresof sociability, where we are seeing a move toward more individualizedand flexible forms of engagement with media environments. Researchershave described this as a turn toward “networked society” (Castells 1996),“networked individualism” (Wellman and Hogan 2004), “selective sociality”(Matsuda 2005), the “long tail” of niche media (Anderson 2006), or amore tailored set of media choices (Livingstone 2002). Youth practices havebeen an important part of the drive toward these more networked, individualized,and diversified forms of media engagement.In addition to these quantitative indicators, there is a growing body ofethnographic case studies of youth engagement with specific kinds of newmedia practices and sites (examples include Baron 2008; Buckingham

4 Introduction2008; Ito, Okabe, and Matsuda 2005; Ling 2004; Livingstone 2008;Mazzarella 2005). Although the United Kingdom has funded some largescalequalitative studies on youth new media engagements (Livingstone2002; Holloway and Valentine 2003), the United States has not had comparablequalitative studies that look across a range of different populationsand new media practices. What is generally lacking in the literature overall,and in the United States in particular, is an understanding of how newmedia practices are embedded in a broader social and cultural ecology.While we have a picture of technology trends on one hand, and spotlightson specific youth populations and practices on the other, we need morework that brings these two pieces of the puzzle together. How are specificnew media practices embedded in existing (and evolving) social structuresand cultural categories?In this section of the introduction, we describe how our work addressesthis gap, outlining our methodological commitments and descriptive focusthat have defined the scope of this book. The first goal of this book is todocument youth new media practice in rich, qualitative detail to providea picture of how young people are mobilizing these media and technologiesin their everyday lives. The descriptive frame of our study is definedby our ethnographic approach, the study of youth culture and practice,and the study of new media.EthnographyUsing an ethnographic approach means that we work to understand howmedia and technology are meaningful to people in the context of theireveryday lives. We do not see media or technology as determining orimpacting society, culture, or individuals as an external force with its owninternal logic, but rather as embodiments of social and cultural relationshipsthat in turn shape and structure our possibilities for social action andcultural expression (see Bijker, Hughes, and Pinch 1987; Edwards 1995;Hine 2000). It follows that we do not see the content of the media or themedia platform (TV, books, games, etc.) as the most important variablesfor determining social or cognitive outcomes. For example, we look at howvideo-game play is part of youth social lives, where it is situated in thehome, how parents regulate play with the games, and how youth identifywith the content and characters. We see outcomes not only in whether achild has identified with or learned media content but also in such things

Introduction 5as how they are able to negotiate social status among peers, gain autonomyfrom parents, or acquire expertise in related domains such as knowledgeseeking on the Internet. The strength of this approach is that it enables usto surface, from the empirical material, what the important categories andstructures are that determine new media practices and learning outcomes.This approach does not lend itself to testing existing analytic categories ortargeted hypotheses but rather to asking more fundamental questionsabout what the relevant factors and categories of analysis are. We believethat an initial broad-based ethnographic understanding, grounded in theactual contexts of behavior and local cultural understandings, is crucial tograsping the contours of a new set of cultural categories and practices.We describe media and technology as part of a broader set of socialstructures and cultural patterns. We have organized our description basedon practices and contexts that structure youth engagement with newmedia—friendship, intimacy, family, gaming, creative production, andwork. A focus on these foundational social practices enables us to describechanges in youth social lives and culture while being attentive to the continuitieswith prior practice and structure. In the service of this broaddescriptive goal we describe the continued relevance of gender and classin determining new media practice. Our focus, however, is on the issue ofage and generational identity as structuring new media engagements. Welook both internally at youth culture and the divisions among differentyouth as well as at the negotiations between youth and adults. How doesnew media engagement relate to different categories of youth culture andidentity? To what extent are new media part of the definition—or, conversely,a disruption—of a generational identity? How are new mediapractices mobilized in the negotiations between adults and youth, particularlyover learning and socialization? Any generation gap we might findin new media literacy and practices needs to be understood in its culturaldiversity and specifics.Our case studies have included diverse studies of youth in particular localcommunities, studies of after-school youth media programs, as well asstudies of youth practices centered on online sites or interest groups. Theseinclude fans of Harry Potter and Japanese animation; video-game players;hip-hop creators; video bloggers; and participants on YouTube, MySpace,and Facebook. By looking at a range of populations and youth practices,we were able to combine in-depth textured description of specific group

6 Introductiondynamics with collaborative analysis of how these different groups definethemselves in relation to or in opposition to one another. We describethese studies and the specifics on data collection and joint analysis inchapter 1, “Media Ecologies.” Our material covers both “mainstream”practices of new media use that are widely distributed among U.S. teensas well as more subcultural and exceptional practices that are not ascommon but represent emerging and experimental modes of technical andmedia literacy. In this, our work resembles other ethnographic studies thatlook at the relationships between different kinds of childhood and youthsubcultures and identity categories (Eckert 1989; Milner 2004; Thorne1993), but we focus on the role of new media in these negotiations. To theextent possible, we have also situated our ethnographic cases and findingsin relation to the quantitative work in the field. Through this approach,we have worked to mediate the gap between the textured, qualitativedescriptions of new media practices and analysis of broader patterns insocial, technical, and cultural change.YouthFoundational to our descriptive approach is a particular point of viewand methodological approach in relation to youth as a social and culturalcategory. In our research and writing we take a sociology-of-youth-andchildhoodapproach, which means that we take youth seriously as actorsin their own social worlds and look at childhood as a socially constructed,historically variable, and contested category (Corsaro 1997; Fine 2004;James and Prout 1997; Wyness 2006). Adults often view children in aforward-looking way, in terms of developmental “ages and stages” of whatthey will become rather than as complete beings “with ongoing lives,needs and desires” (Corsaro 1997, 8). By contrast, the “new paradigm” inthe sociology of childhood (James and Prout 1997) sees that children areactive, creative social agents who produce their own unique children’scultures while simultaneously contributing to the production of adultsocieties and that “childhood—that socially constructed period in whichchildren live their lives—is a structural form” (Corsaro 1997, 4). This structuralform has varied historically and is interrelated with other structuralcategories such as social class, gender, and race (Corsaro 1997; James andProut 1997). In keeping with this sociology-of-youth-and-childrenapproach, we move beyond a simple socialization model in which children

Introduction 7are passive recipients of dominant and “adult” ideologies and norms, andinstead we deploy what Corsaro calls an Interpretive Reproduction model.In this model children collectively participate in society, in which children“negotiate, share, and create culture with adults and each other” (Corsaro1997, 18). In doing so we seek to give voice to children and youth, who,while they have not been absent in social-science research, have often notbeen heard (James and Prout 1997).Our work has focused mostly on youth in their middle-school and highschoolyears, between the ages of twelve and eighteen. As we have indicated,we have made our best effort at examining the diversity amongyouth, rather than suggesting that youth share a monolithic identity.As described in chapter 1, we have also engaged, to a lesser extent, withparents, educators, and young adults who participate or are involved instructuring youth new media practices. The category of youth and youthculture is coconstructed by adults and young people (Alanen and Mayall2001). We capture what is unique about the contexts that youth inhabitwhile also remaining attentive to the ways in which new media practicesspan different age cohorts. In addition to their role in provisioning andregulating youth new media ecologies, adults are important coparticipantsin youth new media practices. In fact, one of the important outcomes ofyouth participation in many online practices is that they have an opportunityto interact with adults who are outside of their usual circle of familyand school-based adult relationships. The age populations that we look atare keyed to the specifics of the particular case study. In studies that focuson mixed-age interest groups, we have a significant proportion of youngadults, while studies that focus on family life or school-based cohorts focusmore exclusively on teens and their relationships to parents and teachers.An ethnography of youth insists on attention to both the focal object ofyouth culture and to the adult cultures that have a formative and pervasiveinfluence.Readers will see the subjects of this research referred to by a variety ofage-related names—children, kids, youth, teens, adolescents, young people,and young adults. In keeping with an ethnographic approach we try touse terms that our respondents use themselves, but given that youth donot commonly refer to themselves in age-graded categories (Thorne 1993),we frequently must impose categories. To that end, for respondents agethirteen and under, the general cutoff age for the term “children” (Wyness

8 Introduction2006), we usually use the word “kids” and, perhaps less often, “children.”While “kids” might seem a pejorative term, researchers have documentedthat this is the term they often use to refer to themselves; as Barrie Thornenoted in her research on schoolchildren, one of her respondents “insistedthat ‘children’ was more of a put-down than ‘kids’” (Thorne 1993, 9). Forparticipants between the ages of thirteen and eighteen we usually use thecategory of “teen” or “teenager” and, less frequently, the more biologicallyoriented “adolescent.” We do this to note that teenagers are, now, a slightlydifferent social category. Teens have more agency than children, developmore elaborate peer cultures, self-consciously construct public and privateselves, and challenge conventions of adult life (Fine 2004). We refer tothose between the ages of nineteen and thirty as “young adults,” and weuse the term “young people” to refer broadly to both young adults andteens. “Youth” is the category we reserve for when we are referring to thegeneral cultural category of youth, which is not clearly age demarcated butwhich centers on the late teenage years.While age-based categories have defined our object of study, we areinterested in documenting how these categories are historically and culturallyspecific, and how they are under negotiation. Age gradations in Euro-American and other postindustrial countries are perhaps more salient andstructuring than they have been at any point in history, as age gradationnow has emerged as a way to define entire populations of people (Chudacoff1989). Youth culture—since its midcentury inception by Talcott Parsons(Eckert 1989; Gilbert 1986)—has been characterized by being set apart fromadulthood, defined by the process of “becoming” and “leisure” (Chudacoff1989). Removing youth from the workforce and home left them with largeamounts of leisure time with their own “peers,” or age cohorts. Morerecently, researchers have documented how youth have been limited intheir access not only to the workplace but also to other forms of publicparticipation, including mobility in public places (Buckingham 2000;Lewis 1990; Livingstone 2002). Youth occupy more age-segregated institutionsthan they have in recent history (Chudacoff 1989) and have morecultural products that are targeted to them as specific age demographics(Cross 1997; Frank 1997; Kline 1993; Livingstone 2002; Seiter 1993). Theghettoization of youth culture also leads to its construction as socialproblem, a generational space in which society channels fears and anxieties(Cohen 1972; Corsaro 1997; Gilbert 1986; Lesko 2001). The current debates

Introduction 9over the digital generation are the latest instantiation of these public hopesand fears surrounding youth; as they have in recent history, media continueto play a central role in the contestations over the boundaries anddefinitions of youth culture and sociability. While we have not conducteda historical or longitudinal study, we see our current snapshot of youthnew media engagement as part of this longer trajectory in the definitionof youth as a historically specific social and cultural category.New MediaPopular culture and online communication provide a window onto examiningyouth practice in contexts where young people feel ownership overthe social and cultural agenda. The commitment to taking youth socialand cultural worlds seriously has been applied to media studies by agrowing number of researchers who have looked at how children engagewith media in ways responsive to the specific conditions of childhood. Incontrast to much of media-effects research, these qualitative studies seechildren and youth as actively constructing their social and cultural worlds,not as innocent victims or passive recipients of media messages (Buckingham1993; Jenkins 1998; Kinder 1999; Seiter 1993). By taking children andyouth popular culture seriously, this body of work argues against the trivializationof children’s media culture and sees it as a site of child- andyouth-driven creativity and social action. While we recognize the ways inwhich popular culture has provided a site for kids to exercise agency andauthority, we think it is important to keep in view the central role of commercialentities in shaping children and youth culture. Media industrieshave been increasingly successful in constructing childhood culture inways that kids uniquely identify with (Banet-Weiser 2007; Seiter 1993,2005). In her analysis of Nickelodeon, Sarah Banet-Weiser describes howthe channel constructs a form of “consumer citizenship.” She writes, “Thisrecent attention to children as consumers has as much to do with recognizinga particular political economic agency of children as it does to theunprecedented ways in which children are constituted as a commercialmarket” (Banet-Weiser 2007, 8). The development of children’s agency inthe local life worlds of home and peer culture is inextricably linked to theirparticipation as consumer citizens.Within their local life worlds, popular culture can provide kids with aspace to negotiate issues of identity and belonging within peer cultures

10 Introduction(Chin 2001; Dyson 1997; Ito 2006; Seiter 1999a). In the case of interactivemedia and communications technology, the constitutive role of youthvoice and sociability is further accentuated in what Henry Jenkins (1992;2006) has described as a “participatory media culture” and Mizuko Ito(2008b) has described in terms of “hypersociality” surrounding mediaengagement. In looking at Pokémon, for example, David Buckingham andJulian Sefton-Green (2004) have argued that although all media audiencesare in some ways “active,” interactive and sociable media such as Pokémon“positively require activity.” With teens, this participatory approach towardnew media has been channeled into networked gaming and social mediasites such as MySpace, Facebook, or YouTube, which have captured thepublic limelight and added fuel to the discourse of a digital generation.The active and sociable nature of youth new media engagement argues foran ethnographic approach that looks at not only the content of mediabut also the social practices and contexts in which media engagement isembedded. While we are cautious about assuming a natural affinity betweenyouth and participatory forms of media engagement, it is clear that youthparticipation in these media forms is high, and that interactive and networkedmedia require particular methodological commitments.We use the term “new media” to describe a media ecology where moretraditional media such as books, television, and radio are intersecting withdigital media, specifically interactive media and media for social communication(Jenkins 2006). As described in chapter 1, we are interested in theconvergent media ecology that youth are inhabiting today rather than inisolating the specific affordances of digital-production tools or online networks.We have used the term “new media” rather than terms such as“digital media” or “interactive media” because the moniker of “the new”seemed appropriately situational, relational, and protean, and not tied toa specific media platform. Just as in the case of youth, who are always onthe verge of growing older, media are constantly undergoing a process ofaging and identity reformulation in which there is a generation of the newready to replace the old. Our focus is on media that are new at this particularhistorical moment. Our difficulty in naming a trait that defines themedia we are scrutinizing (interactive, digital, virtual, online, social, networked,convergent, etc.) stems from the fact that we are examining aconstellation of media changes, in a move toward more digital, networked,and interactive forms, which together define the horizon of “the new.”

Introduction 11Our work has focused on those practices that are “new” at this momentand that are most clearly associated with youth culture and voice, such asengagement with social network sites, media fandom, and gaming. Incontrast to sites such as Linked In and match.com or much of the bloggingworld, sites such as MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, and LiveJournal andonline gaming have a high degree of youth participation, and youth havedefined certain genres of participation within these sites that are keyed toa generational identity. We can also see this cultural distinction at play inthe difference between email and instant messaging as preferred communicationtools, where the older generation is more tightly identified withthe former. The ways in which age identity works in these sites is somewhatdifferent from how more traditional media have segmented youth as adistinct market with particular cultural styles and products associated withit. Instead, the youth focus stems from patterns of adoption, the fit withthe particular social and communicative needs of youth, and how theytake up these tools to produce their own “content” as well as traffic incommercial popular culture. In these sites, it is not only youth consumptionthat is driving the success of new Internet ventures but also theirparticipation (or “traffic”) and production of “user-generated content.” Indescribing these as youth-centric sites and communication tools, we meanthat they are culturally identified with youth, but they can be engagedwith by people of all ages. We are examining the cultural valences ofcertain new media tools and practices in how they align with age-basedidentities, but this does not mean that we believe that youth have amonopoly on innovative new media uses or that youth-centric sites do nothave a large number of adult participants.New media researchers differ in the degree to which they see contemporarynew media practices as attached to a particular life stage or moreclosely tied to a generational cohort identity. For example, in looking atmobile phone use, Rich Ling and Brigitte Yttri (2006) have argued thatcommunicative patterns are tied to the particular developmental needs ofadolescents who are engaged in negotiations over social identity andbelonging. Naomi Baron (2008) also examines the relation between onlinecommunication and changes to reading and writing conventions. Shesees youth uptake of more informal forms of online writing as part of abroader set of social and cultural shifts in the status of printed and writtencommunication. Ultimately, the ways in which current communication

12 Introductionpractice will lead to resilient cultural change is an empirical question thatcan be answered only with the passage of time, as we observe the aging ofthe current youth cohort. If history is any guide, however, we shouldexpect at least some imprint of a generation-specific media identity topersist. The aim of our study is to describe media engagements that arespecific to the life circumstances of current youth, at a moment when weare seeing a transition to what we describe in this book as widespreadparticipation in digital media production and networked publics. At thesame time, we analyze how these same youth are taking the lead in developingsocial norms and literacies that are likely to persist as structures ofmedia participation and practice that transcend age boundaries. Forexample, we have seen text messaging expand from a youth demographicto encompass a broader age range, and the demographics of media suchas gaming and animation gradually shift upstream.Finally, the new media practices we examine are almost all situated inthe social and recreational activities of youth rather than in contexts ofexplicit instruction. In this, our approach is in line with a growing bodyof work in sociocultural learning theory that looks to out-of-school settingsfor models of learning and engagement that differ from what is found inthe classroom (Cole 1997; Goldman 2005; Hull and Schultz 2002b; Lave1988; Lave and Wenger 1991; Mahiri 2004; Nocon and Cole 2005; Nunes,Schliemann, and Carraher 1993; Rogoff 2003; Singleton 1998; Varenne andMcDermott 1998). Our approach also reflects an emerging consensus thatthe most engaged and active forms of learning with digital media happenin youth-driven settings that are focused on social communication andrecreation. As Julian Sefton-Green (2004, 3) has argued in his literaturereview Informal Learning with Technology Outside School, educators mustrecognize that much of young people’s learning with information andcommunication technologies happens outside of school. “This recognitionrequires us to acknowledge a wider ‘ecology’ of education where schools,homes, playtime, and library and the museum all play their part.” Byfocusing on recreational and social media engagement in the everydaycontexts of family and peer interaction, we fill out the picture of the rangeof environments in which youth learn with new media and prioritize thosesocial contexts that youth find most meaningful and motivational. In this,we see our work as addressing an empirical gap in the literature as well as

Introduction 13addressing the need to develop conceptual frameworks that are keyed tothe changing landscape of new media engagement.Our primary descriptive task for this book is to capture youth new mediapractice in a way that is contextualized by the social and cultural contextsthat are consequential and meaningful to young people themselves, andto situate these practices within the broader structural conditions ofchildhood that frame youth action and voice. In this, we draw from anethnographic approach toward youth studies and new media studies. Thiscommitment to socially and culturally contextualized analysis is evidentalso in the thematic and conceptual frameworks that guide our analysis ofparticipation, learning, and literacy.Conceptual FrameworksThrough our collaborative analysis, we have developed a series of sharedconceptual frameworks that function as threads of continuity throughoutthis book’s chapters. Our work is guided by four key analytic foci that weapply to our ethnographic material: participation, publics, literacy, andlearning. Our primary descriptive research question is this: How are newmedia being taken up by youth practices and agendas? Our analytic questionfollows: How do these practices change the dynamics of youth-adultnegotiations over literacy, learning, and authoritative knowledge?In keeping with our focus on social and cultural context, we considerlearning and literacy as part of a broader set of issues having to do withyouth participation in public culture (Appadurai and Breckenridge 1988;1995). We draw from existing theories that are part of the “social turn” inliteracy studies, new media studies, learning theory, and childhood studies.The 1980s and 1990s saw the solidification of a new set of paradigms forunderstanding learning and literacy that emphasized the importance ofsocial participation and cultural identity, and that moved away from thepreviously dominant focus on individual cognition and knowledge acquisition.This social turn has been described in terms of new paradigmsof situated cognition (Brown, Collins, and Duguid 1989; Greeno 1997;Lave 1988), situated learning (Lave and Wenger 1991), distributed cognition(Hutchins 1995), and New Literacy Studies (Gee 1990; Street 1993).We see a counterpart in the new paradigm of childhood studies and the

14 Introductionrecognition among media scholars of the active agency of media audiences,as we describe in the previous section. We tailor these approaches to ourspecific interdisciplinary endeavor and our objects of inquiry that are atthe intersection of these different fields.While the social turn in learning and literacy studies is now well established,there is relatively little work that applies these frameworks to learningin the context of networked communication and media engagement.Further, though situated approaches to learning and literacy engage deeplywith issues of cultural diversity and equity, they tend not to see generationaland age-based power differentials as a central analytic problematicin the same way that the new paradigm in childhood studies does. We seethe topic of youth-centered new media practice as a site that can bringthese conversations together into productive tension. New media are a sitewhere youth exhibit agency and an expertise that often exceeds that oftheir elders, resulting in intergenerational struggle over authority andcontrol over learning and literacy. Technology, media, and public cultureare shaping and being shaped by these struggles, as youth practice definesnew terms of participation in a digital and networked media ecology. Wehave developed an interdisciplinary analytic tool kit to investigate thiscomplex set of relations among changing technology, kid-adult relations,and definitions of learning and literacy. Our key terms are “genres ofparticipation,” “networked publics,” “peer-based learning,” and “newmedia literacy.”Genres of ParticipationOne of the key innovations of situated learning theory was to posit thatlearning was an act of social participation in communities of practice(Lave and Wenger 1991). By shifting the focus away from the individualand to the broader network of social relationships, situated learning theorysuggests that the relationships of knowledge sharing, mentoring, and monitoringwithin social groups become key sites of analytic interest. In thisformulation, people learn in all contexts of activity, not because they areinternalizing knowledge, culture, and expertise as isolated individuals, butbecause they are part of shared cultural systems and are engaged in collectivesocial action. This perspective has a counterpart within work in mediastudies that looks at media engagement as a social and active process. Anotion of “participation,” as an alternative to internalization or consump-

Introduction 15tion, has the advantage in not assuming that kids are passive, mere audiencesto media or educational content. It forces attention to the moreethnographic and practice-based dimensions of media engagement as wellas querying the broader social and cultural contexts in which these activitiesare conducted.Henry Jenkins has put forth the idea of “participatory media cultures,”which he originally used to describe fan communities in the 1970s and1980s, and which he has recently revisited in relation to current trends inconvergence culture (1992; 2006). Jenkins traces how fan practices establishedin the TV-dominated era have become increasingly mainstreambecause of the convergence of traditional and digital media. Fans not onlyconsume professionally produced media but they also produce their ownmeanings and media products, continuing to disrupt the culturally dominantdistinctions between production and consumption. More recently,Jenkins has taken this framework and applied it to issues of learning andliteracy, describing a set of twenty-first-century skills and dispositions thatare based on different modes of participation in media cultures ( Jenkins2006). In a complementary vein, Joe Karaganis (2007) has proposed aconcept of “structures of participation” to analyze different modes of relatingto digital and interactive technologies. In our descriptions of youthpractice, we rely on a related notion of “genres of participation” to suggestdifferent modes or conventions for engaging with new media (Ito 2003;2008b). A notion of participation genre addresses similar problematics asconcepts such as habitus (Bourdieu 1972) or structuration (Giddens 1986),linking activity to social and cultural structure. More closely allied withhumanistic analysis, a notion of “genre,” however, foregrounds the interpretivedimensions of human orderliness. How we identify with, orient to,and engage with media is better described as a process of interpretive recognitionthan a process of habituation or structuring. We recognize certainpatterns of representation (textual genres) and in turn engage with themin social, routinized ways (participation genres).In this book, we identify genres of participation with new media as away of describing everyday learning and media engagement. The primarydistinction we make is between friendship-driven and interest-drivengenres of participation, which correspond to different genres of youthculture, social network structure, and modes of learning. By “friendshipdrivengenres of participation,” we refer to the dominant and mainstream

16 Introductionpractices of youth as they go about their day-to-day negotiations withfriends and peers. These friendship-driven practices center on peers youthencounter in the age-segregated contexts of school but might also includefriends and peers they meet through religious groups, school sports, andother local activity groups. For most youth, these local friendship-drivennetworks are their primary source of affiliation, friendship, and romanticpartners, and their lives online mirror this local network. MySpace andFacebook are the emblematic online sites for these sets of practices. We usethe term “peer” to refer to the people whom youth see as part of theirlateral network of relations, whom they look to for affiliation, competition,as well as disaffiliation and distancing. Peers are the group of people towhom youth look to develop their sense of self, reputation, and status. Wereserve the term “friend” to refer to those relations that youth self-identifyas such, a subset of the peer group that individual youths have close affiliationswith. By “friendship-driven,” we refer even more narrowly to thoseshared practices that grow out of friendships in given local social worlds.The chapters on friendship and intimacy focus on describing these friendship-drivenforms of learning and participation.In contrast to friendship-driven practices, with interest-driven practices,specialized activities, interests, or niche and marginalized identities comefirst. Interest-driven practices are what youth describe as the domain of thegeeks, freaks, musicians, artists, and dorks—the kids who are identified assmart, different, or creative, who generally exist at the margins of teensocial worlds. Kids find a different network of peers and develop deepfriendships through these interest-driven engagements, but in these casesthe interests come first, and they structure the peer network and friendships,rather than vice versa. These are contexts where kids find relationshipsthat center on their interests, hobbies, and career aspirations. It isnot about the given social relations that structure kids’ school lives butabout focusing and expanding an individual’s social circle based on interests.Although some interest-based activities such as sports and music havebeen supported through schools and overlap with young people’s friendship-drivennetworks, other kinds of interests require more far-flung networksof affiliation and expertise. As we discuss in the chapters on gaming,creative production, and work, online sites provide opportunities for youthto connect with interest-based groups that might not be represented intheir local communities. Interest-driven and friendship-driven participa-

Introduction 17tion are high-level genre categories that orient our description as a whole.Individual chapters go into more depth on the specific genre conventionsof their domain.Certain forms of participation also act to bridge the divide betweenfriendship-driven and interest-driven modes. In chapter 5, we describe howmore friendship-driven modes of “hanging out” with friends while gamingcan transition to more interest-driven genres of what we call recreationalgaming. Similarly, in chapter 6, we describe how the more friendshipdrivenpractices of creating profiles on social network sites or taking photoswith friends can lead to “messing around” in the more interest-drivenmodes of digital media production. In chapter 1, we identify a genre ofparticipation of “messing around” with new media that in some cases canmediate between genres of “geeking out” and “hanging out.” Conversely,we have seen how interest-driven engagements can lead to deep andabiding friendships that might eventually transcend the particular focusof interest and provide a social group for socializing and friendship foryouth who may not have been deeply embedded in the more popularityandfriendship-driven networks in their local school or community.Transitioning between hanging out, messing around, and geeking outrepresents certain trajectories of participation that young people can navigate,where their modes of learning and their social networks and focusbegin to shift. Examining learning as changes in genres of participation isan alternative to the notion of “transfer,” where the mechanism is locatedin a process of individual internalization of content or skills. In a participatoryframe, it is not that kids transfer new media skills or social skills todifferent domains, but rather they begin to identify with and participatein different social networks and sets of cultural referents through certaintransitional social and cultural mechanisms. It is not sufficient to internalizeor identify with certain modes of participation; there also needs to bea supporting social and cultural world.Rather than relying on distinctions based on given categories such asgender, class, or ethnic identity, we have identified genres based on whatwe saw in our ethnographic material as the distinctions that emerge fromyouth practice and culture, and that help us interpret how media intersectwith learning and participation. By describing these forms of participationas genres, we hope to avoid the assumption that these genres attachcategorically to individuals. Rather, just as an individual may engage with

18 Introductionmultiple media genres, we find that youth will often engage in multiplegenres of participation in ways that are situationally specific. We havealso avoided categorizing practice based on technology- or media-centricparameters, such as media type or measures of frequency or media saturation.Genres of participation provide ways of identifying the sources ofdiversity in how youth engage with new media in a way that does not relyon a simple notion of “divides” or a ranking of more- or less-sophisticatedmedia expertise. Instead, these genres represent different investmentsthat youth make in particular forms of sociability and differing forms ofidentification with media genres.Networked PublicsWhen we consider learning as an act of social participation, our analyticfocus shifts from the individual to the broader social and cultural ecologythat a person inhabits. Although we all experience private moments oflearning and reflection, a large part of what defines us as social beings andlearners happens in contexts of group social interaction and engagementwith shared cultural forms. Engagement with media (itself a form of mediatedsociability) is a constitutive part of how we learn to participate asculturally competent, social, and knowledgeable beings. Although studiesof learning in out-of-school settings have examined a wide range of learningenvironments, these approaches have been relatively silent as to howlearning operates in relation to mass and networked media. With someexceptions (Mahiri 2004; Renninger and Shumar 2002; Weiss et al. 2006),contexts of social interaction and public behavior tend to be imagined aslocal, copresent encounters such as in the case of apprenticeship or learningin the home or street; work in media studies has largely been in aparallel (though often complementary) set of conversations. The focus onsituated learning in contexts of embodied presence has been an importantantidote to more traditional educational approaches that have focused onkids’ relationships to abstract academic content, often through the abstractionof educational media, but it has stood in the way of an articulationof situated-learning theory in relation to mediated practices. Our workhere, however, is to take more steps in applying situated approaches tolearning to an understanding of mediated sociability, though not of theschool-centered variety. This requires integrating approaches in publicculturestudies with theories of learning and participation.

Introduction 19Arjun Appadurai and Carol Breckenridge suggest the term “publicculture” as an alternative to terms such as “popular culture” or “massculture” to link popular-culture engagement to practices of participationin the public sphere. They see public culture studies as a way of understanding“the space between domestic life and the nation-state—wheredifferent social groups (classes, ethnic groups, genders) constitute theiridentities by their experience of mass-culture mediated forms in relationto the practices of everyday life” (Appadurai and Breckenridge 1995, 4–5).We draw from this framing and situate it within this current historicalmoment, where we are seeing public culture, as it is experienced by agrowing number of U.S. teens, migrating to digitally networked forms. Inthis context, youth are participating in publics constituted in part by thenation-state, and also by commercial media environments that are alongthe lines of the “consumer citizenship” that Banet-Weiser (2007) has theorized.We use the term “networked publics” to reference the forms ofparticipation in public culture that is the focus of our work. The growingavailability of digital media-production tools, combined with online networksthat traffic in rich media, is creating convergence between massmedia and online communication (Benkler 2006; Ito 2008a; Jenkins 2006;Shirky 2008; Varnelis 2008). Rather than conceptualize everyday mediaengagement as “consumption” by “audiences,” the term “networkedpublics” foregrounds the active participation of a distributed social networkin the production and circulation of culture and knowledge. The growingsalience of networked publics in young people’s daily lives is part ofim portant changes in what constitutes the relevant social groups andpublics that structure young people’s learning and identity.This book delves into the details of everyday youth participation innetworked publics and into the ways in which parents and educators workto shape these engagements. As danah boyd discusses in her analysis ofparticipation on MySpace, networked publics differ from traditional teenpublics (such as the mall or the school) in some important ways. Unlikeunmediated publics, networked publics are characterized by their persistence,searchability, replicability, and invisible audiences (boyd 2007).With friendship-driven practices, youth online activity largely replicatestheir existing practices of hanging out and communicating with friends,but these characteristics of networked publics do create new kinds ofopportunities for youth to develop their public identities, connect, and

20 Introductioncommunicate. The chapters on friendship and intimacy describe thesedynamics by examining how practices such as Friending, public socialdrama, flirting, and dating are both reproduced and reshaped by onlinecommunication through social network sites, online chat, and mobilecommunication. These technologies facilitate new forms of private, intimate,and always-on communication as well as new forms of publicitywhere personal networks and social connections are displayed to broaderpublics than have traditionally been available locally to teens.In addition to reshaping how youth participate in their given socialnetworks of peers in school and their local communities, networked publicsopen new avenues for youth participation through interest-driven networks.In contrast to friendship-driven networked publics, the interestdrivenvarieties generally do not adhere to existing formal institutions suchas school or church, nor are they locally bound. Through sites such asYouTube, fan forums, networked gaming sites, LiveJournal communities,deviantART, or youth media centers, youth can access publics that areengaged in their particular hobby or area of interest. These more specializedand niche publics are settings where youth can connect with othercreators or players who have greater expertise than they do, and conversely,where they can mentor and develop leadership in relation to less experiencedparticipants. They are also networks for distributing, publicizing,and sometimes even getting famous or paid for the work that they create.These dynamics of interest-driven networked publics, and the new kindsof peer relations that youth find there, are the focus of our chapters ongaming, creative production, and work.The relation between friendship-driven and interest-driven networkedpublics is complex and grows out of the existing status distinctions ofyouth culture. Although kids with more geeky and creative interests continueto be marginal to the more mainstream popularity and dating negotiationsin school, our work does indicate some shifts in the balance ofhow kids engage with these different networks. Unlike the older generation,today’s kids have the opportunity to engage in multiple publics—theycan retain an identity as a “popular” kid in their local school networks andon MySpace while also pursuing interest-driven activities with another setof peers online. Although the majority of kids we spoke to participateprimarily in friendship-driven publics, we also saw many examples of kidswho maintain a dual identity structure. They might have multiple onlineprofiles for different sets of friends, or they might have a group of online

Introduction 21gaming friends who do not overlap with the friends they hang out within school. Although our study does not enable us to identify whether thebalance is shifting in terms of how kids participate in different publics, wehave identified that there is an expanded palette of opportunity for kidsto participate in different kinds of publics because of the growth of thenetworked variety.Peer-Based LearningSociocultural approaches to learning have recognized that kids gain mostof their knowledge and competencies in contexts that do not involveformal instruction. A growing body of ethnographic work documents howlearning happens in informal settings, as a side effect of everyday life andsocial activity, rather than in an explicit instructional agenda. For example,in describing learning in relation to simulation games, James Paul Gee(2008, 19) suggests that kids pick up academic content and skills as partof their play. “These things, which are in the foreground at school, comefor free, that is, develop naturally as the learner solves problems andachieves goals.” In School’s Out!, an edited collection of essays documentinglearning in home, after-school, and community settings, Glynda Hull andKatherine Schultz (2002a, 2) ask, “Why, we have wanted to know, doesliteracy so often flourish out of school?” They describe the accumulatingevidence documenting how people pick up literacy in the contexts ofinformal, everyday contexts, and it is often difficult to reproduce thosesame literacies in the more formalized contexts of schooling and testing.We see our focus on youth learning in contexts of peer sociability andrecreational learning as part of this research tradition. Our interest, morespecifically, is in documenting instances of learning that are centered onyouth peer-based interaction, in which the agenda is not defined by parentsand teachers.Our focus on youth perspectives, as well as the high level of youthengagement in social and recreational activities online, determined ourfocus on the more informal and loosely organized contexts of peer-basedlearning. We discuss the implications for learning institutions in the conclusionof this book, but the body of the book describes learning outsideof school, primarily in settings of peer-based interaction. As ethnographiesof children and youth have documented, kids learn from their peers. Whileadults often view the influence of peers negatively, as characterized bythe term “peer pressure,” we approach these informal spaces for peer

22 Introductioninteractions as a space of opportunity for learning. Our cases demonstratethat some of the drivers of self-motivated learning come not from theinstitutionalized authorities in kids’ lives setting standards and providinginstruction, but from the kids observing and communicating with peopleengaged in the same interests and in the same struggles for status andrecognition that they are.Both interest-driven and friendship-driven participation rely on peerbasedlearning dynamics, which have a different structure from formalinstruction or parental guidance. Our description of friendship-drivenlearning describes a familiar genre of peer-based learning, in which onlinenetworks are supporting those sometimes painful but important lessons ingrowing up, giving kids an environment to explore romance, friendship,and status just as their predecessors did. In an environment where thereare fewer and fewer spaces for kids to hang out informally in public space,these online friendship-driven networks are critical contexts for theseforms of learning and sociability. Rather than construe these dynamicsnegatively or fearfully, we can consider them also as an integral part ofdeveloping a sense of personal identity as a social being. Peer-based learningrelies on a context of reciprocity, in which kids feel they have a stakein self-expression as well as a stake in evaluating and giving feedback toone another. Unlike in more hierarchical and authoritative relations, bothparties are constantly contributing and evaluating one another. Youth bothaffiliate and compete with their peers.Like friendship-driven networks, interest-driven networks are also sitesof peer-based learning, but they represent a different genre of participation,in which specialized interests are what bring a social group together. Inboth cases, however, the peer group becomes a powerful driver for learning.The peers whom youth are learning from in interest-driven practices arenot defined by their given institution of school but rather through moreintentional and chosen affiliations. When kids reach out to a set of relationsbased on their interests, what constitutes a peer starts to changebecause of the change in a young person’s social network. In the case ofkids who have become immersed in interest-driven publics, the context ofwho their peers are changes, as does the context for how reputation works,and they get recognition for different forms of skill and learning.Youth are increasingly turning to networked publics as sites for peerbasedlearning and interaction that are not reliant on adult oversight and

Introduction 23guidance. Among the reasons that youth participation in these networkedpublics is so high is that they are an alternative to publics that the adultauthorities in their lives have control over, and they provide opportunitiesfor private conversation with peers. Commercial media industries have acomplicated role in these dynamics. Ever since the growth of a youthorientedcommercial and media culture in the past century, children andyouth have been marketed to as a unique demographic, with culturalproducts and identity categories that are distinct from those of their elders(Cross 1997; Frank 1997; Kline 1993; Livingstone 2002; Seiter 1993). Thegrowing influence of peers from a similar age cohort in determining socialvalues and cultural style (Milner 2004; Willis 1990) has grown in tandemwith these broader cultural shifts in defining a distinct youth culture (Frank1997), or “kid power” (Banet-Weiser 2007; Seiter 1993). Although the contemporarymedia ecology is characterized by the growing centrality ofuser-generated content, commercial media are still central to youth culture,and Internet companies are becoming a formidable force in structuring theconditions under which youth connect with their peers. This takes theform of technology design decisions, marketing decisions, and policy constraintsthat are placed on the industry. Although we do not focus on therole of commercial industry in structuring youth peer interactions, weunderstand that commercial culture and commercial online spaces andservices are lending support to youth-centered peer cultures and communication,often at the expense of institutions such as school and family.New Media LiteracyThe negotiations among kids, parents, educators, and technologists overthe shape of youth online participation is also a site of struggle overwhat counts as legitimate forms of learning and literacy. Any discussionof learning and literacy is unavoidably normative. What counts as learningand literacy is a question of collective values, values that are constantlybeing contested and negotiated among different social groups. Periods ofcultural and technological flux open up new areas of debate about whatshould count as part of our common culture and literacy and what areappropriate ways for young people to participate in these new culturalforms. Education designed by adults for children also has an unavoidablycoercive dimension that is situated in a systemic power differential betweenadults and children. The moral panic over youth new media uptake is also

24 Introductionpart of this power differential, as adults mobilize public support to directchildren away from social forms and literacies that they find threateningand dangerous. Changes in social, cultural, economic, and technologicallandscapes are often accompanied by anxieties and questions as to whatskills need to be learned and taught for subsequent generations to be ableto participate in public life, as students, citizens, consumers, and workers.In our work, we are examining the current practices of youth and queryingwhat kinds of literacies and social competencies they are defining as aparticular generational cohort experimenting with a new set of mediatechnologies. We have attempted to momentarily suspend our own valuejudgments about youth engagement with new media in order to betterunderstand and appreciate what youth themselves see as important formsof culture, learning, and literacy. Those studying literacies within the NewLiteracy Studies framework have used ethnography as a way of understandingthe socially constructed dimensions of literacy, whether studying inschool or out-of-school contexts (Collins 1995; Gee 1990; Hull and Schultz2002b; Street 1993, 1995). This work, in both its anthropological roots inthe work of Brian Street and its sociolinguistic roots in the work of JamesPaul Gee, sees any discussion of literacy as an inherently ideological one.Definitions of literacy are embedded in institutions, broader culturaldimensions, and power. The emphasis has continually been on the localpractices associated with the uses of reading and writing and how theseare not determined by text, technology, or media, nor are they determinedin a top-down manner. Those who may seem in weaker positions oftenappropriate and transform the agendas of those who may seem in moredominant positions of power. While we are aware that there may be “limitsto the local” in the understanding of literacies as practices (Brandt andClinton 2002), we believe that it is crucial to examine literacy as a set ofstandards that are under continuous development and negotiation throughsocial activity. In this, our work is in line with that of other scholars (e.g.,Chávez and Soep 2005; Hull 2003; Mahiri 2004) who explore literacies inrelation to ideology, power, and social practice in other settings whereyouth are pushing back against dominant definitions of literacy that structuretheir everyday life worlds.We see a moving horizon of what counts as new media as the horizonof what those who study technologicial systems have described as a windowof “interpretive flexibility.” Theorists who have described the social con-

Introduction 25struction of technological systems have posited that when new technologiesenter the social stage, there is a period of flexibility in which differentsocial actors mobilize to construct the new meaning of a technologicalartifact (Bijker, Hughes, and Pinch 1987). Through time, and throughcontestations among different actors, the meaning and shape of an artifactis gradually stabilized and black boxed. Though the meaning of a technologicalartifact can later be reopened with the introduction of new facts ornew social actors, generally there is a period in the historical evolution ofnew technologies in which there is heightened public debate and socialnegotiations about a technology’s shape and meaning. The new media thatwe are examining in this book, and the related generational struggles overthe shape of culture, norms, and literacy, are emblematic of this momentof interpretive flexibility. While what is being defined as “new medialiteracy” is certainly not the exclusive province of youth, unlike in the caseof “old” literacies, youth are playing a more central role in the definitionof these newer forms. In fact, the current anxiety over how new mediaerode literacy and writing standards could be read as an indicator of themarginalization of adult institutions that have traditionally defined literacynorms (whether that is the school or the family).Researchers have posited a variety of ways to understand and define newmedia literacy. For example, David Buckingham comes from a tradition ofmedia education and considers new media literacy as a twist in the debatesover media literacy that have been, until recently, focused on television(Buckingham 2003; Buckingham et al. 2005). Kathleen Tyner (1998) considersmedia literacy as well as technical literacy in her discussion of literacyin a digital world. James Paul Gee (2003) sees gaming as representingnew modes of learning of certain semiotic domains, and in his recent workon twenty-first-century skills Henry Jenkins (2006) applies his insightsabout active media participation to an analysis of new media literacy. Oneof the more general statements of literacy that is pertinent to consideringnew media literacy is The New London Group’s (1996, 63) work on multiliteracies.It sees a growing palette of literacy forms in relation to an“emerging cultural, institutional, and global order: the multiplicity of communicationchannels and media, and the increasing saliency of culturaland linguistic diversity.”Our work is in line with this general impetus toward acknowledging abroader set of cultural and social competencies that could be defined as

26 Introductionexamples of literacy. However, our work does not seek to define the componentsof new media literacy or to participate directly in the normalizationof particular forms of literacy standards or practice. Rather, we see ourcontribution as describing the forms of competencies, skills, and literacypractices that youth are developing through media production and onlinecommunication to inform these broader debates. More specifically, wehave identified certain literacy practices that youth have been central participantsin defining: deliberately casual forms of online speech, nuancedsocial norms for how to engage in social network activities, and new genresof media representation, such as machinima, mashups, remix, video blogs,web comics, and fansubs. Often these cultural forms are tied to certainlinguistic styles identified with particular youth culture and subcultures(Eckert 1996). The goal of our work is to situate these literacy practiceswithin specific and diverse conditions of youth culture and identity as wellas within an intergenerational struggle of literacy norms. Although thetradition of New Literacy Studies has described literacy in a more multiculturaland multimodal frame, it is often silent as to the generationaldifferences in how literacies are valued. In our work, we suggest that notonly are new media practices defining forms of literacy that rely on interactiveand multimedia forms but they also are defining literacies that arespecific to a particular media moment, and possibly generational identities.Although some of the literacy practices we describe may be keyed to aparticular life stage, new media literacies are not necessarily going to “growup” to conform to the standards of their elders but are likely to be tied tofoundational changes in forms of cultural expression.Overview of ChaptersThe chapters that follow are organized based on what emerged from ourmaterial as the core practices that structure youth engagement with newmedia. Unlike the specific case studies that individual researchers willaddress in independent publications, these chapters are efforts to synthesizeacross different cases and youth populations. Throughout the book,we include a series of illustrative numbered sections that provide moredetailed descriptions of specific youth and cases. With this format, we havetried to provide general summative findings that do justice to the breadthof our research while also providing some of the detailed description thatis the hallmark of ethnographic writing.

Introduction 27Chapter 1, “Media Ecologies,” frames the technological and socialcontext in which young people are consuming, sharing, and producingnew media. The chapter introduces the various locations in which weconducted our research and our methods of data collection and collaborativeanalysis. The second half of the chapter introduces three genres ofparticipation with new media that are an alternative to common ways ofcategorizing forms of media access: hanging out, messing around, andgeeking out.The following two chapters focus on mainstream friendship-drivenpractices and networks. Chapter 2, “Friendship,” examines how teensuse instant messaging, social network sites, and mobile phones tonegotiate their friendships in peer groups that center on school and localactivity groups. These are the dominant forms of sociality in teen communication.Familiar practices of making friends—gossiping, bullying, andjockeying for status—are reproduced online, but they are also reshaped insignificant ways because of the new forms of publicity and always-oncommunication.The discussion of friend-centered practices is followed by the chapter onintimacy, which also examines practices that are a long-standing and pervasivepart of everyday youth sociality. The chapter discusses how teensuse online communication to augment their practices of flirting, dating,and breaking up. The dominant social norm is that the online space is usedto extend and maintain relationships, but that first contact should be initiatedoffline. While these norms largely mirror the existing practices of teenromance, the growth of mediated communication raises new issues surroundingprivacy and vulnerability in intimate relationships.Chapter 4, “Families,” also takes up a key given set of local social relationshipsby looking across the diverse families we have encountered inour research. The chapter describes how parents and children negotiatemedia access and participation through their use of physical space in thehome, routines, rules, and shared production and play. The chapter alsoexamines how the boundaries of home and family are extended throughthe use of new media.The final three chapters of the book focus primarily on interest-drivengenres of participation, though they also describe the interface with morefriendship-driven genres. Chapter 5, “Gaming,” examines different genresof gaming practice: killing time, hanging out, recreational gaming, mobi-

28 Introductionlizing and organizing, and augmented game play. The goal of the chapteris to examine gaming in a social context as a diverse set of practices witha range of different learning outcomes.Chapter 6 examines creative production, looking across a range ofdifferent case studies of youth production, including podcasting, videoblogging, video remix, hip-hop production, fan fiction, and fansubbing.The chapter follows a trajectory of deepening engagement with creativeproduction, beginning with casual personal media production and thendiscussing how youth get started with more serious commitments tocreative work and how they improve their craft, specialize, collaborate, andgain an audience.The final chapter, “Work” examines how youth are engaged in economicactivity and other forms of labor using new media. The chapter suggeststhat new media are providing avenues to make the productive work ofyouth more visible and consequential. We showcase some of the innovativeways that kids are mobilizing their new media skills and talents,including online publishing, freelancing, enterprises, and various forms ofnonmarket work.The conclusion, in addition to highlighting the key findings of this book,discusses the implications of this research for parents, educators, andpolicy makers.Notes1. We use the term “social media” to refer to the set of new media that enable socialinteraction between participants, often through the sharing of media. Although allmedia are in some ways social, the term “social media” came into common usagein 2005 as a term referencing a central component of what is frequently called “Web2.0” (O’Reilly 2005 at http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html) or the “social web.” All these terms refer to the layeringof social interaction and online content. Popular genres of social media includeinstant messaging, blogs, social network sites, and video- and photo-sharing sites.2. A wide variety of terms have been coined to link generational identity to digitaland information technologies. Some examples include Don Tapscott’s (1998) “netgeneration,” the Kaiser Family Foundation’s report on “Generation M” (for media)(Roberts, Foehr, and Rideout 2005), Mark Prensky’s (2006) work on “digital natives,”and John Beck and Mitchell Wade’s (2004) “gamer generation.” See Buckingham(2006) for a critique of the discourse of “digital generations.”

1 MEDIA ECOLOGIESLead Authors: Heather A. Horst, Becky Herr-Stephenson, andLaura RobinsonI get up in the morning and I just take a shower and eat breakfast and then Igo to school. No technology there. And then when I come home—I invited afriend over today and we decided to go through my clothes. My dad saw thehuge mess in my room. I had to clean that up, but then we went on the computer.We went on Millsberry [Farms]. And she has her own account too. So she playedon her account and I played on mine, and then we got bored with that ‘causewe were trying to play that game where we had to fill in the letters and makewords out of the word. That was so hard. And we kept on trying to do it andwe’d only get to level two and there’s so many levels, so we gave up. And wewent in the garage and we played some GameCube. And that was it, and thenher mom came and picked her up. I came back in, played a little more computer(tried to get that word game and tried to get more points), and, but I got bored withthat and so I went in my room and I listened to a tape. And then I ate dinner andyou came . . .—Geo Gem, age 12 (Horst, Silicon Valley Families)In the spring of 2006, Heather Horst interviewed Geo Gem, a twelveyear-oldgirl who attends a public middle school in Silicon Valley,California. The youngest of two children in a biracial family (whiteand Asian-American), Geo Gem twirled her long dark hair while shetalked about all the things she was “into”: playing piano, singing,volleyball, the rain forest, and playing games on the computer or theGameCube in the family’s media room, a space in the converted garage.Although Geo Gem’s family lives in a wealthy area of the San FranciscoBay Area, the media and technology she uses every day do not necessarilyreflect the family’s economic status. The “kids’ computer” is a secondhanddesktop computer that sits in the living room and the GameCube is dated.Moreover, Geo Gem’s parents decided not to buy cable in an effort to

30 Heather A. Horst, Becky Herr-Stephenson, and Laura Robinsonshelter their kids from what they thought was the brash commercializationand high costs of cable television. While Geo Gem has accepted thefact that she can watch only the occasional movie on the family DVDplayer, she notes that this often presents problems when her friends comeover, “since they usually watch cable.” Instead of watching television,Geo Gem plays games such as basketball, online games, and the GameCube.For Geo Gem, her media ecology, and the learning that takes place withinher home environment, seems unremarkable; she moves fluidly betweensitting in her bedroom with her friend going through the clothes in hercloset and hanging out playing GameCube after school or sitting downfor an hour to try to get to the next level on Millsberry Farms. Althoughit is unlikely that Geo Gem would describe her after-school activitieswith media as “learning” in the same way that she might describe schoolworkor piano lessons (see Seiter 2007), Geo Gem’s home environment,the institution of the family, rules, and a variety of other factors constituteher everyday media ecology and her social and cultural context forlearning.Young people in the United States today are growing up in a mediaecology where digital and networked media are playing an increasinglycentral role. Even youth who do not possess computers and Internetaccess in the home are participants in a shared culture where new socialmedia, digital media distribution, and digital media production are commonplaceamong their peers and in their everyday school contexts. As weoutline in the introduction, we see technical change as intertwined withother forms of historically specific social and cultural change as well asresilient structural conditions, such as those defined by age, gender, andsocioeconomic status. We emphasize that there are a diversity of waysin which U.S. youth inhabit a changing and variegated set of mediaecologies. We also recognize that the ways in which U.S. youth participatein media ecologies are specific to contextual conditions and a particularhistorical moment. In line with our sociocultural perspective on learningand literacy, we see young people’s learning and participation with newmedia as situationally contingent, located in specific and varied mediaecologies. Before we begin our description of youth practice, we need tomap what those ecologies of media and participation look like. That is thegoal of this chapter.

Media Ecologies 31We use the metaphor of ecology to emphasize the characteristics of anoverall technical, social, cultural, and place-based system, in which thecomponents are not decomposable or separable. The everyday practices ofyouth, existing structural conditions, infrastructures of place, and technologiesare all dynamically interrelated; the meanings, uses, functions,flows, and interconnections in young people’s daily lives located in particularsettings are also situated within young people’s wider media ecologies.We also take an ecological approach in understanding youth cultureand practice. As we suggest in the case of interest-driven and friendshipdrivenparticipation, these are not unique social and cultural worlds operatingwith their own internal logic, but rather these forms of participationare defined in relation and in opposition to one another. In this way, weextend the understanding of media ecologies used in communicationstudies (e.g., McLuhan 1964/1994; Meyrowitz 1986; Postman, 1993), whichhas focused primarily on “media effects,” to studies of the structure andcontext of media use. Similarly, we see adults’ and kids’ cultural worlds asdynamically co-constituted, as are different locations that youth navigatesuch as school, after-school, home, and online places. The three genres ofparticipation that we introduce in this chapter—“hanging out,” “messingaround,” and “geeking out”—are also genres that are defined relationally.The notion of “participation genre” enables us to emphasize the relationaldimensions of how subcultures and mainstream cultures are defined; it alsoallows us to use an emergent, flexible, and interpretive rubric for framingcertain forms of practice.In this chapter, we frame the media ecologies that contextualize theyouth practices we describe in later chapters. By drawing from case studiesthat are delimited by locality, institutions, networked sites, and interestgroups (see appendices), we have been able to map the contours of thevaried social, technical, and cultural contexts that structure youth mediaengagement. This chapter introduces three genres of participation withnew media that have emerged as overarching descriptive frameworks forunderstanding how youth new media practices are defined in relation andin opposition to one another. The genres of participation—hanging out,messing around, and geeking out—reflect and are intertwined with youngpeople’s practices, learning, and identity formation within these varied anddynamic media ecologies.

32 Heather A. Horst, Becky Herr-Stephenson, and Laura RobinsonBox 1.1 Media Ecologies: Quantitative PerspectivesChristo SimsHere I contextualize our ethnographic data by connecting our work to quantitativemeasures collected in several recent large-scale surveys of Americanyouth media practices. Such surveys strikingly demonstrate the pervasive, andseemingly increasing, prevalence of media in the daily lives of Americanyouth. In 2005, the Kaiser Family Foundation published data from a nationallyrepresentative survey of eight- to eighteen-year-olds showing that mostAmerican youth lived in households where media technologies were variedand numerous. On average, the youth in its sample lived in households with3.5 televisions, 2.9 VCRs or DVD players, 2.1 video-game consoles, and 1.5computers (Rideout, Roberts, and Foehr 2005). Additionally, the Kaiser FamilyFoundation survey found that more than 80 percent had access to cable orsatellite television. More recently, the Pew Internet & American Life Projectconducted a survey that showed 94 percent of all American teenagers—whichit defines as twelve- to seventeen-year-olds—now use the Internet, 89 percenthave Internet access in the home, and 66 percent have broadband Internetaccess in the home (Lenhart et al. 2008). In 2008, the USC Digital FutureProject reported that broadband was now used in 75 percent of Americanhouseholds (USC Center for the Digital Future 2008). Additionally, Pewreported that in the fall of 2007, 71 percent of American teenagers owned amobile phone and 58 percent had a social network site profile (Lenhart et al.2008). In a 2006 survey, Pew found that 51 percent of teens owned an iPodor MP3 player (Macgill 2007). In addition to access, these studies tend toemphasize the frequency with which American youth engage media, manyof which have become part of daily life. The Kaiser Family Foundation studyfound that young Americans spend on average 6.5 hours with media per day:almost 4 hours a day with TV programming or recorded videos, approximately1.75 hours per day listening to music or the radio, roughly one houra day using the computer for nonschool purposes, and about 50 minutes aday playing video games (Rideout, Roberts, and Foehr 2005). Pew’s 2007survey found that daily 63 percent of teens go online, 36 percent send textmessages, 35 percent talk on a mobile phone, 29 percent send IMs, and 23percent send messages through social network sites.The Pew, Kaiser, and USC studies each report on the increasing prevalenceof new media—notably the Internet and the mobile phone. Pew reports asteady increase in teen Internet use, from 73 percent in 2000, to 87 percentin 2004, to 95 percent in 2007, and a rapid increase in mobile phone ownership,going from 45 percent in 2004 to 71 percent in 2007 (Lenhart, Rainie,and Lewis 2001; Lenhart, Madden, and Hitlin 2005; Lenhart et al. 2008). Yetwhile new media have increased in popularity, they have not, according to

Media Ecologies 33the Kaiser report, displaced other types of media, nor have they led to anincrease in the overall amount of time teens spend with media. 1 The authorsof the Kaiser report suggest that this is because youth engage with more thanone type of media at the same time, reading a magazine while watching TV,for example. Furthermore, the Kaiser report found that media engagementdoes not crowd out time spent with parents, pursuing hobbies, or doingphysical activity. Rather, those who engaged in high amounts of mediareported spending more time on average with family, hobbies, and physicalactivity (Rideout, Roberts, and Foehr 2005).When compared to participants in these surveys, our survey participants 2appear, on average, to be more engaged with new media than national averages.While Pew’s 2007 survey found that 63 percent of American teens goonline daily, 75 percent of our surveyed participants reported going onlinedaily and 85 percent reported going online at least a few times a week. Additionally,only 1 percent of our survey participants had never been online,whereas Pew’s 2007 survey found a nonuse rate of 6 percent. 3 In terms ofdaily communications, our survey participants again outpace those found byPew in the fall of 2007: IM (Digital Youth Project (DY) 50 percent, Pew 29percent), text messaging (DY 43 percent, Pew 36 percent), talking on a mobilephone (DY 56 percent, Pew 35 percent), and using a social network site (DY46 percent, Pew 23 percent). 4 If our survey participants tend to be moreengaged with media than the national average, it would not be surprisingbecause our sites and participants were often chosen based on having alreadydemonstrated some affiliation with new media. This was particularly true ofthe online and/or interest-driven sites.While the national surveys by Pew, Kaiser, and USC tend to illustratewidely pervasive engagement with media, they also highlight ways in whichmedia access and use vary according to demographic distinctions in age,gender, socioeconomic status, and ethnicity. In terms of variations thatcorrespond to age divisions, Pew’s fall 2007 survey found that a significantlyhigher proportion of older teens (defined as fifteen- to seventeen-year-olds)go online daily, own mobile phones, and communicate daily via mobilephone calls, text messages, IMs, and messages through social networksites (Lenhart et al. 2008). With respect to gender distinctions, the samePew survey found that a significantly greater proportion of teenage girls thanboys owned mobile phones and communicated daily via text messaging,talking on mobile phones, talking on landlines, sending IMs, and messagingthrough a social network site (Lenhart et al. 2008). The Kaiser survey foundthat girls spent significantly more time than boys listening to music andsignificantly less time than boys playing video games (Rideout, Roberts, andFoehr 2005).

34 Heather A. Horst, Becky Herr-Stephenson, and Laura RobinsonIn terms of variation in measures of access and use that corresponded todistinctions in socioeconomic status—often measured as based on householdincome and/or the level of parental education obtained—Pew’s 2007 surveyand Kaiser’s survey both found that youth living in the most economicallydisadvantaged households had significantly lower rates of Internet access inthe home and tended to rely on nonhome locations, such as schools andlibraries, to access the Internet. In the case of the Pew survey, 70 percent ofteens living in households with an income of less than $30,000 per year hadInternet access in the home whereas 99 percent of teens living in householdswith earnings of $75,000 per year or more had such access (Lenhart et al.2008). Both Pew and Kaiser found that youth from higher-income householdsgo online more frequently than youth from lower-income households—39percent of teens living in households earning less than $30,000 per year goonline daily whereas 75 percent of teens from households earning more than$75,000 per year go online daily (Lenhart et al. 2008; Rideout, Roberts, andFoehr 2005). In 2007 Pew also found that teens from more well-off householdsare significantly more likely to own mobile phones. Finally, in terms of variationsthat correspond to distinctions in ethnic identifiers, Pew’s 2007 surveyand Kaiser’s survey both found that minorities (blacks and Hispanics) weresignificantly more likely to rely on nonhome locations to access the Internet(Lenhart et al. 2008; Rideout, Roberts, and Foehr 2005). Additionally, Pewfound that a significantly greater share of white teens went online daily thanblack teens, reporting 67 percent and 53 percent, respectively. Last, Pew founda significant difference in the proportion of white teens who had broadbandaccess in the home when compared to broadband access in black and Hispanichouseholds—70 percent, 56 percent, and 60 percent, respectively.Some aspects of these national surveys shed light on some of the themesnoted in this book: namely the friendship-driven and interest-driven practices.In terms of friendship-driven practices, the most illustrative survey dataare those that indicate patterns of ownership, access, and use of communicationtechnologies such as mobile phones, IM, and social network sites. Whilethe current indicators used by Pew and others do not differentiate whenteenagers use these technologies to communicate with friends versus communicatewith family members and other members of the youth’s socialworld, a few trends are worth noting. 5 For one, Pew’s 2007 survey finds thatboth gender and age distinctions map to significant differences in severalfactors related to communications. Girls and older teens are more likelyto own a mobile phone than boys and younger teens; additionally, bothgirls and older teens are significantly more likely to make a mobile phonecall, send a text message, send an IM, or send a message through a socialnetwork site (Lenhart et al. 2008). Another noteworthy trend indicated bythe Pew data is what Lenhart and her colleagues (2007) refer to as “super

Media Ecologies 35communicators.” The term is meant to refer to the finding that those whocommunicate using multiple technologies and channels—phone calls, textmessages, IMs, social network sites—not only communicate more in aggregatethan teens who use fewer channels but they also tend to communicate morefrequently within each channel.Regrettably, there are fewer survey data for making comparisons to whatwe have characterized as interest-driven practices. USC’s 2008 Digital FutureReport surveyed some activities that could, but do not necessarily, indicateinterest-driven practices. In its survey it asks about participation in, andattitudes about, online communities, which it defines as “a group that sharesthoughts or ideas, or works on common projects through electronic communicationonly” (USC Digital Future Report Highlights 2008, 8). While theoverall percentage of respondents who reported participating in an onlinecommunity was relatively small—15 percent of all respondents—the authorsnote that this rate has more than doubled in three years. Of those who participate,more than half reported that the community related to a hobby.Many of the interest-driven practices we account for in this report could beseen as reasonably fitting this definition, but a few problems limit a moredirect mapping. For one, we show examples of interest-driven participationthat does not take place solely, or at all, through electronic communications.Additionally, the USC Digital Future report surveys adults and youth. Whileparticipation in online communities is on the rise, a majority of adults withchildren reported being uncomfortable having their children participate inonline communities—65 percent reported feeling uncomfortable whereasonly 15 percent felt comfortable. This last indicator suggests that spreadingyouth participation in online venues for interest-driven participation willlikely require a change of attitude among adult populations.Genres of Participation: Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking OutHow does young people’s social and cultural participation shape new mediaengagement, interest, and expertise? Throughout this project, our challengehas been to develop frameworks that help us understand youth participationin different social groups and cultural affiliations, a framing thatis in line with approaches that see knowledge and expertise as embedded insocial groups with particular media identities. For example, James Paul Gee(2003) has suggested that gaming is part of the construction of “affinitygroups,” where insiders and outsiders are defined by their participation ina particular semiotic domain. Similarly, a communities-of-practice approach

36 Heather A. Horst, Becky Herr-Stephenson, and Laura Robinsonto learning posits that the development of knowledge and expertise isdeeply integrated with being part of social groups engaged in joint activity(Wenger 1998). In order to understand these forms of group practice andidentity, studies need to take into account an individual’s media engagementas well as the properties of social groups and cultural identity. Whilequantitative studies (see box 1.1) can help us situate an individual’s mediaengagement with specific media and technologies, we provide an ethnographicaccounting of shared practices and cultural categories that structureyouth new media participation.“Hanging out,” “messing around,” and “geeking out” describe differinglevels of investments in new media activities in a way that integrates anunderstanding of technical, social, and cultural patterns. It is clear thatdifferent youth at different times possess varying levels of technology- andmedia-related expertise, interest, and motivation. The genres of participationthat emerged from our research can be viewed as an alternative toexisting taxonomies of media engagement that generally are structured bythe type of media platform, frequency of media use, or structural categoriessuch as gender, age, or socioeconomic status. Quantitative studies customarilycategorize people according to high and low media use, which is thenanalyzed in relation to different social categories or outcomes of interest.For example, the Kaiser Foundation report on “Generation M” (Rideout,Roberts, and Foehr 2005) looks at how differing amounts of media exposuretime relate to individual measures such as age, educational status, raceand ethnicity, school grades, or personal contentedness. Our approach iscloser to those of qualitative researchers who take a more holistic approachto media engagement by focusing on how social and cultural categoriesare cut from the same cloth as media engagement, rather than looking atthem as separate variables. For example, Holloway and Valentine (2003)suggest the categories of “techno boys,” “lads,” “luddettes,” and “computercompetent girls” to understand how gender intersects with computerbasedactivity and competence. Sonia Livingstone (2002) suggests thecategories of “traditionalists,” “low media users,” “screen entertainmentfans,” and “specialists” to relate frequency of engagement with specificmedia types to certain forms of social and cultural investments. However,all these taxonomies are based on categorizing individuals in relation tocertain practices. By contrast, our genre-based approach emphasizes modesof participation with media, not categories of individuals.

Media Ecologies 37The distinction between a genre-based approach centered on participationand a categorical approach based on individual characteristics is significantfor a number of reasons. First, it enables us to move away fromthe assumption that individuals have stable media identities that are independentof contexts and situations. In our work, we have observed howmany youth craft multiple media identities that they mobilize selectivelydepending on context; they may be active on Facebook and part of theparty scene at school, but they may also have a set of friends online focusedon more specific interests related to gaming or creative production. Second,the notion of genre moves away from a focus on media platform (TV,computers, music, etc.) and shifts our attention to the crosscutting patternsthat are evident in media content, technology design, as well as in thecultural referents that youth mobilize in their everyday communication.Finally, genre analysis relies on what we believe is an appropriately interpretivemodel of analyzing social and cultural patterns. Rather than suggestingthat we can clearly define a boundary between practices in acategorical way, genres rely on an interpretation of an overall “package”of style and form. Genres of participation take shape as an overall constellationof characteristics, and are constantly under negotiation and flux aspeople experiment with new modes of communication and culture. In thisway, it is a construct amenable to our particular methods and approach tolooking at a dynamic and interrelated media ecology. Our approach isecological rather than categorical. In the remainder of this chapter, we turnour attention to the three genres of participation, hanging out, messingaround, and geeking out, in an effort to define and describe how thesegenres emerge through youth practice.Hanging OutThe interdisciplinary literature on childhood and youth culture has establishedthat coming of age in American culture is marked by a general shiftfrom given childhood social relationships, such as families and local communities,to peer- and friendship-centered social groups. Although theparticular nuances of these relationships vary in relation to ethnicity, class,and particular family dynamics (Austin and Willard 1998; Bettie 2003;Eckert 1989; Epstein 1998; Pascoe 2007a; Perry 2002; Snow 1987; Thorne1993), the vast majority of the middle-school and high-school students weinterviewed expressed a desire to “hang around, meet friends, just be”

38 Heather A. Horst, Becky Herr-Stephenson, and Laura Robinson(Bloustein 2003, 166), as much and as often as possible, as part of theirburgeoning sense of independence. Given the institutional restrictions andregulations placed on young people by schools, teachers, parents, andneighborhood infrastructures, kids and teenagers throughout all our studiesinvested a great deal of time and energy talking about and coordinatingopportunities to “hang out.” In the first part of this section, we examinehow youth mobilize new media communication to construct spaces forcopresence where they can engage in ongoing, lightweight social contactthat moves fluidly between online and offline contact. We continue bydiscussing the ways in which new media content, such as music and onlinevideo, becomes a part of young people’s social communication. Finally, weconsider how youth use new media to be present in multiple social spaces,hanging out with friends in online space while pursuing other activitiesconcurrently offline.Getting Together and Being Together As we describe in this book’sintroduction, contemporary teens generally see their peers at school astheir primary reference point for socializing and identity construction.At the same time, they remain largely dependent on adults for providingspace and new media and they possess limited opportunities to socializewith peers and romantic partners without the supervision of adults. Youngpeople move between the context of the school, where they are physicallycopresent but are limited in the kinds of social activities they can engagein, and the context of the home, where they have more freedom toset their social agendas but are not usually copresent with their peers.Parental and official school rules, availability of unrestricted computer andInternet access, competing responsibilities such as household chores, andtransportation frequently complicate efforts toward hanging out. Youngpeople who have ready access to mobile phones or the Internet, viewonline communication as a persistent space of peer sociability where theyexercise autonomy for conversation that is private or primarily defined byfriends and peers. Although in most cases they would prefer to hang outwith their friends offline, the limits placed on their mobility and use ofspace means that this is not always possible.Chapters 2 and 3 describe the many mechanisms that youth mobilizeto keep in ongoing contact with their peers through social media. Bymoving between the browsing of social network profiles, instant messaging

Media Ecologies 39(IM), and phone conversations, youth experience a sense of hanging outwith their peers that is unique to online interaction, but that also has manyparallels to how kids hang out offline. The more passive and indirect modeof checking people’s status updates on Facebook or MySpace, or exchanginglightweight text messages indicating general status (“I’m so tired,” “justfinished homework”), are examples of “ambient virtual co-presence” thatin many ways approximates the sharing of physical space (Ito and Okabe2005b). Through these modalities, youth keep tabs on one another. Atother times, youth engage in more sustained and direct conversation,such as when they start an IM chat or initiate a telephone call. C. J. Pascoe’sbox 1.3, “You Have Another World to Create,” for example, discussesthe ways in which a participant in her “Living Digital” study, Clarissa,coordinates hanging out with friends and her girlfriend through MySpaceand LiveJournal and how she negotiates hanging out with an expandedfriend base within an online role-playing game. By flexibly mobilizingdifferent networked communications capabilities, young people circumventsome of the limits that prevent them from hanging out with theirfriends.When young people want to get together and hang out (for both onlineand offline meetings), they typically go online first, since that is wherethey are most likely to be able to connect. For example, Java, a whitetwelve-year-old living in the suburbs, describes how she will first get permissionfrom her mom, and then use email or IM to find a friend and askher over. “Well, if I just want a friend over I’ll ask my mom and she’ll sayyes or no. And if she says yes, then I’ll call them or ask them online oremail them or something.” After that, she and her friends must coordinatewith a parent to drive them to each other’s homes (Sims, Rural and UrbanYouth). Even when kids are independently mobile (e.g., if they can drive,or if they live in a more urban context where public transportation is available),online media still remain the place where they find and connectwith their friends. For example, Champ, a nineteen-year-old Latino wholives in Brooklyn, New York, with his mom and two sisters, discussed withChristo Sims how hanging out has changed since the incorporation ofMySpace within his peer group:Champ: I guess before, before it was MySpace is, like, you just go outside,whoever you bump into, you bump into ‘em. Whatever, you gotta do whatyou gotta do. And, now, computer, like, you go talk to the people and like,

40 Heather A. Horst, Becky Herr-Stephenson, and Laura Robinson“Oh, what you doing?” “You wanna do this?” “All right. So, I’ll be overthere in ten minutes, five minutes.”Christo: And that’s mostly on MySpace? You can see if they’re online nowor something like that?Champ: Yeah, like I was saying, online under their names. And, it haslike a little computer there. Click on their page and then like, “Yo, I wasabout to come outside.” And, if [I] tell you “coming out, wanna meet up?”Java and Champ use new media to help orchestrate face-to-face hangingout, but their examples also reveal how proximity, or neighborhood, affectstheir ability to get together. In rural and suburban California, young peoplemust mobilize parents and their vehicles for hanging out with friends whoare separated by greater distances, at least until teens are old enough todrive or have friends who drive. By contrast, urban youth such as Champlive close to friends and rely less on their parents for transportation becausethey can take advantage of a more durable transportation system such asthat in New York. Champ and other urban youth more readily movebetween online and offline sociality. In most of the cases we have seen,youth rely to some extent on networked communication to facilitatearranging offline meetings, these networked sites and communicationdevices becoming an alternative hanging out site in its own right.Sharing, Posting, Linking, and Forwarding When teens are togetheronline and offline, they integrate new media within the informal hangingout practices that have characterized peer social life ever since the postwarera and the emergence of teens as a distinct leisure class (Snow 1987). Aswe describe in the introduction, this era saw a growth in the number ofteens who attended high school and the emergence of a distinctive youthculture that was tightly integrated with commercial popular culturalproducts targeted to teens. The growth of an age-specific identity of“teenagers” or “youth” was inextricably linked with the rise of commercialpopular culture as young people consumed popular music, fashion, film,and television as part of their participation in peer culture (Cohen 1972;Frank 1997; Gilbert 1986; Hine 1999). While the content and form of muchof popular culture has changed in the intervening decades, the corepractices of how youth engage with media as part of their hanging outwith peers remains resilient. In relation to gaming, Ito (2008b) has describedhow children and youth traffic in popular media referents as part of their

Media Ecologies 41everyday sociability. She describes how contemporary media mixes suchas Pokémon enable kids to develop identities in peer culture in relation tocustomizable, interactive media forms. This “hypersocial” social exchangeis more generally a process through which people use specific media astokens of identity, taste, and style to understand and display who they arein relation to their peers. While hanging out with their friends, youthdevelop and discuss their taste in music, their knowledge of television andmovies, and their expertise in gaming, practices that become part andparcel of sociability in youth culture.One of the most common ways that kids hang out together with mediais listening to music, a practice that stands as a source of affinity amongfriends. In fact, rock and roll was a central piece of the emergence of youthculture (Snow 1987). Technologies for storing, sharing, and listening tomusic are now ubiquitous among youth. Indeed, only 2 percent of theyouth we interviewed reported not owning a portable music player. Inaddition, digital music formats are increasingly dominant. Among ourrespondents, 88 percent reported downloading music or videos over theInternet and 74 percent reported that they had shared files (music or other)over the Internet. Two practices related to music were particularly prominentamong the teens in our study: First, teens frequently displayedtheir musical tastes and preferences on MySpace profiles and in otheronline venues by posting information and images related to favorite artists,clips and links to songs and videos, and song lyrics. Second, sharing andlistening to music continues to be an important practice and somethingthat teens do together when they are hanging out. For example, sixteenyear-oldSasha, a teenager from Michigan who participated in danah boyd’sinterviews (Teen Sociality in Networked Publics), outlines how acquiringmusic is an important part of hanging out in her life because she can getfree music from her friends. “I use like the iTunes store, but I don’t haveany more money, so I just go over to my friends’ houses and plug in totheir computer and get songs off of there.” Sites such as MySpace oftenextend this kind of music-driven sociability online, where young peoplecan add music to their own profiles and view one another’s musical preferences.As Mae Williams, a sixteen-year-old teen in Christo Sims’s study ofrural California (Rural and Urban Youth), explains, “That’s the one thingMySpace is good for, is that you can actually browse through music prettyeasily. And so you can select a genre and you can go through other people’s

42 Heather A. Horst, Becky Herr-Stephenson, and Laura Robinson[profiles] and sometimes if I see a name that keeps popping up, I’ll be like,‘Oh, this guy must be halfway good.’ ” As with earlier forms of musicsharing, the digital music on iPods and MySpace profiles are still about thesharing of media and media tastes with friends and local peers. Digitaltechnologies enhance these practices by making music more readily availableto youth for listening and sharing in a wider variety of contexts.Many teens also view new media as something to do while they arehanging out with their friends. One example of hanging out with mediacan be found in box 1.2, in which Lisa Tripp describes the media ecologyof Michelle, a twelve-year-old girl from Los Angeles who uses television,online media, and books for entertainment when she is hanging out athome with her mother or with friends. Like other youth, Michelle usesMySpace to connect with friends when they cannot hang out in person.As discussed at length in chapter 5, boys often prefer to play games whenthey are together. A white ten-year-old boy, dragon, who was part ofHeather Horst’s study of Silicon Valley Families, illustrates that hangingout together in a game is important when friends are in different locationsand time zones. At the time of his interview, dragon had recently movedfrom the U.S. East Coast to the West Coast. While he was making friendsat his new school, he regularly went online after school to play RuneScapeon the same server as his friends back east. In addition to playing andtyping messages together, dragon and his friends also use the phone to calleach other using three-way calling,. Dragon then places the phone onspeakerphone, filling the house with the sounds of ten-year-old boysarguing and yelling about who killed whom, why one person was slow,and reliving other aspects of the game.Box 1.2 MichelleLisa TrippMichelle Vargas lives in the San Fernando Valley region of Los Angeles. Sheis a twelve-year-old girl, just finishing the seventh grade at Cameron MiddleSchool, where Lisa Tripp and Becky Herr-Stephenson conducted fieldwork(Los Angeles Middle Schools). Michelle is being raised by her mother, Rose,who immigrated to the United States from El Salvador years before Michellewas born. The two share a bedroom in an immaculately clean apartment andrent their second bedroom to a cousin. Rose works as the apartment manager

Media Ecologies 43for the complex where they live, and sometimes she cleans houses on theweekends. She describes herself as both a strict and loving mom. Roseexplains, “Me gusta que [Michelle] ande conmigo. Yo soy con ella como su amiga,su hermana, su mamá, todo. Así lo siento yo.” (“I like her [Michelle] to be withme. I am like her girlfriend, her sister, her mom, all of that. That’s the way Ifeel.”) When Michelle is not at school, she spends most of her free time athome. Sometimes on weekends she helps her mom at work, or the two doother things together, such as go to a birthday party or stay home and watcha DVD. A recent favorite movie was Grease, which she and her mom havewatched in both English and Spanish.Michelle is not allowed to watch TV on school days, with two exceptions.She can watch the news if she wants to and, every night after dinner, sheand her mom have a special date to watch La Tremenda, a popular Spanishlanguagesoap opera, or telenovela. At the end of the school week the TVrestrictions are lifted. As Michelle explains, “On Fridays, my mom can’t tellme nothing, because I’m watching TV!”Michelle likes watching mainstream “kid shows” such as Phil of the Future,That’s So Raven, Danny Phantom, The Suite Life of Zach and Cody, and HannahMontana, as well as “little kid” shows such as Winnie the Pooh and Blue’s Clues.She is also a major fan of High School Musical and considers teen idol ZacEfron her absolute favorite. Her friends are also fans of the shows, and sometimesshe will call one of her friends and say, “Turn it on, turn it on,” so theycan watch a TV show at the same time. When Michelle gets the chance togo online for fun, her favorite thing to do is play games based on these shows,especially the maze games on the Disney Channel website.Michelle listens to music around the house while hanging out in her roomor doing chores and when she is in the car riding around with her mom. Shehas a CD player but longs for an iPod, and she claims to like “any kind ofmusic, except country.” She gets most of her music by downloading it fromthe Internet, either buying it from iTunes or getting it for free from LimeWire(see figure 1.1). She often burns music on CDs to give to her friends—manyof whom either do not have a computer or do not know how to burn CDs.She says she sometimes feels “too lazy” to help them, however, so they haveto wait.Michelle is also an avid reader. She keeps a bookshelf in her bedroomstocked with young-adult literature. The books come from her mom’s boss,who regularly gives the family hand-me-down books. Michelle tries to readfor about an hour before bed every night. This sets her apart from the restof her friends, who engage in little to no pleasure reading. Michelle has alearning disability and reads at approximately a third-grade level, and shetakes her time reading a book. When she comes across a word she does not

44 Heather A. Horst, Becky Herr-Stephenson, and Laura RobinsonFigure 1.1Michelle looking around online. Photo by Lisa Tripp, 2006.understand, she writes down the word and asks her teachers at school forhelp. Some of her recent favorite books include Thoroughbred: A Horse CalledWonder, Sideways Stories from Wayside School, and Harry Potter, which took herabout three months to read.Rose helps Michelle with reading and doing homework to the extent thatshe can, but she speaks limited English and studied up to only the eighthgrade in her native El Salvador. This makes providing homework help difficult.Rose bought a computer and pays for high-speed Internet, all to helpMichelle complete school assignments. At the same time, Rose worries alot about Michelle visiting websites such as MySpace, where she fears herdaughter might get in to trouble, talk to strangers, or be the target of sexualpredators. She also worries that Michelle will waste time playing online gamesinstead of doing her homework. As a result, the computer is kept in the livingroom, where Rose can keep an eye on what Michelle is doing and, if Rose hasto leave the house, she often takes the modem with her to keep Michellefrom going online unsupervised. Sometimes when Rose is not looking,Michelle sneaks online to one of her favorite sites. When she gets caught, sheyells back at her mom, “I’m not doing anything wrong!”Several of Michelle’s friends have MySpace pages, and Michelle has one too.From Michelle’s perspective, the site is fun because it allows her another way

Media Ecologies 45to talk to her friends. She likes leaving messages for her friends on MySpace,or reading messages they have left for her, and sometimes she likes to typeback and forth with them and talk on the phone at the same time. Michellethinks her mom’s fears about the Internet are misplaced and that her momis just overreacting to scare stories on the news. “I just type to my friends.That’s all I do,” she explains. “Like, I don’t talk to people I don’t know.”On other occasions, mother and daughter use the computer for more collaborativeendeavors. Rose likes to send email to a friend in El Salvador andto her twenty-six-year-old son, who lives in Texas, but she does not knowhow to do it without help. According to Rose, she types her own email messagesand then asks her daughter, “Hija ven: ¿cómo le tengo que hacer aquí?”(“Hey, come here: What do I need to do here?”) Michelle then helps hersend the email. More recently, Michelle has been giving her mom lessonson how to pay bills online and how to create birthday cards. Rose explains,“Ella me ha enseñado a usar todo lo de la computadora . . . todo que ha aprendidoen la escuela.” (“Michelle has taught me how to do everything on thecomputer . . . everything she has learned at school.”)For Rose, not knowing as much about the computer as Michelle producesa great deal of anxiety and leads her to closely supervise and often limit herdaughter’s time online, particularly for “hanging out” and “messing around.”Thus while Michelle is able to go online outside school more readily thanmost of her classmates (because she has home Internet access), her mother’sconcerns ultimately lead to Michelle having less time online for open-endedexploration and self-directed inquiry than might otherwise be possible.At school this year Michelle has been part of a special program in whichstudents create media art projects, such as graphic art images and shortvideos. The program has given Michelle her first chance to use PowerPointand iMovie, and she already has learned enough to help other students learnthe software. The class was Michelle’s favorite, and she thinks that creatingmedia projects for a school project “just helps her learn better.” At the sametime, she still had difficulty with the reading and writing part of the process,such as doing research online and writing a script for her video. “I did notlike that part,” she explains. “It was so boring.” It is likely that Michelle foundparts of the media production process in school “boring” because they wereteacher-driven exercises, designed to achieve goals mandated by the schoolcurriculum and teacher lesson plans. Unlike how Michelle and her classmatestypically engage in “youth-driven” practices with media, at school they havemuch less input into defining the goals and content of their media productionwork. Outside school, Michelle loves taking photos of her friends andfamily on her mom’s mobile phone, and some day she would like to makemore videos with her friends . . . but just of them hanging out together. Shesays she will “skip the script writing part.”

46 Heather A. Horst, Becky Herr-Stephenson, and Laura RobinsonDuring the course of our three-year study, many of the American teenagerswe interviewed also became regular viewers of short videos and televisionprograms on sites such as YouTube. Although most youth still watchtelevision shows on a television set, there has been a rapid growth ofTV-show viewing on YouTube. In her study “Self-Production throughYouTube,” Sonja Baumer describes how watching television shows onYouTube differs from traditional viewing because of the overlay of socialinformation and networks, enabling viewers to engage in a kind of lightweighthanging out with other viewers, even if they may not be spatiallyor temporally copresent. YouTube videos are contextualized by YouTubeparticipants who provide a layer of opinion and linking that differs fromthe ways in which television has traditionally been organized by channelsand networks. As KT, an eighteen-year-old male from suburban California,describes: “I go to the most-viewed page. . . . Mostly I want to know what’sup, what’s cool, like what was funny on the Colbert Report yesterday, andit is just there. You can browse and look for stuff. Awesome!” Similarly,“When I start watching YouTube, I cannot stop. Each video takes me toanother video. . . . It takes me to the author’s profile page. . . . I like to clickon related videos that YouTube gives you on the side, you know what Imean. . . . There are always pointers to other videos.”We see this hypersocial mode of video viewing in a more immediate andsocially interactive way when youth view videos together offline. Videodownloads and sites such as YouTube mean that youth can view media attimes and in locations that are convenient and social, provided they haveaccess to high-speed Internet. At the after-school center where Dan Perkel,Christo Sims, and Judd Antin observed students in their study, “The SocialDynamics of Media Production,” they began seeing youth gathering infront of a computer during downtime, watching episodes of Family Guy onYouTube. For college students in dorm rooms, the computer often becamethe primary TV-viewing mechanism. High bandwidth connections meanthat there is little need for the added expense and clutter of a TV purchase.Ryan, a seventeen-year-old white working-class student in high school inurban California who participated in C. J. Pascoe’s “Living Digital” study,describes hanging out with his friend John while they were on a schoolsponsoredski trip. He describes how they went online together and “prettymuch just grabbed videos, and laughed at a bunch of shock stuff,” meaningvideos that involved “death, and crazy accidents, and people like, torture

Media Ecologies 47cams and stuff like that, just because I’ve never been exposed to that.”Ryan was able to share his reactions to these extreme videos with a friendat an opportune moment when they returned to their rooms for the nightafter a school-sanctioned outing. In effect, access to rich, networked mediaenables youth to engage in social activity around video in the diverse settingsof their everyday lives. This ready availability of multiple forms ofmedia in diverse contexts of daily life means that media content is increasinglycentral to everyday communication and identity construction.Work-Arounds, Back Channels, and Multitasking Unlike other genresof participation we discuss in which individuals justify that the activitiesare “productive” and/or possess the potential for secondary skills, thepractice of hanging out is usually not seen by parents and teachers assupporting productive learning. Many parents, teachers, and other adultswe interviewed described kids’ and teenagers’ inclination toward hangingout as “a waste of time,” a stance that seemed to be heightened whenhanging out was supported by new media. Not surprisingly, teenagersreported considerable restrictions and regulations tied to hanging out inand through new media. Sites such as MySpace, which are central tohanging out genres of participation, are often restricted by parents andblocked in schools. In their examination of schools in Southern California(Los Angeles Middle Schools), Lisa Tripp and Becky Herr-Stephenson findthat schools generally provide students with the opportunity to log on tothe Internet in a school library before school, during lunch or other freeperiods, or after school. While students in schools with media andtechnology resources frequently obtain access to the Internet in classroomsusing mobile laptop labs or small centers with three or four desktops in anarea of the classroom, gaining access to the library is a more complexprocess of obtaining passes and working in strict silence, and students tendto use the library infrequently aside from class periods during which theentire class would visit the library to do research. Moreover, teachers andschools attempt to determine appropriate use of those resources. The desireto restrict hanging-out practices at school in favor of keeping students “ontask” while using media and technology for production or research,combined with concerns about which media and websites are suitable forcitation (e.g., Wikipedia and .edu sites), can prompt teachers and principalsto develop rules about the appropriate use of media structures.

48 Heather A. Horst, Becky Herr-Stephenson, and Laura RobinsonIn response to these regulations, teenagers develop work-arounds, waysto subvert institutional barriers to hanging out while in school (see Thorne1993 on the concept of underground economies in the classroom). C. J.Pascoe (Living Digital) reports that teenagers in her study regularly usedproxy servers to get online at school. She also notes that many of the kidsshe spoke with seemed to know which students were experts at findingavailable proxy servers. During one of her interviews at California DigitalArts School (CDAS), 6 one teen wanted to show Pascoe his MySpace profile,but he could not because the school’s server blocked the site. He spentthirty minutes during the interview tracking down one of the school’sexperts on proxy servers. Unfortunately, when the proxy expert sat downto log on to the proxy, he discovered that school officials had alreadyblocked the server, forcing him to start a search for a new server. Karl, afifteen-year-old mixed-race student in San Francisco, attested to the factthat teenagers who want to hang out with their friends will find ways touse MySpace in the school library even though the school bans accessto the site. As Dan Perkel (MySpace Profile Production) describes, “whilewiggling his fingers in the air in front of an imaginary keyboard, a slylook crosses his face as if to show how sneaky people are and also the biggrin on his face as he confirms, ‘They can’t ban MySpace!’ ” Karl’s generalattitude toward bending the rules in the name of maintaining contact withhis friends throughout the day is mirrored in Liz’s and her boyfriend’suse of text messaging. Liz, a sixteen-year-old high-school student who livesin a middle-class suburb in the San Francisco Bay Area, highlights theimportance to her friends of back-channel communication:C.J.: And so why is texting such a big deal?Liz: You want to talk in class, but then like you’re in different classes andso this is the only way you can talk to them. Or you just aren’t allowed totalk in class [and] your friend is sitting next to you, so you text. Or writenotes. But nobody writes notes anymore. . . .Liz’s boyfriend: Yeah, it replaced the note.Liz: Nobody.C.J.: There’s none of the elaborately folded?Liz: We sit next to each other, so sometimes we write little notes andthen usually the teacher takes it away because we’re right in front of them.But we’re not even talking about anything. But then if we’re across theroom then he’ll start texting me and I text someone else. And then if you’rein other classrooms you definitely need to text. . . . (Pascoe, Living Digital)

Media Ecologies 49Like many of the other participants in our studies, Liz and her boyfriendreveal how hanging out with friends, boyfriends, and girlfriends representsa continuation of practices that have been pervasive among Americanteenagers in the school setting since the 1950s. Rather than mouthingwords behind a teacher’s back or secretly passing notes underneath tablesand desks at school, texting or sending short messaging services (SMS) onthe mobile phone now facilitates communication.These work-arounds and back channels are ways in which kids hang outtogether, even in settings that are not officially sanctioned for hanging out.This happens in settings such as the classroom, where talking socially topeers is explicitly frowned upon, as well as at home when young peopleare separated from their friends and peers. Just as recent studies indicatethat “multitasking,” or engaging in multiple media activities at the sametime, is on the rise among kids (Roberts and Foehr 2008), we note that theteens in our studies are becoming particularly adept at maintaining a continuouspresence in multiple social communication contexts. We also seekids hanging out or engaging in multiple social contexts concurrently.Derrick, a sixteen-year-old Dominican American living in Brooklyn, NewYork, explains to Christo Sims (Rural and Urban Youth) the ways he movesbetween using new media and hanging out.Derrick: My homeboy usually be on his Sidekick, like somebody usuallybe on a Sidekick or somebody has a PSP or something like always aretexting or something on AIM. A lot of people that I be with usually onAIM on their cell phones on their Nextels, on their Boost, on AIM orusually on their phone like he kept getting called, always getting called.Christo: So even when you’re just hanging out they’re constantly textingand all that?Derrick: Getting phone calls.Christo: What . . . to find out what’s going on or what do you thinkthey’re usually like?Derrick: Just to meet up with everybody, just to stay in contact.As Derrick’s discussion suggests, even when teenagers and kids are hangingout in a face-to-face group, many feel the need to stay connected to otherteens who are not there. The drive to hang out, and the use of new mediato coordinate such endeavors, continues even when there may be a copresent,cohesive group. Playing games, making videos, and listening to musicmay well be the focus when teens are hanging out, yet they may also

50 Heather A. Horst, Becky Herr-Stephenson, and Laura Robinsonbecome part of the background, something to do when teens are waitingfor other people to come and other plans to develop. Moreover, there maybe multiple activities occurring at the same time while kids and teens arehanging out together. As Christo Sims notes in one of his field notes from“Rural and Urban Youth,” “When I was in rural California, I saw a fewboys playing a console game, another carrying on an ongoing text-messageconversation, and another one making food,” all in the same room together.The layering of media and social interaction is part of a changing mediaecology that youth inhabit, where they are in persistent touch with friendsand intimates through networked communication while accessing popularand commercial media in varied settings. The social desire to share spaceand experiences with friends is supported now by a networked and digitalmedia ecology that enables these fluid shifts in attention and copresencebetween online and offline contexts.Box 1.3 “You Have Another World to Create”: Teens and OnlineHangoutsC. J. PascoeTall and lithe, white seventeen-year-old Clarissa moves with the grace andthe particular upright posture of a ballerina, a lasting effect of her years ofparticipation in dance. Her long blond hair is often braided and woven in acomplicated pattern across the nape of her neck. She laughs easily, and shefrequently accents her lively eyes by drawing a lacy circular pattern in silverglitter below her left eye. She lives with her parents and two younger siblingsin a small unincorporated working-class suburb of San Francisco. Clarissa saysthat she is not a particularly avid user of technology since she “doesn’t evenlook” at a computer until she gets to school and laments the fact that hermobile phone is so “old school” that she cannot use it to send text messages.Clarissa represents many teens in her casual technology use—using newmedia as a meeting place, a place to foster romantic relationships, and a placeto engage in hobbies. These digital environments have grown increasinglyimportant as pastimes and socializing places for Clarissa because she recentlysuffered a debilitating leg injury that robbed her of the ability to engage inher first passion, ballet.Like other teens I have spoken with, Clarissa and her girlfriend, Genevre,play out much of their relationship through digital media. Clarissa andGenevre share online spaces in a variety of ways. They publicly declare their

Media Ecologies 51relationship status and affection for one another on their social networkingpages, share their passwords, and have created a blog together. Clarissa saidthat when she first gets home she checks her MySpace page. Her avatar featuresher girlfriend and her kissing on the bus on the way to their seniorpicnic. Her list of “Top 8” friends prominently features Genevre in additionto her other close friends. Genevre’s presence is threaded throughout thepage, from the pictures of Clarissa and her at prom to the notes declaringlove and support Genevre leaves for Clarissa.During our interview, Clarissa expressed surprise when we logged on toher MySpace and saw a new addition to her site, saying to me that her girlfriendmust have added it. Clarissa explained that because she shared herpassword with Genevre, “I have not done my MySpace. It’s all my girlfriend,except a very little bit of it. My girlfriend’s done all the colors and all that.”Recently, Genevre changed Clarissa’s website again, altering the backgroundfrom a ballet dancer’s foot en pointe to a background of fanciful coloredhearts and transforming the text from a standard font to a whimsicallarge script. She also changed Clarissa’s avatar to a picture of her friends.Flirtatiously, Genevre left a note on the site reading, “So . . . yet again . . .Clarissa was hacked. . . . Her girlfriend was bored and her MySpace was boring,so I spiced it up!”Beyond the intimacy they created by sharing a password, the couple keepsa blog together on LiveJournal. While the site itself is public, Clarissa says, “Ido a lot of private entries that my girlfriend and I can read, because we knoweach other’s passwords.” When Genevre took a motorcycle trip for a week,Clarissa said good-bye and wished her well by posting a picture of an elaboraterose accompanied by a poem. In this way the two could remain digitallylinked, a way of being together even when they were not.In addition to her MySpace and LiveJournal sites, Clarissa spends muchof her online time on Faraway Lands, 7 her preferred hangout. Clarissadescribes Faraway Lands as a “really nice-quality, good, inviting, comfortable,fun place to be.” She finds it to be a community of supportive friends whohave high writing standards and creativity. Members must write intricatecharacter applications to join the site. These character applications areessentially 25,000-word descriptions of a given character, its race, its history,and its location. For Clarissa, an aspiring writer and filmmaker, this siteallows her to use “words like clay to create whatever stories suit your fancy.”She finds the community to be a “nurturing” one in which she is “able tofully develop intricate personalities and plots that in computer games, sports,and academics are simply not possible.” Faraway Lands is a text-based sitewhere members weave long and detailed tales about their characters’ questsand adventures.

52 Heather A. Horst, Becky Herr-Stephenson, and Laura RobinsonIn this online hangout Clarissa has made many friends and transcendedher local boundaries. While people of all ages are on this site, “most of thepeople that I’ve interacted with are in my age group. It’s sort of cool ‘causethey’re far away and sort of fun.” On Faraway Lands she is simultaneously incharacter and out of character as she hangs out and chats on an Internet relaychannel. During these chats, she has made friends all over the world, tellingme, “I know a guy in Spain now and fun stuff like that.” She and her friendfrom Spain are in the middle of planning a new role play in which his evilcharacter tries to hire one of Clarissa’s characters, Saloria, as an apprentice(see figure 1.2).Clarissa’s stories involve themes of fantasy, triumph, and escape. Hercharacter Saloria, for instance, grew up in a poor neighborhood and was raisedby a “loving community” rather than a nuclear family. As a teen, Salorialeaves this community to seek her fortune in the wider world. However, shesoon realizes that, as a single woman, the world is a dangerous place. Saloriathendecides to live her life as a man “because men have it better. So shespends her days as a man.” During the day, as a man, Saloria performs “roadworkaround the city. She’s a happy-go-lucky charming young fellow.” Atnight “she’s a crazy lady who has fun.” Clarissa drew on her real-life experienceto create Saloria. She recalled fondly stories of adventurous women.Figure 1.2Saloria. Photo titled “Little Red Bird” by Cathy Hookey, 2006–2008, http://little-red-pumpkin.deviantart.com.

Media Ecologies 53She “loved those women who would go on these voyages acting likethey were boys for months, and months, and months. It was daring andcrazy. And I was like, ‘I want to do that. That would be fun.’“ While thissort of adventuring is not feasible for Clarissa, her characters can liveout these fantasies. She sums up Saloria’s story by saying, “It just startedwith that, the freedom of being a boy.” Through this particular roleplay, Clarissa grapples with intense issues of adolescent identity workand imagines her way out of some of the gendered expectations faced byteenage girls.Faraway Lands also provides a forum in which Clarissa can be creative andhone her writing skills. She and her role-playing friends critique one another’swriting and stories. She and a fellow role player from Oregon “had this sortof thing where we were reviewing each other’s work all the time ’cause hejust wanted all the input he could get.” The creative aspect of this site is partof what drew Clarissa to Faraway Lands. “It’s something I can do in my sparetime, be creative and write and not have to be graded. . . . You know how inschool you’re creative, but you’re doing it for a grade so it doesn’t reallycount?” Unlike in school, where teens live in a world of hierarchical relations—wherethey are graded, run the risk of getting in trouble, and mustobey all sorts of status- and age-oriented rules—in Faraway Lands Clarissa isevaluated on her creativity and artistic ability.Clarissa struggles with some normal teenage challenges—finding time forher girlfriend, power-struggling with her father, lacking money, and figuringout a path to college—and some unusual challenges—having a disabledbrother, being involved in a same-sex relationship, and suffering a severe leginjury. While she might be particular in her use of the Internet as a space torole-play, her story is a compelling one with which to think through possibilitiesof the Internet as a semipublic, third space for teens to hang out in. Thesedigital spaces are particularly interesting because of the variety of hangoutoptions they afford. As Clarissa illustrates, teens can do public-identity workby setting up sites defining “who they are”; they can maintain and deepenromantic relationships; and they can make new friends, play, be creative, andbe treated as competent artistic producers.Messing AroundThe second genre of participation prevalent among American teenagersis what we have termed “messing around.” Whereas hanging out is agenre of participation that corresponds largely with friendship-driven practicesin which engagement with new media is motivated by the desire to

54 Heather A. Horst, Becky Herr-Stephenson, and Laura Robinsonmaintain connections with friends, messing around as a genre of participationrepresents the beginning of a more intense engagement with newmedia. In the first section on “Looking Around,” we focus on the ways inwhich kids use search engines and other online information sources to findinformation, a practice we call “fortuitous searching.” The second sectionattends to the importance of “Experimentation and Play” in facilitatinglearning about the way a particular medium works, particularly throughthe processes of trial and error. The final section, “Finding the Time,Finding the Place,” outlines many of the conditions or environments thatare conducive to young people’s efforts to engage with new media throughillustrations of young people seeking out and taking advantage of theresources available to them at home, at friends’ homes, and at after-schoolprograms and in other institutional contexts.Looking Around One of the first points of entry for messing around withnew media is the practice of looking around for information online. AsEagleton and Dobler (2007), Hargittai (2004; 2007), Robinson (2007), andothers have noted, the growing availability of information in online spaceshas started to transform young people’s attitudes toward the availabilityand accessibility of information (Hargittai and Hinnant 2006; USC Centerfor the Digital Future 2004). Among our study participants who completedthe Digital Kids Questionnaire, 87 percent reported using a search engineat least once per week, varying from Google to Yahoo! and Wikipedia aswell as other more specialized sites for information. 8 The vast majority ofthe young people we interviewed engaged in “fortuitous searching,” a termthat distinguishes itself as more open ended as opposed to being goaldirected. Rather than finding discrete forms of information, such as theexchange rate between the United States and Great Britain, the color of aparticular flower, or the name of the twentieth U.S. president, fortuitoussearching involves moving from link to link, looking around for whatmany teenagers describe as “random” information. As seventeen-year-oldCarlos, a Latino from the San Francisco bay area described the process toDan Perkel (MySpace Profile Production), “I was just going throughGoogle . . . it just gives a lot of websites. So I just started finding these . . .I put Google . . . then it took me to a website and it had a lot of differentstuff. . . .”Despite the seemingly roundabout method of following links describedby Carlos, teens’ online research can be quite focused. Many searches

Media Ecologies 55involve finding information to facilitate the completion of homework andschool projects, looking for a “cheat” for a particular game (see chapter 5),or looking for a way to complete a particular task. However, the nature ofsearch engines and the organization of information on search results pagesenables teenagers who are interested in a topic to find out more by clickingfrom one link to another.Fortuitous searching represents a strategy for finding informationand reading online that is different from the way kids are taught toresearch and review information in texts at school. Students are taughtto use tools such as identifying a purpose for reading, activating priorknowledge, predicting the content of the text before and during reading,and summarizing or discussing the text after reading in order to improvetheir skills in finding and comprehending information in both traditionaland online resources (Eagleton and Dobler 2007; Graves, Juel, and Graves2001). By contrast, fortuitous searching relies upon the intuition of thesearch engine and the predictive abilities of the reader. Eagleton andDobler write:Readers of web texts rely on a similar process of making, confirming, and adjustingpredictions. However, not only do web readers make predictions about what is tocome in the text (and within other multimedia elements), they also make predictionsabout how to move through the text in order to find information. When areader who wants to know more about how to do an olley on a skateboard andclicks on the hyperlink “olley,” she is mentally making a prediction that this linkwill lead her to learn more about this skateboarding trick. (37)Indeed, participants’ skills in navigating large numbers of pages and usingappropriate search terms indicate proficiency at predicting the informationavailable to them online.Kids often will look around online to find material for creative production.For example, we have seen kids use fortuitous searching to findmaterials for customization, appropriation, and alteration of their MySpacepages. As Perkel (2008) notes, copying and pasting has become a prevalentpractice among American teenagers who want to update and alter theirMySpace pages (see also chapter 6). Many of the tips or guides for changinga MySpace page (such as embedding images and videos and uploadingpictures) are online—on other people’s profiles, in online guides, and onthe MySpace site itself. Many kids use a variety of search sites’ strategiesto obtain information about their interests (Robinson, Wikipedia andInformation Evaluation). Nineteen-year-old Torus, an Indian Italian who

56 Heather A. Horst, Becky Herr-Stephenson, and Laura Robinsonlives in the Los Angeles area, described to Patricia Lange (YouTube andVideo Bloggers) how he looks on Wikipedia for information about gameshe is interested in. “I actually went on recently to learn about one aspectof [a particular type of mod]. There’s some card game inside the gameand I didn’t understand it so I went on Wikipedia and Wikipedia told me,as usual.” Similarly, Christo Sims interviewed eighth grader MaxPower, awhite fourteen-year-old living in a middle-class area of rural California(Rural and Urban Youth), who expressed a strong interest in music.MaxPower learned about music in some of the traditional ways, such aswatching music videos on television. However, after a song or a bandpiqued his interest, he turned to online sites, searching for a particularband on iTunes, doing a Google search to learn more about the band, oridentifying Google images to download a picture for his binder. When heliked what he saw, he sometimes bought music, and if he really liked it,he would burn a copy for his friends.The youth we spoke to who were deeply invested in specific media practicesoften described a period in which they discovered their own pathwaysto relevant information by looking around. Unlike MySpace profiles, wheremany kids can find local experts, kids with more specialized interests oftenneed to rely on online resources for an initial introduction to a particulararea. While the lack of local resources can make some kids feel isolated orin the dark, the increasing availability of search engines and networkedpublics where they can “lurk” (such as in web forums, chat channels, etc.)effectively lowers the barriers to entry and thus makes it easier to lookaround and, in some cases, dabble or mess around anonymously. Withouthaving to risk displaying their ignorance, they find that opportunities forlegitimate peripheral participation (Lave and Wenger 1991) abound online.For example, SnafuDave, 9 a web comics creator described in box 7.1,explains how he learned many of his initial graphics skills from onlinetutorials and web forums before becoming an active participant in a webcomics community. Similarly, Derrick, a sixteen-year-old teenager born inthe Dominican Republic who lives in Brooklyn, New York, looked to onlineresources for initial information about how to take apart a computer. Heexplains to Christo Sims (Rural and Urban Youth) how he first lookedaround online for this topic:

Media Ecologies 57I just searched on Google and I just went to . . . because I bought myself a videocard. I had no idea what a video card looked like. I typed in video card image. BeforeI went to searching for it, image. I wanted to know what it looked like first. I seendifferent pictures. So Google sometimes gives you different pictures. If you typesomething in, it gives you . . . So I’m confused. I’m like, “I thought it looks like thisbut it looks like” . . . so I typed something in and I seen on Google what it lookslike. So I looked at mine and I seen exactly where’s it at. If you smart you don’t gotto search out, “How do I put in and put out.” It’s simple. It’s just take the piece out.Have your computer off. Take it out. When you get your new one if it has a fan youcan’t have your sound card too close to it. So you’ve got to put your sound card inanother slot and I bought myself a sound card too. I had no idea what none of thoselooked like. I thought a sound card was called a sound disk. I learned a lot on myown that’s for computers. . . . Just from searching up on Google and stuff. . . . That’swhy I like Google.As Derrick makes clear, looking around online and searching is anim portant first step to gathering information about a new and unfamiliararea. Although many of these forays do not necessarily result in longtermengagement, youth do use this initial base of knowledge as a stepping-stoneto deeper social and practical engagement with a new areaof interest. Online sites, forums, and search engines augment existinginformation resources by lowering the barriers to looking around inways that do not require specialized knowledge to begin. Lookingaround online and fortuitous searching can be a self-directed activitythat provides young people with a sense of agency, often exhibited ina discourse that they are “self-taught” as a result of engaging in thesestrategies (see chapter 6). The autonomy to pursue topics of personalinterest through random searching and messing around generally assistsand encourages young people to take greater ownership of their learningprocesses.Experimenting and Play As with looking around, experimentation andplay are central practices for young people messing around with newmedia. As a genre of participation, one of the important aspects of messingaround is the media awareness that comes from the information derivedfrom searching and, as we discuss in this section, the desire and (eventually)the ability to play around with media. Often experimentation starts small,such as using digital photo tools to crop, edit, and manipulate images. AsGee (2003) has argued for games and other interactive technologies that

58 Heather A. Horst, Becky Herr-Stephenson, and Laura Robinsonhave low stakes attached to making mistakes or trying multiple scenariosto solve a problem, messing around also involves a great deal of trial anderror. In chapter 5 we argue that the sociability around gaming combineswith the affordances of gaming systems to support an ecology of playfulexperimentation with technology that can often lead to technical andmedia expertise. This kind of social play and experimentation can happenin the home, as an extension of hanging out with family and friends, aswell as online in networked gaming contexts where players join incollaboration and competition through game play, practices that arebuttressed by ongoing exchange and collegiality. In fact, much ofcontemporary gaming is built on the premise that players will engage ina great deal of experimentation on their own in a context of social support.Many key dimensions of game play in complex games are not explicitlyspelled out by designers, and players learn about them from other playerseither directly or through online resources such as fan sites, game guides,and walk-throughs.Because of the ease of copying, pasting, and undoing changes, digitalmedia-production tools also facilitate this kind of experimentation.The availability of these tools, combined with the online informationresources just described, means that youth with an interest and accessto new media now possess a rich set of tools and resources with whichto tinker and experiment. In chapter 6 we describe how youth mediacreators typically recount a period of time early in their learning aboutmedia production when they were tinkering with new media in a selftaughtmode. They often describe getting started by messing aroundwith home videos, modifying photos, or using a program such asPhotoshop. Eventually, many of these media producers begin to getmore serious about their craft and develop a hobbyist network to supporttheir work. Often these activities start as social hanging out modes ofmedia creation, but young people with an interest in media productionsometimes go on to play and experiment with different media beyondsimple plug and play. Young people who are successful in learningadvanced technology skills through messing around sometimes becomeexperts among their families, friends, teachers, and classmates. MeganFinn describes this position as the “techne-mentor” in box 1.4. Technementors,like guides and digital tools, support learning about technologyin informal settings.

Media Ecologies 59Box 1.4 The Techne-MentorMegan FinnIn conceptualizing the media and information ecologies in the lives of Universityof California at Berkeley freshmen, classical adoption and diffusionmodels (e.g., Rogers [1962; 2003]) proved inadequate. Rather than beingcharacterized by a few individuals who diffuse knowledge to others in asomewhat linear fashion, many students’ pattern of technology adoptionsignaled situations in which various people were at times influential in different,ever-evolving social networks. The term “techne-mentor” is used tohelp to describe this pattern of information and knowledge diffusion. Theterm “technology” is generally thought to be partially derived from the Greekword techne, which means craftsmanship. Mentor is a figure in the Odysseywho advised both Odysseus and Telemachus and is the source of the modernuse of the word “mentor.” Techne-mentor refers to a role that someone playsin aiding an individual or group with adopting or supporting some aspect oftechnology use in a specific context, but being a techne-mentor is not apermanent role. The idea of the techne-mentor is useful for expanding conversationsabout adoption patterns to one of informal learning in socialnetworks.Growing up, Joan learned about technology on her own and acted as atechne-mentor to her family and friends. Joan started as a techne-mentorwhen her computer got a virus. She then helped her friends get rid of thevirus.We got this one [virus] on AIM [AOL Instant Messenger] actually. It was on your userprofile so whenever you clicked info, it would say, “Ha, ha, ha, I found the picture ofinsert your name here” and you would click on the link and then you would get thisspyware. . . . It took me a day to figure it out. . . . Then I got rid of it for all my friends.It’s kind of like a little game. . . . It was a challenge, especially the first virus. . . . I juststarted getting into [computer] stuff.Many students such as Joan were often driven to learn about technology ontheir own when they encountered problems with the technology and didnot have other support to learn how to fix them. Other students startedlearning about computers while trying to get rid of viruses on their families’computers. For example, Ben explained, “I did get a virus once and had tolearn how to get rid of it. The damn ‘I love you’ virus. Gosh, that nailedeverybody.” Once students such as Ben and Joan figured out how to get ridof a virus, they would often help the people in their social networks get ridof the virus, essentially becoming techne-mentors to others.Joan also explicitly directed her siblings about how to use technology.I would teach them [my siblings]. Not so much in middle school but in high school,they’re usually, “Do you know how to use Photoshop?” I’ll say, “Yeah, do this.” . . . Or

60 Heather A. Horst, Becky Herr-Stephenson, and Laura Robinson“Do you know how to get rid of this spyware?” . . . for my brother at least; my [older]sister has her own tech guy.Once Joan started at Berkeley, she found a job working for a computing helpdesk. Through her colleagues at work, Joan picked up a lot of informationabout best computing practices: “When I got my job, there was this girl atwork who did a yearbook and knows everything and so whenever we have ashift, she will teach me all this random stuff.” In a work context Joan wasmentored by her friends and colleagues, but in other social contexts, such asher family, Joan was a techne-mentor to others. It is important to note thenonstatic nature of the techne-mentor; the status of techne-mentor is relativeto the knowledge of others within a social context. The significance of thetechne-mentor is that he or she provides information to others withoutimplying absolute expertise.Joan uses information from the work context where she has found a techementorto help her friends.I see that they are using it [AIM]. . . . [I say,] “Your AIM starts playing a movie trailer withaudio every half hour and it’s just annoying.” [My friends say,] “My god, I want to getrid of that, can you help me?” and so I’ll go on like a downloading site and downloadGAIM or DeadAIM.We can see here that when Joan acts as a techne-mentor to her friends, sheis not teaching in a traditional way. The techne-mentor interactions are veryad hoc and informal. The mentorship can be in the form of exposure to atechnology. Joan, the techne-mentor in this case, has preexisting relationshipswith those whom she mentors that are much more elaborate than justthe techne-mentor/student relationship. It allows her to casually mentor herfriends when a technology is not working.Besides Joan, in the Freshquest study we found many cases of technementors.The kind of roles they played varied from case to case and situationto situation. One one hand, the techne-mentor may simply make someoneaware of a technology. On the other hand, he or she may play an integralrole in demonstrating the technology practice or even installing the technologyand ensuring its status as operational. Sometimes students we interviewedhad one primary techne-mentor in their lives, but in turn the students wouldtake on the role when they passed this information on to other groups. Infact, it is this constant flow of information about technology among a student’smultitude of social networks that accounts for the fluidity of the roleof techne-mentor. In all these socially situated contexts, techne-mentors werean integral part of informal learning and teaching about technology andtechnology practices.

Media Ecologies 61In chapter 7 we describe how young people who started successful onlineand digital media ventures enjoyed a certain amount of time and autonomyduring which they could try out various modes of working that weredifferent from the standard forms of part-time labor available to teenagers.Indeed, messing around requires a good deal of time for self-directed learning.For example, SnafuDave, the successful web comics artist profiled inbox 7.1, described how school provided an important venue for developinghis new media skills. While he learned few useful new media skills in hiscollege classes, school did provide him with the time and space to learnon his own. Similarly, Zelan, profiled in box 7.2, described how his interestin new media began with gaming while his parents were prospecting forgold. Eventually, Zelan parlayed his interest in gaming into different formsof technical expertise, and he learned how to take apart and fix gameconsoles and eventually computers. Now he is a local technical expert andgets paid for his services; he sees his future in a new media–relatedbusiness.Messing around is easiest when kids have consistent, high-speed Internetaccess, when they own gadgets such as MP3 players and DVD burners, andwhen they have a great deal of free time, private space, and autonomy.However, these are not necessary conditions for messing around. Some ofthe innovative experimentation in youth’s messing around was seen intheir circumventing limited media access. Consider, for example, James, afourteen-year-old from Lisa Tripp and Becky Herr-Stephenson’s study(Teaching and Learning with Multimedia). James’s parents promised himan iPod as a graduation gift if he completed eighth grade with acceptablegrades. With graduation still a few weeks off and his grades in question,James figured out a way to substitute the technology he did have for theiPod he was anticipating. James borrowed his aunt’s digital camera, onwhich he could record several minutes of video, and recorded music videosoff the television in his bedroom. Getting a good recording took time andseveral tries, but fortunately for James, he had a few hours at home aloneafter school before his parents arrived home from work, so he could shuthis bedroom door and crank the sound on the television to get a goodrecording without having to worry about his parents’ overhearing questionablelyrics or complaining about the volume. Although the camera’smemory card held only two or three songs at one time, it had a headphonejack and fit in James’s pocket so no one had to know that it was not an

62 Heather A. Horst, Becky Herr-Stephenson, and Laura RobinsonMP3 player. By messing around and being creative with technology, Jackwas able to find an acceptable interim solution until he could get his iPod.Similarly, Melea, a mixed-race high-school student in San Francisco enrolledin an after-school program, used resources at the after-school center todevise a creative way of getting a custom ringtone for her phone. DanPerkel describes Melea’s ringtone practices:I saw that Melea had come in, sat down at the adjacent computer, and was usingthe computer. I realized that she was playing music and getting everyone else to bequiet. She was bent way over next to the Mac’s external speakers with her cell phoneup to the speaker recording the song that she had put on her MySpace profile. JJ atone point started talking and she shh’d him (later she said in a threatening voice,“If your voice is on that . . .”). She said it was going to be her ringtone. Then shewent to the Fergie page on MySpace music. She played the Fergie song. I asked herif this were Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas and she said, “Yes.” She played the songand asked herself over and over again . . . “Do I want this song? Do I want thissong?” Then she said, “Yes!” and right in the middle hit the record button on herphone (or whatever) and started recording from the speakers again. (Antin, Perkel,and Sims, The Social Dynamics of Media Production)Melea circumvented economic costs associated with buying ringtones,costs that could have prohibited her from possessing her ringtone ofchoice. Despite the difficulty of getting a high-quality recording in a noisycomputer lab, by recording it from the playback of a MySpace page Meleacreatively acquired the media she wanted in her desired format.Whether in media production, game play, or other mediated contexts,opportunities to experiment, play, and fail with minimal consequence cansupport young people in developing problem-solving skills and learningto use resources wisely and creatively. As with looking around, the socialdimensions of experimentation and play are important, as peers are ableto scaffold experiences for one another based on experience and the resultsof previous experimentation.Finding the Time, Finding the Place The ability to mess around requiresaccess to media, technology, and social resources that are not alwaysavailable to youth. Just as in the case of hanging out, messing around is agenre of participation that is driven by young people’s own interests andmotivations. It is not always fully provided by the adults who have authorityover kids. While schools may provide structured media productionprograms for youth, these programs are task focused and there is little time

Media Ecologies 63for unstructured experimentation and play. Most of the messing aroundactivities that we observed occurred at home with kids who had bothwell-provisioned media households and an environment where they hadcertain amounts of free time and whose parents gave them a fair degree ofautonomy over their media choices. The dynamics of homes and familiesare described more in chapter 4. We also found that transitioning to collegewas often a key moment when kids took the time and space to engage inmessing around, particularly if they did not grow up in a home where theywere given the freedom to engage in these activities before college. Theolder participants we spoke to who were highly engaged with mediaproduction or gaming generally described falling in with a crowd of friendsin college who shared some of these interests.For young people without access to digital media at home, after-schoolprograms can be an important place for experimentation and play, providingtechnical and social resources and a time and space for messing aroundwith technology that they do not have at home. Jacob, a seventeen-year-oldAfrican-American high-school student in Oakland, is enrolled in a programwhere he can stay after school to work with computers. He described theprogram where he had the opportunity to mess around to Dan Perkel(Antin, Perkel, and Sims, The Social Dynamics of Media Production):So it’s fun, because they teach you all these different programs that you had no ideawhat they were until you get into there. And then they have nice software. Theyhave LCD screens. Every seat, every computer they have fast Internet service, processor.They have nice seats. I mean, the seats aren’t like these. I mean, they have niceroll-around comfy sit-back seats where you can just sit back and type. It’s comfortable.And then they got tables. And then they got a table where you eat. So theybring out food, like sandwiches, chips, apples, fruit. Nutritious stuff. They don’treally serve fast [food] . . . they do have chips, like Doritos, but not sloppy things.And so I learned Photoshop, Flash animation, Dreamweaver, a couple of other programslike Word, Excel. They have all the latest programs. Flash. Our school hasFlash [inaudible], but Tech Visions have the new ones—Flash 8 and Dreamweaver9. And I think it’s Photoshop CS and Fireworks. They got all the programs. Anythingyou need to do to build any kind of website, or any kind of project or picture, theyhave it.Jacob recounts with delight how the program provides a whole environmentthat gives him a sense of empowerment and efficacy; not just thetechnology but the provisioning of good, nutritious food and comfortablework spaces are all part of the package that draws him to this program.

64 Heather A. Horst, Becky Herr-Stephenson, and Laura RobinsonMessing around happens according to a variety of trajectories and indifferent settings. Although the youth in our study who had in-home,private, and consistent access to new media (particularly computers andInternet connections) tended to have an advantage in relation to thosewho had more limited resources, for a number of youth, the most importantspaces for messing around took place at school or in after-school settings.For Katynka Martínez’s study, “High School Computer Club,” Martínezobserved a Los Angeles high school where the computer-lab instructorallowed kids to hang out and use the lab for their own self-directed activities.The kids in the computer lab set up the computers so they couldengage in networked game play, launched a variety of self-directed mediaproductionprojects, and started some small business ventures as describedin box 7.3. In many ways, the computer lab was a unique context wherekids could gather informally during school breaks and after school to messaround with a comfortable mix of social and technical resources.Some teens were able to construct their own times and places for messingaround in the absence of formal programs, even if they did not have ahome context that fully supported these activities. For example, Toni, atwenty-five-year-old living in New York City whom Mizuko Ito (AnimeFans) interviewed over an instant-messaging program, reflected on hisexperiences as a student coming to the United States from the DominicanRepublic and the ways in which he was able to create space to mess aroundat school. He was first exposed to computers soon after he moved to theUnited States for middle school and took a computer class. He quickly tookan interest in computers and then later went back to the DominicanRepublic for a year and attended a computer-training institute, all thewhile not having computer access at home. When he returned to theUnited States in ninth grade, he became part of an informal computer club.Toni: i would stay after school and play around/help the teacher whokept the lab open for students to useMizuko: sounds like a cool teacherToni: he was except when i printed out the student database he wasn’thappy thenMizuko: lol but sounds like he gave you some freedom to mess aroundToni: yeah, the exposure i got both learning how parts of a computermake the whole and also helping other students was pretty good for meand i sort of do the same kind of thing these days

Media Ecologies 65Today, Toni is an active online participant in the anime fandoms that arethe subject of Ito’s study, and he is a technology expert for his family. Heeventually acquired his first computer in eleventh grade and attendedschool at a technical university. While Toni’s experience of messing aroundinformally at school is not necessarily typical, it speaks to the fact thatschools and after-school programs continue to play an important role tomany youths for learning about technology. In addition, it illustrates thevalue of informal learning, unscheduled time, and student-driven inquiry,even in a formal educational environment.As a collection of practices and a stance toward media and technology,messing around highlights the advantages of growing up in an era of mediasaturation, interactive media, and social software. Although messingaround can be seen as a challenge to traditional ways of finding andsharing information, solving problems, or consuming media, it also representsa highly productive space for young people in which they can beginto explore specific interests and to connect with other people outside theirlocal friendship groups. As noted in the beginning of this section, messingaround can be understood as a transitional genre of participation that canmediate between hanging out and geeking out. Kids can move from mediaengagement that centers on peer sociability to forms that are more interestfocused via messing around. Conversely, kids who are participating inmore geeky interest-driven activities see messing around as a form of socialplay in which they engage with their friends around interests and learning.Unlike learning in more structured settings, messing around involves amore open-ended genre of participation, which often hinges on certainmodes of sociability and play, along with access to resources on a timelyand as-needed basis. As we outline, even youth with well-provisionedmedia environments can lack the time and social resources to successfullymess around with media. Messing around is therefore a powerful modalityof learning that requires a whole ecology of resources, including time andspace for experimentation.Geeking OutThe third genre of participation we have identified is “geeking out.” Thisgenre primarily refers to an intense commitment or engagement withmedia or technology, often one particular media property, genre, or atype of technology. This stance is characteristic of the young people we

66 Heather A. Horst, Becky Herr-Stephenson, and Laura Robinsoninterviewed who were involved in a media fandom, such as the youngpeople in Mizuko Ito’s “Anime Fans” study, in Becky Herr-Stephenson’s“Harry Potter Fandom” study, or the more committed gamers who participatedin Matteo Bittanti’s “Game Play” study. The term “geeking out” canbe used to describe the everyday practices of some of the gamers and mediaproducers who participated in our project. In addition to intensive andfrequent use of new media, high levels of specialized knowledge attachedto alternative models of status and credibility and a willingness to bend orbreak social and technological rules emerged as two additional features ofgeeking out as a genre of participation.Before discussing geeking out in more detail, it is important to note thatalthough “geeking out” describes a particular way of interacting withmedia and technology, this genre of participation is not necessarily drivenby technology. The interests that support and encourage geeking out canvary from offline, nonmediated activities, such as sports, to media-driveninterests, such as music, which are larger than the technological componentof the interest. That is to say, one can geek out on topics that are notculturally marked as “geeky.” We also wish to distinguish here betweengeeking out and other uses of the word “geek,” as an identity category.Whereas notions of geek identity have traditionally been associated withwhite, affluent, suburban boys (Jenkins 2000; Thomas 2002), our understandingof geeking out as a genre of participation—a way of understanding,interacting, and orienting to media and technology—widens thedefinition to include activities and people outside established understandingsof what it means to identify (or be identified) as a geek. This is not tonegate the potential implications of participation for the negotiation andarticulation of identity. As we discuss elsewhere, participation, learning,and identity development are contingent within communities of practice.Our point here is to call attention to examples of continued, intensive,and sophisticated interaction and use of new media that might otherwisebe overlooked because the person doing it does not fit a preconceivednotion of the gender, class, or race of a “geek”.Expertise and Geek Cred For many young people, the ability to engagewith media and technology in an intense, autonomous, and interestdrivenway is a unique feature of the media environment of our currenthistorical moment. Particularly for kids with newer technology and

Media Ecologies 67high-speed Internet access at home, the Internet can provide access toa huge amount of information related to their particular interests. Thechapters on gaming, creative production, and work describe some ofthe cases of kids who geek out on their interests and develop reputationand expertise within specialized knowledge communities. Geek credinvolves learning to navigate esoteric domains of knowledge and practiceand being able to participate in communities that traffic in these formsof expertise.Box 1.5 describes zalas, one highly expert participant in online knowledgecultures who has customized his media engagement in a way thatfocuses on developing deep expertise in a specific area of interest. Althoughvery few of the youths we spoke to exhibited the kind of informationalexpertise that zalas did, it was not uncommon to find young people whocustomized their media environments to facilitate access to specializedknowledge. For example, one of Heather Horst’s interviewees in her study“Silicon Valley Families” a fifteen-year-old boy who chose the pseudonym010101, discussed the way he keeps up with information about his interestin technology by creating a customized Google home page with variousRSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds so he can keep tabs on different sitesof interest. In addition to Slashdot, one of the most popular technologynews blogs featuring “news for nerds,” 010101 regularly reads a variety oftechnology websites specific to his interest, including MacRumors.com andEngadget.com. His sources of information are sites with high status withinthe tech geek community, where the credibility of technology informationis debated among people who identify as tech experts.Box 1.5 zalas, a Digital-Information VirtuosoMizuko ItoMy first encounter with zalas was through email, through an introductionfrom another anime fan. I was seeking information about my new study onfansubbing practices, and I was told that zalas was the person I should know.Initially, we corresponded over email, where I peppered him with questionsabout the fansub community. He seemed to have eyes and ears all across thevast web of the online fandom around anime, not just among the fansubcommunities. Apparently no question was too esoteric; he could come backwith information about the latest anime releases in Japan, the activities ofeven the most minor fansub groups, and the juiciest gossip on the online

68 Heather A. Horst, Becky Herr-Stephenson, and Laura Robinsonforums surrounding Japanese popular culture in both Japan and the UnitedStates. I had the good fortune of having zalas, a digital-information virtuoso,as a key informant in my study of anime fans.After immigrating with his family to the United States from mainlandChina when he was a child, zalas grew up in a technology-rich household,with two parents who worked with computers. “I got introduced to computersearly on. And, also, I just tend to be better at science and math than thearts and English and things like that. I was sort of just drawn to [the computer]because it was like this super, über toy, you know.” Both his parentswere in graduate school at the time, and he had online access to their VAXmachine. Ever since, he kept up with the latest online technologies, movingfrom AOL Instant Messenger, to Internet relay chat (IRC), and eventually toBitTorrent. He discovered the online anime and fansub scene through hiscontacts in IRC.He participates in a wide range of fan activities. He has been involved in avariety of fansub groups and activities, including projects for fansub gamesand electronic visual novels. He also makes anime music videos (AMVs), isan officer at his university’s anime club, and is a frequent speaker at his localanime convention. I have seen zalas give talks on topics as varied as Japaneseanime and game-remix videos, fansubbing, and visual novel subtitling. Hedescribes himself as something of an elder in the online anime scene, despitethe fact that he is still in his early twenties.In my interview with zalas, he guided me through some of what was behindthe curtain of his information magic. He explains that he is constantly onIRC, logged into multiple channels populated by the information elite of theonline anime fandom.I used to have just one copy of mIRC running that simultaneously connected to all thesechannels, and every once in a while just scroll through to see which ones have newmessages, go to them, see if it’s important, if it’s not, go to the next one and things likethat. But right now I actually have a text-only IRC client that’s running on my friend’sweb server, and I’m connected to about twenty channels on that one. It’s actually downfrom what I’m usually connected to. And that one lights up a little number near thebottom of the screen indicating which channels have new activity, and I’ll switch to itand see if it’s worthwhile or something.He has four computers at home: a Windows computer, a Linux computer,a Macintosh desktop computer, and a Macintosh laptop.So, my Windows computer is there so I can play games. It’s—most of my desktop processingstuff and all my video editing and things like that are on [my] Windows computer.My Linux computer is there because I need—sometimes I need a Linux compiler,and it’s also there as a server. So, it’s serving my source code repositories, and it’s—it hasa IRC file server on there as well and IRC bot on that or something like that, whichcontrols some channel. And my OS10 one is actually my laptop, which I bring with me.It’s kind of like my portable computer . . . I bought it because I wanted to be able to work

Media Ecologies 69anywhere, and also I bought it so I can sort of connect to IRC at conferences—atconventions.Although zalas is an avid consumer of music and television, he rarelyaccesses this content through standard broadcast channels. He frequentsthe Japanese streaming-video site Nico Video in addition to using BitTorrentto download anime episodes. IRC is zalas’s home base for communication.But in addition to IRC zalas frequently visits information websites andonline forums devoted to his hobby. He does not keep a personal blogbut prefers to post to shared online forums. He will often scour the Japaneseanime and game-related sites to get news that English-speaking fans donot have access to. “It’s kinda like a race to see who can post the first tidbitabout it.”In addition to his prolific activities as an anime fan, zalas is a graduatestudent in electrical engineering at one of the top universities in the country.He says that he mainly uses IM for people he has met in school and otherreal-life contexts, and IRC is for people he “met randomly online.” Despitethe fact that he is in a high-powered graduate program, zalas says that almostall his online activity centers on his anime- and game-related hobbies. Heestimates that he spends about eight hours a day online keeping up with hishobby. “I think pretty much all the time that’s not school, eating, or sleeping.”Building a reputation as one of the most knowledgeable voices in theonline anime fandom requires this kind of commitment as well as an advancedmedia ecology that is finely tailored to his interests.Another example of how geeking out relates to finding and producingcredible information comes from a number of the gamers with whom wespoke during this project. Particularly when it comes to massively multiplayeronline role-playing games (MMORPGs), the intensive engagementassociated with geeking out as a genre of participation extends beyondparticipation within the boundaries of the game world and to the paratexts10 that support and extend the game. Paratexts take many forms,varying from gaming magazines and official guides published by gamemanufacturers, to player-generated guides and tutorials, to materials morerecognizable as fan texts such as fan fiction and fan art. For example,Rachel Cody notes that the players in her study “Final Fantasy XI” usedguides, typically on websites but sometimes in books, regularly duringgame play for information about quests, missions, and crafting. The guidesassisted players in streamlining some parts of the game that otherwise tooka great deal of time or resources. For example, guides that instructed players

70 Heather A. Horst, Becky Herr-Stephenson, and Laura Robinsonon strategies for leveling crafting skills could help players save on thein-game expense of materials by providing tips on the best way to craftitems. Cody observed that a few members of the linkshell in her study keptMicrosoft Excel files with detailed notes on all their crafting in order topostulate theories on the most efficient ways of producing goods. AsWurlpin, 11 a twenty-six-year-old male from California, told Cody, theguides are an essential part of playing the game. He commented, “I couldn’timagine [playing while] not knowing how to do half the things, how togo, who to talk to.”As Wurlpin and many other players with whom we spoke noted, theinformation sought from guides is often used to save time, resources, orto draw upon advice from players who have successfully completed a taskwith which the player is struggling. In this context, user-generated guidesoften have greater credibility with players because they have been createdby other players rather than by the producers of the game. Using and creatingplayer-generated guides is an example of geeking out because it reflectsan acceptance of the alternative status economy and markers of credibilitythat exist in many gaming communities. While not endemic to gamingcommunities, valuing geek cred is a unique feature of geeking out as agenre of participation and is significantly different from the ways in whichinformation is assessed while messing around.Status and credibility also remain linked in alternative status economies,which represent another area of blending between interest- and friendshipdrivengroups. For example, in her study of anime fans, Mizuko Ito observesthat fans gravitate toward particular fan sites that have credibility withinthe community rather than relying on industry-produced sites for informationabout anime. She notes that fans in specialized creative communitiesoften avoid official discussion forums (those provided by the media producersor otherwise sponsored by the industry), instead looking to specializedfan communities where the knowledgeable fans congregate. Forexample, fansubbers such as zalas generally prefer to participate in closedIRC groups or specialized forums rather than general fan discussion forums,which they see as catering to less knowledgeable fans.In interest-driven groups built around technology expertise, mediafandom, or electronic gaming, status does not have to align with the hierarchiesof status at school, at home, or more general social status. Whereas

Media Ecologies 71family, peers, classmates, and others might contribute to a young person’sfeeling of marginalization for having a particular niche interest, within aninterest-driven group the niche interest is what brings people together.Therefore knowing a lot about it, sharing unique infor mation with thegroup, or producing interesting and high-quality pro ductions (fan fiction,art, fansubs, videos, podcasts, etc.) are highly valued practices.Rewriting the Rules Rewriting the rules is a practice related to bothmessing around and geeking out. However, there are important differencesin the ways in which the rules are rewritten in each of these genres ofparticipation. Like messing around, which involves an inchoate awarenessof the need and ability to subvert social rules set by parents and institutionssuch as school, geeking out frequently requires young people to negotiaterestrictions on access to friends, spaces, or information to achieve thefrequent and intense interaction with media and technology characteristicof geeking out. Rewriting the rules in the service of geeking out, however,also involves a willingness to challenge technological restrictions—toopen the black box of technology, so to speak. This practice is most oftendone in the service of acquiring media—either media that are unavailablethrough commercial outlets (such as anime that has not yet been releasedin the United States) or media that are unavailable because of the costof buying it. Geeking out often involves an explicit challenge to existingsocial and legal norms and technical restrictions. It is a subcultural identitythat self-consciously plays by a different set of rules than mainstreamsociety.Many of the geeking out practices we describe in the chapters on gaming,creative production, and work involve youth engaged in passionate interestswho are concurrently innovating in ways that rewrite the existing rulesof media engagement. For example, fans of various forms of commercialmedia have engaged in their own alternative readings of media and createdsecondary productions such as fan fiction, video mashups, and fan art.These activities are proliferating online, and we capture some of this inchapter 6. Similarly, gaming represents a breeding ground for practices ofcode hacking, creating and exploiting cheats, and making derivative workssuch as machinima and game modifications. These forms of geeking outare described in chapter 5.

72 Heather A. Horst, Becky Herr-Stephenson, and Laura RobinsonGeeks also have been at the forefront of alternative regimes of mediacirculation. Fansubbing bridges fan practices of secondary production andpeer-to-peer (P2P) circulation, and it is described further in chapter 7.Despite attention in recent years to large numbers of youth downloadingmusic illegally, more sophisticated downloading—particularly downloadingvideo—continues to be associated with more intense engagement andcommitment to media. Whereas figuring out LimeWire to download songswith friends might be more characteristic of hanging out or messingaround, geeking out tends to require more systematic, long-term, andpurposeful use of less-common technology to acquire media. As Derrick inBrooklyn, New York, explains to Christo Sims (Rural and Urban Youth):Christo: So when you surf on the Internet what are some of the thingsthat you are looking for?Derrick: Well, mostly I look for . . . I ain’t going to lie . . . illegal things.Christo: That’s fine.Derrick: I just search. I just try to get . . . if I seen a movie or I like thatmovie, I go home, I get the movie.Christo: You mean just find it and download it?Derrick: Yeah.Christo: Do you use like LimeWire or what do you . . .Derrick: Torrent.Christo: BitTorrent?Derrick’s friend: He’s a computer freak.What is interesting about the conversation between Christo and Derrickis Derrick’s friend’s comment. His act of calling Derrick “a computer freak”(even if meant as a joke between friends) indicates that he associatesa particular and deviant identity with video file sharing, which is consideredgeekier than music file sharing. Although the publicity and legalcampaign against file sharing has had the effect of curtailing some P2Ppractices, our discussions with youth indicate that P2P sharing (particularlyof music) is still widespread. Youth such as Derrick are becomingmore savvy about what practices are likely to get them in trouble sociallyand legally, and more savvy about how to bend rules in ways that presentthe least amount of risk. The time and skill involved in subverting legaland technological rules is often quite intensive. For example, Federico, aseventeen-year-old Latino who participated in Dan Perkel’s study (MySpace

Media Ecologies 73Profile Production), described the process he goes through to downloadsoftware:Federico: Like if I don’t want to try to pay for a software that costs ahundred dollars and some, I just go to the website and then I downloadit. Probably like Nero. There’s a new version. I’m like . . . I just look for iton Google or something and see the whole name, what’s the name. Andthen just go over there to the other website and . . . then press okay. Thenthey’ll take you to another website and then they’ll go like, you got todownload part one, part two, part three . . . whatever. Right after that I goover there and then it takes you to another website and you press “free”and then it takes you whatever minutes, depending on your Internet. Andthen it opens up and it tells you if you have to put a code. Right after thecode you got to put a [inaudible]; that’s like another code. And you got tofind it in another website. And then right after that you’ve got to find theserial number that I’ve got to download. And right after the serial code Igot the software.Dan: How much time does that take . . . the whole process?Federico: Depending. If I’m trying to download a good software,sometimes I’ve got to download six parts . . . that’s like two, three days.Getting around the copyright rules and software market is, in this case,quite an intensive exercise, but acquiring the software for free is an incentivefor this interviewee to put forth the effort. The commitment to geekingout pays off in this ability to navigate and exploit alternative media ecologiesthat are counter to the given, mainstream consumer logic of newmedia.Having What It Takes The intensive commitment to new media that ischaracteristic of geeking out clearly requires access to new media. However,in many of our cases, we have found that technological access is just partof what makes participation possible. Returning to the concept of mediaecologies, it is important to emphasize the interaction of different resourcesin determining access. Family, friends, and other peers in on- and offlinespaces become particularly important to facilitating access to thetechnology, knowledge, and social connections required to geek out. Justas in the case of messing around, geeking out requires the time, space, andresources to experiment and follow interests in a self-directed way.

74 Heather A. Horst, Becky Herr-Stephenson, and Laura RobinsonFurthermore, it requires access to a community of expertise. Contrary topopular images of the socially isolated geek, almost all geeking out practiceswe have observed are highly social and engaged, although these are notnecessarily expressed as friendship-driven social practices. We also havefound that families provide a cultural and social context conducive togeeking out. For example, Carolina, a white female creator of AMVs in hertwenties who was interviewed by Mizuko Ito in her study of anime fans,learned how to access P2P networks within the context of a family of filesharers. In her interview, she described learning about file sharing with herparents and siblings:I started out by using search engines to look up what I was seeing on TV, orthe manga we had at the bookstore, and that inevitably led me to review sitesthat [led] me to other series and movies. At the same time, our whole householdwas discovering peer-to-peer file sharing, so I’m sure you can imagine what thatled to :$ 12Carolina notes that different interests motivated each family member’sfile-sharing practices. Whereas her parents and sister were most interestedin downloading music, Carolina and her brother focused on finding videoclips, mainly anime fansubs. Carolina and her brother navigated multiplesites for P2P file sharing. She told Mizuko, “I know my brother has gottenthings for me off of IRC, but we also used Napster, [LimeWire], Morpheus,more recently any number of [BitTorrent] clients. . . .” In this case, as wellas in some of the cases highlighted in chapters 4 and 6, it is evident thatfamily support and/or participation can be an important source of encouragementand access for geeking out.Friends form an important support structure, not only in terms of gainingaccess to hardware or Internet connections when one does not have themat home but also in terms of recommending media, technology, or otherresources related to a shared interest. In chapter 5 we describe how friendshipsbuilt through playing together become a source of technical expertisethat often extend beyond game-specific interests. In Katynka Martínez’sstudy (Pico Union Families), she interviewed Dark Queen, a seventeenyear-oldeleventh grader who told Martínez that she does not talk abouther music, television, or reading preferences with friends in her neighborhoodor school or with family members. However, Dark Queen likes toread manga and relies on MySpace friends for reading recommendations.She notes:

Media Ecologies 75It’s actually really interesting because they [her MySpace friends who are intomanga] have read so many books that I haven’t and I would be like—if they wouldgive me a brief summary about like the book they have read or a movie they’veseen, an anime movie, we would be like, “Okay. I have to read this book, or I haveto see this movie.” And I would look for it.Having access to a community with similar interests allowed Dark Queento pursue her interest in manga privately and to interact with a communityof experts through the exchange of recommendations. In this case, exploringher interest in manga was as much about being a part of the communityas it was about accessing the media itself.Similarly, orangefizzy, a thirteen-year-old Asian-American Harry Potterfan from California and participant in Becky Herr-Stephenson’s HarryPotter fandom study, described her experiences as an avid fan-fiction readerand writer on two fan-fiction archive sites. As orangefizzy notes, she prefersthe smaller of the two sites because it “has more of a ‘community we allknow each other’ feeling to it than [the larger archive], which is huge.” Inaddition, orangefizzy observes that her decision to post her own work onthe smaller archive site was very much influenced by the fact that she gotto know other people participating on the site through extended conversationsin the site forums. The examples of Dark Queen and orangefizzyillustrate how interest-driven and friendship-driven genres of participationoften overlap and become intertwined.Conclusion“Hanging out,” “messing around,” and “geeking out” are three genres ofparticipation we found to be widespread among the American kids andteenagers who participated in our studies. As descriptive frames, the threegenres of participation are closely related to the genres of interest-drivenand friendship-driven participation that we outline in this book’s introduction,although here we have focused on issues of expertise and the intensityof media engagement. Hanging out tends to correspond with morefriendship-driven practices and geeking out to the more interest-drivenones, although we have seen cases of kids geeking out on more friendshipdrivenpractices, such as in the case of kids who are intensely into Facebookor MySpace, or when kids engage in video or photo production as part oftheir hanging out with friends. Messing around is a genre of participation

76 Heather A. Horst, Becky Herr-Stephenson, and Laura Robinsonin its own right, but it is also a transition zone along a continuum betweengeeking out and hanging out and between interest-driven and friendshipdrivenparticipation. It describes those modes of media engagement inwhich kids are tinkering, learning, and getting serious about particularmodes or practices, which are often supported by the social networks theyhave developed in their friendship or interest groups. Taken together, thesedifferent genres of participation provide a flexible vocabulary for describingthe different ways in which kids engage with new media and how theirengagement relates to social participation and identity.While each genre of participation represents a different stance towardengagement in terms of intensity and level of commitment to new media,we want to emphasize that these practices do not correspond with “types”of young people. Derrick, the sixteen-year-old in Christo Sims’s projectfocused on rural and urban youth, is chronicled in all three genres of participation.In the section on hanging out, Derrick describes hanging outwith friends in person and trying to coordinate further plans to hang outby using his mobile phone. In the section that focuses on messing around,Derrick participates in fortuitous searching on Google to build a computer.Finally, in our discussion of geeking out, Derrick downloads movies overBitTorrent, a somewhat obscure application that is used to download mediaand is often associated with geek culture and identity. This is not to suggestthat Derrick is somehow schizophrenic or that he plays different roles.Rather, he is a young man born in the Dominican Republic, now living ina relatively low-income neighborhood in Brooklyn, who moves throughthe different genres of participation depending upon his motivation andwithin the constraints of his socioeconomic status, age, and location.When he is with his friends in Brooklyn, Derrick participates in his friendship,or peer, group by strategizing ways to hang out with his friendsthrough the use of their mobile phones. When he wants to gain knowledgeabout computers and how they work, his engagement with new mediamore closely involves geeking out and messing around.Throughout this chapter our primary aim is to map the media ecologiesthat constitute the lives of our research participants. We suggest that learningand participation with new media needs to be contexualized within abroader social-, cultural-, technical-, and place-based ecology. Our work hasapproached this problem by examining a diverse range of cases that were

Media Ecologies 77selected and delimited according to different criteria, some based on location,others based on online and institutional sites, and others based oninterest-based groups. We designed our research to understand the environmental,socioeconomic, and infrastructural dimensions of media use.By sampling in these diverse ways, we have been able to grasp at least someof the variegated ecological factors that structure new media participation.We have suggested that the conceptual construct of genres of participationis one way of extrapolating from this material, which reflects the patternsof engagement of the young people we interviewed. These genres of participation,which are not reductive, retain the ecological context and beginto characterize how different forms of engagement and participation aredefined in relation and in opposition to one another. Although our discussiondoes not focus on issues of the digital divide or the participation gap,we have worked to illustrate the kinds of resources that need to be presentin youth’s environments for them to participate in certain genres ofpractice.In the following chapters, we elaborate upon this ecological frame andthe genres of participation we introduce here by delving into specific youthpractices. Throughout our descriptions, we use the broad genre distinctionbetween interest- and friendship-driven genres of participation and thespecific characteristics of hanging out, messing around, and geeking out,as points of orientation to bring the reader back to the ecological framewe outline here. We delve into some of the specific practices that make upthe media ecologies of the young people who participated in our study.Although the subsequent chapters look at specific media practices, ourinvestigation situates these practices within the diverse contexts of youngpeople’s lives—homes and neighborhoods, learning institutions, networkedsites and spaces, and interest-based groups. We also use the broaddistinction between interest-driven and friendship-driven genres of participationas well as the specific characteristics of hanging out, messingaround, and geeking out as frames for understanding these practices withina larger media ecology. While individual chapters necessarily focus onspecific populations and practices, we hope that when taken as a wholethey allow us to retain a sense of context and relationality that has characterizedthe overall collaborative endeavor of analyzing and writing acrossa range of case studies, using multiple methods and disciplinary approaches.

78 Heather A. Horst, Becky Herr-Stephenson, and Laura RobinsonNotes1. The Kaiser report finds that youth spend the same number of hours, approximately6.5 per day, with media in 2004 as they did in a similar survey conductedin 1999.2. These comparisons are between national surveys and the share of our participantswho completed our survey. Since not all the participants at our various ethnographicsites completed surveys, these figures should not be read as descriptions of ourparticipant population as a whole.3. We did, however, have 11 percent of participants report going online a few timesa month or less. Since Pew reports frequency only in terms of the percent of participantswho go online daily, we cannot compare these figures directly.4. Part of the discrepancy in this final figure could be due to posing the questiondifferently. We asked our participants if they “use a social network site daily,”whereas the Pew survey asks whether or not they “send a message through a socialnetwork site daily.” Since teens can use a site without sending a message, part ofour figure probably includes those who visit a social network site daily but do notsend messages every day.5. Boase (2008) has analyzed variation in communication practices based on Pew’ssurvey data of adults. To our knowledge, no similar survey analysis has been conductedof variation in communication among youth.6. A pseudonym.7. A pseudonym.8. Although a variety of search engines are available to digital youth, across differentcase studies there are frequent references to Google. Some youth use variouspermutations such as “Googling,” “Googled,” and “Googler” as normative information-seekinglanguage. The ubiquitous nature of Google may indicate that the ideaof “Googling” has been normalized into the media ecology of digital youth suchthat for many, Googling may be considered synonymous with information seekingitself.9. “SnafuDave” is a screen name.10. “Paratext” refers to elements that surround a text. In relation to written texts,examples would be tables of contents or indexes. Mia Consalvo has described theproducts of the gaming industry—including guides—as a paratext for gaming. Fora full discussion of paratexts, please see Consalvo (2007) and Lunenfeld (2000).11. “Wurlpin” is a real character name.12. “:$” is an emoticon meaning “embarrassed.”

2 FRIENDSHIPLead Author: danah boydSitting in a coffee shop in suburban Michigan in June 2007, Tara, aVietnamese sixteen-year-old, was asked about Facebook. She giggled andsaid that she had “an addiction” to the site. She had heard from adultsthat Facebook might be bad, but “like everyone says get a Facebook. Youneed to get one.” She made sure to log in often to check for new messagesfrom friends, read updates about her classmates, and comment on friends’photos. For Tara, this type of participation on a social network site is acritical element of staying socially connected. She is not alone. While thespecific tools vary by geography, time, and peer group, the teens we interviewedthroughout the United States regularly told us that engaging withsocial media is important for developing and maintaining friendshipswith peers. While these teens may see one another at school, in formal orunstructured activities, or at one another’s houses, they use social mediato keep in touch with their friends, classmates, and peers when gettingtogether is not possible. Skyler Sierra, an eighteen-year-old from Colorado,succintly articulated the importance of these new media to these teens’social lives when she explained to her mother that “if you’re not onMySpace, you don’t exist.” 1 For many contemporary teenagers, losingaccess to social media is tantamount to losing their social world.We found that U.S. youth use a variety of social media to develop andmaintain broader communities of peers. Teen practices when using socialmedia mirror those that scholars have documented in other places whereteens gather with peers (Eckert 1989; Milner 2004; Skelton and Valentine1998). Just as they have done in parking lots and shopping malls, teensgather in networked public spaces for a variety of purposes, including tonegotiate identity, gossip, support one another, jockey for status, collaborate,share information, flirt, joke, and goof off. They go there to hang out.

80 danah boydBy providing tools for mediated interactions, social media allow teens toextend their interactions beyond physical boundaries. Conversations andinteractions that begin in person do not end when friends are separated.Youth complement private communication through messaging and mobilephones with social media that support broader peer publics.In the 1980s, the mall served as a key site for teen sociability in theUnited States (Ortiz 1994) because it was often the only accessiblepublic space where teens could go to hang out (Lewis 1990). Teens areincreasingly monitored, though, and many have been pressured out ofpublic spaces such as streets, parks, malls, and libraries (Buckingham 2000).More recently, networked publics have become the contemporary stompingground for many U.S. teens. Just as teens flocked to the malls becauseof societal restrictions, many of today’s teens are choosing to gather withfriends online because of a variety of social and cultural limitations (boyd2007). While the site teens go to gather at has changed over time, manyof the core practices have stayed the same. The changes we are seeing todayare a variant of these core practices, inflected in distinctive ways as youthmobilize social media.During the course of our study, we watched as a new genre of socialmedia—social network sites (SNSs) 2 —gained traction among U.S. teenagers.While teenagers have many choices of media with which to interactwith one another, two large social network sites—MySpace and Facebook—captured the imaginations of millions of U.S. teenagers while we weredoing fieldwork in the years 2004 through 2007. Not all teens frequentthese sites (Lenhart and Madden 2007), but social network sites becamecentral to many teens’ practices. This form of networked public allowedbroad peer groups to socialize together while other social media suchas instant messaging (IM) and mobile phones allowed teens to interactone-to-one or in small groups. All these tools can be used for a wide varietyof purposes, but what we witnessed during our study was that the dominantpractices for most youth were friendship-driven and exhibited thegenre of participation that we have described in chapter 1 as “hangingout.”This chapter documents how social media are incorporated into teenfriendship practices in the context of their everyday peer groups. Weemphasize the practices that take place on social network sites because theyemerged and took hold during our study as a central gathering spot for

Friendship 81U.S. teens. The material used in this chapter primarily comes from studiesthat emphasized the friendship-driven practices of youth as they interactedwith peers in their school-centered social networks. These studies includethose conducted by C. J. Pascoe (Living Digital); Christo Sims (Rural andUrban Youth); Dan Perkel (MySpace Profile Production); Heather Horst(Silicon Valley Families); Katynka Martínez (Pico Union Families); MeganFinn, David Schlossberg, Judd Antin, and Paul Poling (Freshquest); anddanah boyd (Teen Sociality in Networked Publics). Unless otherwise stated,the quotes come from danah boyd’s study.This chapter and chapter 3, “Intimacy,” focus specifically on the dominantand normative practices of high-school teenagers. For most teens,friendship-driven practices, such as those described in this chapter, play amore central role in structuring new media participation than interestdrivenpractices. The seemingly popular social media highlighted in thischapter, including MySpace and Facebook, are common tools for friendship-drivenpractices. While teens invested in both friendship-driven andinterest-driven activities may use these services, these sites are emblematicof the genre of friendship-driven participation and support the kind ofsocial relations that center on popularity, romantic relationships, andstatus. Although sites such as LiveJournal or web forums share much ofthe functionality of MySpace or Facebook, they inhabit a genre in closeralignment to interest-driven practices. While the dominant practice ofteens in MySpace and Facebook conform to a hanging out, friendshipdrivengenre, kids sometimes also use these practices as jumping-off pointsto messing around and more “geeked out” interests. Chapter 6 examinesthe kind of technical and media expertise that youth develop as part oftheir participation on social network sites.This chapter focuses on the role that technology plays in establishing,reinforcing, complicating, and damaging friendship-driven social bonds.Emphasizing the role of mediating technologies, this chapter contextualizespractices involving social media within a broader discussion ofyouth’s everyday friendship practices. After outlining a historical andconceptual framework for understanding teen peer-based friendship, thechapter examines how social media intersect with four types of everydaypeer negotiations: making friends, performing friendships, articulatingfriendship hierarchies, and navigating issues of status, attention, anddrama. In all these cases, we consider how the unique affordances of

82 danah boydcontemporary networked publics are inflecting existing peer learning,sharing, and sociability in new ways.Peers and FriendshipTeen friendship practices in contemporary networked publics need to beunderstood in relation to the broader contexts of teen sociability as it playsout in U.S. high schools. The current debates over teen participation onMySpace and Facebook are part of a longer history of intergenerationalstruggle over parental authority, youth culture, and the peer relations fosteredin high schools. Sociologists of youth culture identify the 1950s as apivotal period that saw the emergence of many of the dynamics that definecontemporary youth peer culture and adult attitudes toward youth. Thisperiod saw a broadening of the base of teens who attend high school, agrowth in youth popular and commercial cultures, and the emergence ofan age-segregated peer culture that dominated youth’s everyday negotiationsover status and identity (Chudacoff 1989; Frank 1997; Gilbert 1986;Hine 1999). This period also saw the growth of a new set of intergenerationaltensions, evident in the emerging discourse of juvenile delinquencyand tied to the recognition that “the American family itself now exercisedless influence on the cultural formation of youngsters” (Gilbert 1986, 17).Even as youth were developing a sense of autonomous generational identitywith the aid of popular media cultures, their period of financial dependencyand segregation from adult roles was expanding as more and moreyouth attended high school and higher education institutions. StanleyCohen (1972, 151) writes, “The young are consigned to a self-containedworld with their own preoccupations, their entrance into adult status isfrustrated, and they are rewarded for dependency.”For contemporary youth, the age-segregated institutions of school, afterschoolactivities, and youth-oriented commercial culture continue to bestrong structuring influences. Despite the perception that online media areenabling teens to reach out to a new set of social relations online, we havefound that for the vast majority of teens, the relations fostered in schoolare by far the most dominant in how they define their peers and friendships.In the later chapters of this book, we consider how new medianetworks enable youth to reach out beyond their given social relations andto engage with intergenerational interest groups and forms of creative

Friendship 83production and economic activity that give youth a role in adult socialworlds. This chapter, however, focuses on the more mainstream practicesof teens that are situated within the more conservative structures of youthsociability, as largely segregated from but dependent on adult social worlds.Within these contexts of normative youth sociability, adults (whetherin the role of parent, teacher, or media-technology maker) are generallyrelegated to the role of provisioning or monitoring youth media ecologiesrather than as coparticipants.The peer relations of children and teens are structured by a developmentallogic supported by educational institutions organized by rigid ageboundaries. We share a cultural consensus that the ability to socialize withpeers and make friendships is a key component of growing up as a competentsocial being, and that young people need to be immersed in peercultures from an early age (Newcomb and Bagwell 1996; Berndt 1996).Children are brought into preschools, kindergartens, and elementaryschools not only to learn what is traditionally taught and measured in theclassroom but also to learn how to develop friendships with peers (Corsaro1985; Howes 1996). The “personal communities” that youth develop helpthem negotiate identity and intimacy (Pahl 2000). During the period ofadolescence, kids’ social worlds become dominated by same-age peers,adult oversight recedes, and the status and popularity battles that we typicallyassociate with middle school and high school take hold. This is thesame period when kids transition from a largely homosocial context thatdominates elementary school to one that is increasingly defined by performancesof heterosexuality (Eckert 1996; Pascoe 2007a; Thorne 1993).Milner suggests that teens’ obsession with status exists because “theyhave so little real economic or political power” (2004, 4). He argues thathanging out, dating, and mobilizing tokens of popular culture all play acentral role in the development and maintenance of peer status. Workingout markers of cool in the context of friendship and peer worlds is one ofthe key ways that youth do gender, race, class, and sexuality work (Bettie2003; Pascoe 2007a; Perry 2002; Thorne 1993) and engage with teen-specificidentity categories such as “jocks and burnouts” (Eckert 1989), “nerdsand normals” (Kinney 1993), or “freaks, geeks and cool kids” (Milner2004). Teens have flocked to social media because they represent anarena to play out these means of status negotiations even when they areaway from the school yard. Mediated teen social worlds began with the

84 danah boydtelephone and continue to today’s variegated palette of communicationstechnologies and popular media. Teens use all that is available to craft anddisplay their social identities and interact with their peers. Just as we seein the locker rooms and cafeterias in high schools, online spaces introduceopportunities for kids to display fashion and taste, to gossip, form friendships,flirt, and even harass other peers. While not all teens experiencebullying, most struggle with fitting in, standing out, and trying to keep upwith what is cool. These dynamics are often described in negative terms,as “peer pressure,” but we can also consider them a powerful peer-basedlearning environment where youth are constructing and picking up socialnorms, tastes, knowledge, and culture from those around them.For most teens, social media do not constitute an alternative or “virtual”world (Abbott 1998). They are simply another method to connect withtheir friends and peers in a way that feels seamless with their everydaylives (Osgerby 2004). Popular social media 3 such as instant messaging,mobile phones, and social network sites are used interchangeably byteens for a variety of friendship-driven practices. At an intimate level, teensuse social media to maintain “full-time intimate communities” with theirclosest friends, just as Misa Matsuda (2005) witnessed in Japan with youthusage of mobile phones. Yet, because of the affordances of media such associal network sites, many teens move beyond small-scale intimate friendgroups to build “always-on” networked publics inhabited by their peers.Teens will usually have a small circle of intimate friends with whom theycommunicate in an always-on mode via mobile phones and IM, and alarger peer group that they are connected to via social network sites. Socialmedia support a wide range of interactions, including those betweenclose friends and those that take place among a broader cohort of peers.Social relations—not simply physical space—structure the social worldsof youth.The relations and social dynamics that play out in school extend intothe spaces created through social media. What takes place online is reproducedand discussed offline (Leander and McKim 2003). When teens areinvolved in friendship-driven practices, online and offline are not separateworlds—they are simply different settings in which to gather with friendsand peers. Conversations may begin in one environment, but they moveseamlessly across media so long as the people remain the same. Socialmedia mirror, magnify, and extend everyday social worlds. By and large,

Friendship 85teens use social media to do what they have been doing—socialize withfriends, negotiate peer groups, flirt, share stories, and simply hang out.At the same time, networked publics provide opportunities for alwaysonaccess to peer communication, new kinds of authoring of public identities,public display of connectedness, and access to information aboutothers. In the sections to follow, we describe how these dynamics reinforceexisting friendship patterns as well as constitute new kinds of socialarrangements.Box 2.1 Sharing Snapshots of Teen Friendship and LoveKatynka Z. MartínezIt is not uncommon for Stephanie to call Sandra so that they can plantheir outfits or hairstyles in anticipation of the next day of school. The twosixteen-year-olds are best friends. They live in a low-income urban area of LosAngeles and attend a public school thirty miles away from home. Stephanie,who identifies as Colombian and Irish, shares a bedroom with her mother.Her twenty-six-year-old brother sleeps in the converted den of their condominiumapartment. I met Stephanie at the youth group of a local communitycenter. The center is less than a block away from her home. Stephanie volunteeredto take part in a general interview regarding how youth use digitalmedia. She also signed up for a more detailed diary study in which sherecorded her use of digital media during the course of two days. Stephaniewould receive gift certificates for participating in these interviews. She hadthe choice of receiving a certificate from iTunes, Amazon.com, or any otheronline vendor. She opted for a gift certificate from Best Buy, the homeelectronicsstore where she would buy her first digital camera.Photographs are important artifacts used by youth to capture their participationin teen rituals such as a prom or a quinceañera and also to documentless formal social escapades with friends. Sandra takes her digital camera toschool every day. On the days that she and Stephanie plan their outfits orhairstyles, they make it a point to take photos of themselves that they thenpost on MySpace. These photos, which they post on their individual profiles,receive many comments from friends. Typical comments include “You lookso pretty!” and “This was so much fun!”Before Stephanie had a digital camera, she would rely on Sandra to takepictures. Stephanie explained, “I have the iPod and she has a digital camera.We just work together.” Working together meant that the two girls sharedpasswords to their Photobucket accounts. Photobucket is an image-hostingand photo-sharing website. Individuals create an online album where they

86 danah boydupload photos, videos, and any images they may have found online. Usershave the option of setting their album to private (accessible only through apassword) or public (accessible to anyone online). Stephanie’s and Sandra’sPhotobucket accounts are set to private, but the girls, as mentioned, haveshared their passwords with each other. While Sandra uploads photos thatthe girls took together, Stephanie searches through public Photobucketalbums and uploads images that she may want to share with friends viaMySpace. Stephanie accesses Sandra’s album, finds pictures of herself, anduploads these onto her own MySpace page. She rarely posts pictures of herselfon Friends’ pages. However, the images that she finds via public Photobucketalbums are eventually posted as comments on her Friends’ MySpace pages.While showing off her Photobucket account, Stephanie proudly proclaimedthat she had more than four hundred images in her album. As she describedher typical session on Photobucket, it became clear that a shared understandingof friendship and romance was being constructed by her and otherPhotobucket users:I save a picture, save a picture, save a picture. How do I decide? Well, the first thing like,you know, girls think about . . . I typed in “love.” And then things from The Notebookcame up. Different things. Then so I liked that so I was like, “Oh, I’ll type in ‘The Notebook.’“And then I typed in “A Walk to Remember” because, you know, it’s another lovemovie.Stephanie begins describing her Photobucket activities with the assumptionthat the first thing girls her age think about is love. After conducting a Photobucketsearch for the word “love” she finds that many users have taggedthe film The Notebook with this word. It is not surprising that the film wouldbe associated this way. The Notebook won the 2005 MTV Movie Award for BestKiss, an award that is voted on by MTV viewers. Like those viewers, Stephaniewas a fan of the film. However, she also typed in the name of “another lovemovie,” A Walk to Remember, and continued typing in modified versions ofthe word “love” to find additional images. She explained, “If you change theword, it’s always different. ‘Young love’ like to see what comes up. And thenI typed in . . . and in ‘young love’ you saw ‘high-school sweethearts.’ And thenI typed in ‘high-school sweethearts.’ It all connects.”It does, indeed, “all connect.” Sometimes these connections are madeby Photobucket users who have used the word “love” to tag snapshots ofthemselves with their boyfriends or girlfriends. Other times the connectionis made by users who use the word “love” to tag stock footage of actorsor models displaying trite acts of affection (such as kissing on the beachamid shallow waves). Also common on Photobucket are banners or boxes oftext with greetings, sayings, and words of encouragement. For example, a“love” banner states the following in glittered letters: “It only takes a second

Friendship 872 say I luv u, but a lifetime 2 show it!” Stephanie has many similar bannersstored in her Photobucket album and plans to eventually post them onFriends’ MySpace pages. She hopes that the “Get Out of Jail Free card” willadd humor to the MySpace page of a friend who knows someone who isincarcerated. Stephanie is also storing images for future developments in herfriends’ lives. She displayed a banner with an inspirational quote andexplained, “Like if a guy broke up with my good friend or something, thenI’ll send her this.”Most of the images in Stephanie’s Photobucket album allude to theim portance of friendship. For example, one proclaims: “Inside jokes, midnightcalls, crazy at night, equals best friends.” While going through heralbum, Stephanie explained, “And then I’ll type in ‘best friends’ and then‘friends’ and then ‘boyfriend’ and then ‘girlfriend.’ You can go on forever.”Sitting and watching Stephanie search for additional images and navigatethrough the four hundred saved in her photo album, it was easy to see thatshe very well could “go on forever.” The search engine served as a type ofthesaurus for Photobucket users. Having witnessed how engrossed she was inthese searches, one might wonder if this online quest would also manifestitself in her approach to schoolwork that incorporates online research.Katynka: And then so do you ever do searches like this, for homework?Stephanie: For homework?Katynka: Yeah. Like for a research paper or anything like that?Stephanie: No.Katynka: No? Do you use the Internet much for homework or not really?Stephanie: Kind of. But they make it so hard. Like for English, you can’t useWikipedia. I understand that because whoever could, like, write in whatever.But then they say we can’t use websites that have “.com” on the end. Only“.edu.” I think they said. Or “.org.” So it’s hard.Katynka: Uh-huh. So do they explain the difference to you between “.edu”and . . .Stephanie: Yeah. For that I will just use, like, the Internet at school becausethey have this special library thing. I forgot what it’s called. I’ll show you.“So long and good night,” I wrote, I posted on the bulletin. I put: “I’m goingto bed now.” Because that’s when I turn off the computer. “I want what Iwant.” “I want to love somebody like you.” “I want to be your favorite helloand your hardest goodbye.” “Texting is love.” “Cell phone love.” “My cellphone is love.” “Best friends.”Stephanie never did go to the “special library thing” that she briefly mentioned.Instead, she continued clicking through her album and eventuallyshared her Photobucket password with me. This openness and collaborative

88 danah boydspirit is at odds with her school’s approach to online sources of information.The fact that her school has restrictions against referencing Wikipedia frustratesStephanie but she ultimately understands that the school would takethis stance because “whoever could, like, write in whatever.” Yet it is preciselythis collaborative feature that makes Photobucket so appealing—you are ableto see the images that other users have associated with terms such as “love”and “best friends.” Many times these images simply reproduce conventionalgender roles and a culture of consumption. However, youth are able to pickand choose from among the images and, perhaps most important, contributetheir own works—some of which will challenge the representations of teenfriendship and love that have been created by outside forces without anyunderstanding of how youth actually negotiate relationships. Youth today aretaking portraits at social events, snapping pictures in the halls of their schools,and borrowing from the photo albums of people they’ve never met. The factthat they draw from all these sources suggests that youth’s friendship maintenanceis in tune with a discourse of love and friendship that is being widelydisplayed and (re)circulated.Making FriendsTeens may select their friends, but their “choice” is configured by thesocial, cultural, and economic conditions around them (Allan 1998).Studies have shown that most friendships American youth develop arebetween youth of approximately the same age, in part because of agestratifiedschool systems and other cultural forces that segregate youth byage (Chudacoff 1989; Montemayor and Van Komen 1980). Likewise, thesefriendship groups tend to be relatively homogenous (Cohen 1977; Cotterell1996), resulting in what sociologists call “homophily” (McPherson, Smith-Lovin, and Cook 2001). Homophily describes the likelihood that peopleconnect to others who share their interests and identity. Most of the teenswe interviewed tended toward building friendships with others of similarage who shared their interests and values. While teens’ friendships werenot completely segregated by race, ethnicity, religion, and gender, none ofthese factors was absent either.Social media theoretically allow teens to move beyond geographicrestrictions and connect with new people. Presumably, this means thatparticipants could develop relations with people who are quite different

Friendship 89from them. Research that tests this premise is sparse. One survey of Israeliteens suggests that those who develop friendships online tend toward lesshomogenous connections than teens who do not build such connections(Mesch and Talmud 2007). While this suggests tremendous possibilities,developing friendships online is not a normative practice, at least not forU.S. teens. Surveys of U.S. teens indicate that most teens use social mediato socialize with people they already know or are already loosely connectedwith (Lenhart and Madden 2007; Subrahmanyam and Greenfield 2008).Even though MySpace is commonly viewed as a site for networking withnew people, teens consistently underscored that this is not what they do.For example, Sabrina, a white fourteen-year-old from suburban Texas,explained that while she uses MySpace, she never uses it to meet newpeople. “I just find my friends and hang out.” Teens emphasized that IMand social network sites were primarily valuable as media for socializingwith those they knew from school, worship centers, summer camps, andother activities.This is not to say that teens do not leverage social media to developfriendships. Teens frequently use social media as additional channels ofcommunication to get to know classmates and turn acquaintances intofriendships. Melanie, a white fifteen-year-old from Kansas, explained,“Facebook makes it easier to talk to people at school that you may not seea lot or know very well.” She found Facebook to be helpful in getting toknow some of her classmates. Social network site profiles can also becomevaluable tools for learning more about acquaintances. Carlos, a Latinoseventeen-year-old, told Dan Perkel (MySpace Profile Production) howMySpace allowed him to learn that a boy who lived up the street was reallyinto skydiving. This prompted a conversation between Carlos and theneighborhood boy, who then invited Carlos to go skydiving, but Carloswas not old enough. While both Melanie and Carlos used social networksites to make friends, these other teens were already members of their socialcircles; they simply did not know them very well. Teens often use socialmedia to make or develop friendships, but they do so almost exclusivelywith acquaintances or friends of friends (see figure 2.1).While the dominant and normative social media usage pattern is toconnect with friends, family, and acquaintances, there are some teens whouse social media to develop connections with strangers. Some teens—especially marginalized and ostracized ones—often relish the opportunity

90 danah boydFigure 2.1Teens socializing online and off-line. “MySpacing” photo courtesy of Luke Brassard,2006, http://www.flickr.com/photos/brassard/138829152.to find connections beyond their schools. Teens who are driven by specificinterests that may not be supported by their schools, such as those describedin chapters 5 and 6, “Gaming” and “Creative Production,” often buildrelationships with others online through shared practice. Likewise, manylesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) teens who feel isolated atschool often find social media valuable in making social connections withother LGBT youth (Gray 2009). In addition to these interest- and identitydrivenmotivations for building connections, some teens connect withstrangers precisely because they are strangers. One of the boys Christo Simsspoke with in his “Rural and Urban Youth” study valued the opportunityto talk anonymously with other youth without facing social consequences(see box 3.2). Social media allowed him to discuss intimate matters—suchas going through puberty—that would be difficult to bring up in the localcontext for fear of embarrassing himself and damaging his local—andpersistent—reputation. He was not interested in meeting his Internetfriends or connecting them to his everyday peer group, but he valued thesocial support he gained through these connections.

Friendship 91While there are plenty of teens who relish the opportunity to make newconnections through social media, this practice is heavily stigmatized.Jessica, a college freshman who participated in the “Freshquest” study, toldMegan Finn that she had been very shy in middle school so she startedmeeting people through IM. While she made a close friend that way, shebelieves that such connections are rare—“I don’t know anyone that hasany Internet friends.” She also highlights that her classmates think she’s“weird” and label her a “freak” for meeting people online.The stigma that Jessica faces is not simply kid-driven. While there is astigma for not being able to make friends at school, developing friendsonline is further vilified by cultural fears that meeting people online isdangerous. The same “stranger danger” rhetoric and “terror talk” that limityouth from interacting with strangers in unmediated public spaces (Levine2002; Valentine 2004) also have taken hold for online spaces. There areschool assemblies dedicated to online dangers, primarily the possibility ofsexual predators. Mainstream media, law enforcement, teachers, andparents reinforce the message that interacting with strangers online is risky.While the percentage of teens who have experienced unwanted sexualsolicitations has declined through the years (Wolak, Mitchell, and Finkelhor2006), the fear that youth—and especially girls—are at risk has increased(Cassell and Cramer 2007; Marwick 2008). At a deeper level, the publicmyths about online “predators” do not reflect the actual realities of sexualsolicitation and risky online behavior (Wolak et al. 2008). Not only dounfounded fears limit teenagers unnecessarily but they also obscure preventableproblematic behavior (Valentine 2004). During the tenure of ourproject, we watched as this stigma was amplified by a moral panic thatformed around MySpace.While social media have the potential to radically alter friendshipmakingprocesses, most teens use these tools to maintain preexistingconnections, turn acquaintances into friendships, and develop connectionsthrough people they already know. Social media offer a platform forteens to take friendships to a new level. Those teens who seek new friendsthrough networked media are a minority, often because developing onlineconnections is stigmatized and set against a backdrop of adult fearsof stranger danger and mainstream youth norms that center on schoolcenteredsociability. Even against this backdrop, some teens value theopportunity to gain social support that they cannot find locally.

92 danah boydBox 2.2 From MySpace to Facebook: Coming of Age in NetworkedPublic CultureHeather A. HorstOne of the fundamental shifts in American youth culture revolves aroundkids’ engagement in what has been termed “networked public culture,” or“those cultural artifacts associated with ‘personal’ culture (such as homemovies, snapshots, diaries, and scrapbooks) that have now entered the arenaof ‘public’ culture (such as news papers, cinema, and television)” (Russellet al. 2008). For young adults such as eighteen-year-old Ann, a white teenagerliving on the outskirts of Silicon Valley, the entrée into networked publicculture came through MySpace. Throughout her junior and senior years ofhigh school, Ann was an active MySpace user who uploaded pictures andcommented on friends’ comments on a daily basis. Ann also participated inwhat she and her friends called “MySpace parties,” or sleepovers that involveddressing up and taking photographs to post on their respective MySpace pages.Ann and her friends enjoyed trying on different clothing, such as short skirts,bra tops, fishnet stockings, or other sexy clothes. They also began to makevideos of “funny stuff,” such as her friends dancing or imitating celebrities.After accepting an offer to attend a small liberal-arts college in WashingtonState, Ann received an invitation from her future dorm’s resident assistant(RA) to participate in Facebook, a social network site that (at the time) cateredto the college community. Ann’s RA sent her an invitation to be a memberof the “Crystal Mountain” wing, part of a wider network of ninety dorm residentsattending her new college. Ann admitted that in the course of twoweeks she was spending hours at a time perusing different people’s sites,looking for familiar names and faces and checking out friends of friends.As the summer progressed, Ann increasingly felt that she was becoming“addicted” to Facebook, checking it anytime she had a free moment for statusupdates (e.g., a change to someone’s profile), which was an average of fourto five times per day, a typical session lasting about ten minutes. Throughthis brief, repetitive engagement, Ann started to meet the other studentsslated to live in her dorm, the most important and exciting of these newconnections being her future roommate, Sarah. Describing her fascinationwith her Facebook page, Ann explained:And you can see everyone else’s dorm room and I have groups. Like everyone in mydorm room is in this group. And you can see all the others . . . and so I can see who myRA is going to be and stuff and so it’s really cool. And then I have . . . I can show youmy roommate. It’s really exciting. So I can see her. And so it . . . I don’t know, I can justsee a picture of her instead of having to wait and stuff.During the course of the summer, Ann and her future roommate, Sarah,“poked” each other and sent each other short messages and comments.

Friendship 93Some of these messages were pragmatic, such as when they planned to moveinto their dorm room, what “stuff” they had, or which classes they plannedto take. Alongside using Facebook to facilitate communication, Ann delvedinto the details of Sarah’s Facebook page for insight into what she imaginedwould be shared interests, the most obvious being her taste in music andmedia.But actually her and I like a lot of the same music, I could tell from her Facebook. Andso we were talking about concerts that we’ve been to this summer and stuff. So I’msure . . . ’cause she’s bringing a TV ’cause she lives in a really, really rich area of Washington.And so I think she’s bringing a really nice TV, so I’m like I should probably bringsomething kind of nice. So I think I’ll bring this [iPod speakers] and then we can bothhook our iPods up whenever we want. . . . I’m supposed to bring a microwave but I don’tthink I’ll bring a microwave.More than reflecting shared interests or competitive consumption, Ann’sdecision about what to bring to college was aligned with a desire to constructan aesthetic balance. Buying new, trendy iPod speakers complements the“really nice TV” Sarah will be contributing to their room. Ann also hopedthat the speakers might create an acoustic space wherein Ann and Sarah couldhang out and listen to music together. Ann and Sarah decided to upload afew pictures of their bedrooms at home onto their Facebook pages to get asense of each other’s style and tastes. Ann was excited when she looked atthe photographs and saw Sarah’s signature colors. “I’m brown and pink stuffand she’s brown and blue stuff!” Ann surmised that this aesthetic harmonywould also signify a harmonious relationship (cf. Clarke 2001; Young 2005).For Ann, and individuals like her, MySpace and Facebook have played animportant role in structuring and sustaining her social worlds, including herability to imagine her future college life in the dorm and to establish relationshipswith new individuals and communities. They also have provided Annwith opportunities to understand and assert her own sense of who she is andwho she will become in the mediated transition from high school to college.Much like homecoming, prom, and graduation, Facebook, MySpace, andother spaces of networked public culture have now become part and parcelof the coming-of-age process for teenagers in the United States.Performing FriendshipsSmall children often seek confirmation of friendships through questionssuch as “We’re friends, right?” (Corsaro 1997, 164). Yet, in everydaylife, most youth friendships are never formalized or verified exceptthrough implicit social rituals. One of the ways in which social media alter

94 danah boydfriendship practices is through the forced—and often public—articulationof social connections. From instant-messaging “buddy lists” to the publiclisting of “Friends” on social network sites, teens are regularly forced tolist their connections as part of social media participation. The dynamicssurrounding this can directly affect friendship practices.The articulation of connections in social media serves three purposes.First, these lists operate as an address book, allowing participants tokeep a record of all the people they know. Second, they allow participantsto leverage privacy settings to control who can access their content,who can contact them, and who can see if they are online or not. Finally,the public display of connections that takes place in social networksites can represent an individual’s social identity and status (Donath andboyd 2004).The practice of creating an “address book” is common across manygenres of social media. With email address books and mobile phone contactslists, the collection of relations is simply meant as a reference tool tohelp the participant remember another person’s email address or phonenumber. Because these are never made visible nor are people required toapprove of address book inclusion, address books are little more than areference tool.With IM, buddy lists are both references and the initial site of interaction.Buddy lists display a person’s contacts as well as a variety of presenceinformation about online and idle status as well as “away messages” thatconvey additional personal and contextual information (Baron 2008;Grinter, Palen, and Eldridge 2006). Social network sites take this onestep further by displaying the list of connections on a person’s profile ina way that is visible to anyone who can view that profile. On social networksites, “Friends” end up serving as a part of a person’s self-representationon the site as well as the foundation of access control to certain features(e.g., commenting) and content (e.g., blog posts). Teens use Friends toenact their identity (Livingstone 2008) and imagine the social context(boyd 2006).“Friends” in the context of social media are not necessarily the same as“friends” in the everyday sense (boyd 2006). 4 Social network sites use theterm “Friends” to label all articulated relationships, regardless of intensityor connection type (e.g., family or colleagues). Different challenges areinvolved in choosing whom to select as Friends. Because Friends are

Friendship 95displayed on social network sites, there are social tensions concerningwhom to include and whom to exclude. Furthermore, as many IM clientsand most social network sites require confirmation for people to list oneanother, 5 choosing to include someone prompts a “Friend request” thatrequires the recipient to accept or reject the connection. This introducesanother layer of social processing. While teens are developing a set ofshared social practices for Friending, the norms for these practices are stillin a state of flux and interpretive flexibility, as is characteristic of the earlyyears of adoption of a new technology. Further, the technology capabilitiesalso are evolving in tandem with the development of user practices ornorms. Teens’ ongoing debate and negotiation over what is socially appropriate,combined with Internet companies’ efforts to monitor and regulatethese practices, is gradually stabilizing a set of practices for how youthpublicly articulate their social relations on social network sites.Teens have different strategies for choosing whom to mark as Friends.By and large, the teens we interviewed include as Friends those theyknow—friends, family, peers, and so on. Yet, even within the confines ofthis general rubric, there is immense variation. Teens may choose to acceptrequests from peers they know but do not feel close to, if only to avoidoffending them. They may also choose to exclude people they know wellbut do not wish to have present on Facebook or MySpace. This categorymay include parents, siblings, and teachers.Both MySpace and Facebook offer many incentives for adding peopleother than close friends. Many of the privacy features that were introducedduring the course of our study limit non-Friends from profile viewing,leaving comments, and, in some cases, sending messages. Teens who wishto talk with peers or friends of friends are encouraged to accept requestsfrom peers so as to open the channel of communication. Likewise, teenswho use MySpace to distribute their music think it is important to acceptrequests from any potential fans.Teens must determine their own boundaries concerning whom to acceptand whom to reject. For many, this is not easy. In determining boundaries,there are common categories of potential Friends that most teens addressin their decision-making process. The first concerns strangers. While manyearly adopters of MySpace gregariously welcomed anyone and everyone asFriends, the social norms quickly changed. For most teens, rejectingsuch requests is now the most common practice. Although teens who

96 danah boydaccept Friend requests from strangers rarely interact with these peopleonline, let alone offline, the same concerns that keep teens from interactingwith strangers online also keep them from including strangers intheir lists of Friends. Yet fear is not the only reason teens choose to denystrangers.Trevor, a seventeen-year-old working-class white boy from a suburb innorthern California, says he added only people he knew in the physicalworld to his Friends list on MySpace because “I don’t want anyone on herethat I don’t know” (C. J. Pascoe, Living Digital). By denying strangers,Trevor reinforces MySpace’s claim that it is “a place for friends.” He thinksthat people who accept requests from those they do not know are trying“to seem more popular to themselves.” Trevor is not alone in his criticismof those who are open with their Friends lists. Mark, a white fifteenyear-oldfrom Seattle, complains that “there’s all these people that judge[MySpace] as a popularity contest and just go around adding anyone thatthey barely even know just so they can have like, you know, 500,000friends just because it’s cool. I think that’s stupid, personally.” Those whocollect large numbers of Friends on MySpace are derogatively called“MySpace whores.” While this term is both gendered and sexualized innature and those loaded references are sometimes intended, it is appliedto both boys and girls and refers to attention seekers of all types, not justthose seeking sexual attention.The vast majority of those who collect large numbers of Friends areadults—musicians, politicians, corporations, and both real and wannabecelebrities. Teen musicians and activists sometimes collect Friends for thesame purposes as public-facing adults—to connect with fans and developa following. Teens also do so as a form of entertainment or competitionamong friends. These teens are not interested in developing friendshipswith those they include as Friends; they simply collect them because it issomething to do. One boy said that it is fun to see which attractive womenwould say yes to his Friend requests. Collecting attractive women is socommon that spammers started making fake profiles of attractive womento lure men.Mass Friend collecting is just one of the practices of connecting withstrangers. Teens commonly send Friend requests to bands and celebrities.Teens do not believe that such connections indicate an actual or potentialfriendship, but they still find value in these Friends. Bands and celebrities

Friendship 97frequently send messages—and sometimes VIP opportunities—to the fanswho are their Friends. Teens enjoy receiving these, value the occasionalcomment, and sometimes enjoy connecting with other fans by leavingcomments themselves. Such connections serve as a public display of tasteand identity (Donath and boyd 2004).Teens also use the Friending feature to build communities based onspecific affiliations. For example, Christo Sims (Rural and Urban Youth)interviewed a sixteen-year-old Haitian American girl from Brooklyn,New York, named Ono who accepts all Friend requests from people whoare Haitian “because I’m from Haiti, and I want to keep all the Haitianstogether.” By making these connections, Ono is able to inhabit a communityon MySpace that is dominated by Haitians from all over theworld. She may not build personal relationships with these people, butconnecting to them allows her to participate in a networked public ofpeople like her.While most teens who connect with strangers have no expectation ofbuilding a relationship out of this performed connection, there are teenswho happily add people to whom they are attracted in the hopes that oneof these connections might develop into something more. This practice isoften controversial, both in adult and youth worlds. Adults are concernedthat this opens the door for pedophiles pretending to be teens, eventhough the data show that deception is virtually nonexistent on the rareoccasions in which sexual solicitation occurs through these sites (Wolak etal. 2008). Also, many teens—especially girls—think talking to any strangeris risky, as it exposes them to unknown adults as well as to fellow teenswho may take an unwanted interest in them.There is little social cost to rejecting Friend requests from strangers—because these people are unknown, teens do not worry about offendingthem. Rejecting known individuals, on the other hand, is much morecomplicated. By and large, the social convention is to accept Friend requestsfrom all known peers, including all friends, acquaintances, and classmates,regardless of the quality of the relationship. Jennifer, a white seventeenyear-oldfrom a small town in Kansas, always accepts requests from peopleshe knows because “I’d feel mean if I didn’t.” She sees such requests as asign of niceness and an opening of potential friendship. Additionally, shethinks it is important to be nice because she would be mad if someonerejected her attempt to be nice.

98 danah boydAs Jennifer indicates, some teens use the Friend request feature to developacquaintances into friends. When Bob, a nineteen-year-old white malefrom rural California, meets someone new, he turns to Facebook to learnmore about the person because “it gives you a deeper level of comfort withthe person after you meet them” (Sims, Rural and Urban Youth). Usingsocial network site profiles to research someone’s tastes, style, affiliation,and social connections provides valuable conversation fodder in additionto offering signs of potential friendship compatibility. Furthermore, theonline communication channels provide a low-cost and casual option forinitiating conversations. As Bob explains, becoming Friends on Facebooksets up your relationship for the next time you meet them to have them be a biggerpart of your life. . . . Suddenly they go from somebody you’ve met once to somebodyyou met once but also connected with in some weird Facebook way. And nowthat you’ve connected, you have to acknowledge each other more in personsometimes.The ritual of Friending can permit or prompt direct interaction when theteens involved see one another in school or at a group function; it lays thegroundwork for building a friendship and gives reason to single the otherout from the group and initiate communications. From Bob’s point ofview, Facebook allows teens to take a new relationship “to the next levelimmediately.”Bob feels comfortable sending Friend requests to people he does notknow well in the hopes of future connections. Yet not all Friend requestsfrom acquaintances are attempts to deepen the relationship. Often teenssend requests to everyone they know or recognize and no additionalcontact is initiated after the Friend request is approved. This only adds tothe awkwardness of the Friend request. As Lilly, a white sixteen-year-oldfrom a Kansas City suburb, explains, getting Friend requests from classmatesdoes not even mean that they know who you are at school, makingit difficult to bridge the gap between online and offline.It’s just on Facebook, you’re friends. At school, you don’t have to talk if you don’twant to. . . . It’s kind of nice, but then at the same time it’s not because you knowthey’re your Friends. . . . You don’t say hi in the hall ‘cause maybe they just addedme because somebody else had me added and they’d be like, “I don’t know whoyou are. Hi.”Lilly accepts requests from all classmates, even those from classmates shebarely knows, but her friend Melanie prefers to mock the dynamic that

Friendship 99this sets up. Melanie, a white fifteen-year-old, will approach classmateswho send her Friend requests with comments such as “Hey Friend fromFacebook,” simply because she thinks it is funny. Melanie’s approach toFacebook is quite unusual. Not only is she willing to call out the absurdityof being Friends online but not talking at school, but she also is willing tobuck the norms by rejecting people she does not like and deleting peoplewho annoy her. Melanie notes that Facebook “is better than real life”because while there is no simple mechanism to formally indicate disinterestin school, it is possible to say “no” on Facebook by rejecting Friendrequests. Unlike Melanie, who is comfortable deleting Friends who annoyher on Facebook, most teens find deleting people discomforting and inappropriate.Penelope, a white fifteen-year-old from Nebraska, says that deletinga Friend is “rude . . . unless they’re weird.” Yet, while she will do itoccasionally, the process of deleting someone is “scary” to Penelope; shefears that she will offend someone.Generally, it is socially unacceptable to delete a Friend one knows. Whenthis is done, it is primarily after a fight or breakup. In these situations, theact of deletion is spiteful and intentionally designed to hurt the otherperson. Teen awareness of malicious deletions adds to the general sensethat deleting someone is socially inappropriate. Thus, it can be problematicwhen teens accidentally delete people they know. Ana-Garcia, a fifteenyear-oldhalf-Indian, half-Guatemalan girl from Los Angeles, faced thisproblem when her brother decided to log in to her account and delete twopages’ worth of Friends. Luckily, those she did know understood as soonas she explained what happened. Gabbie, a seventeen-year-old Chinese girlfrom a suburb in northern California whom C. J. Pascoe (Living Digital)interviewed, found herself on the opposite side. Her feelings were initiallyhurt when her friend deleted her, but she confronted him and learned thathe did it by mistake. “I just asked him, I was like, ‘Why did you deleteme?’ And he was like, ‘I didn’t know!’ So he added me on. But he’s one ofmy closest friends.”While deleting known people can be seen as malicious, it is sociallyacceptable to choose to move from an open profile to a closed one anddelete strangers. In fact, this is often encouraged. Lolo, a Latina fifteenyear-oldfrom Los Angeles, says: “At the beginning, I was just adding peoplejust to get friends and just random boys living in New York or Texas. Thenmy boyfriend kinda like, ‘You don’t know them. You don’t know them,’

100 danah boydso I deleted them and then I had three hundred and I really knew them.”Deleting strangers, like rejecting their initial Friend requests, is viewed ashaving no social repercussions.The Friends feature forces teens to navigate their social lives in new ways.Although youth are in a process of actively negotiating the underlyingsocial practices and norms for displaying friendship online, we haveobserved an emerging consensus about socially appropriate behavior thatlargely mirrors what is socially appropriate in offline contexts. The processof adding and deleting Friends is a core element of participation on socialnetwork sites. It allows teens to negotiate who can gain access to theircontent, but it also means that teens have to manage the social implicationsof their decisions. Because the peer groups that teens connect withon social network sites are the same as those they socialize with in everydaylife, decisions about whom to accept and whom to reject online directlyaffect their offline connections. By facing decisions about how to circumscribetheir Friends lists, teens are forced to consider their relationships,the dynamics of their peer group, and the ways in which their decisionsmay affect others. These processes make social status and friendship moreexplicit and public, providing a broader set of contexts for observing theseinformal forms of social-evaluation learning. It makes peer negotiationsvisible in new ways, leading to heightened stakes as well as opportunitiesto observe and learn about social norms from their peers.Friendship HierarchiesA Friend connection alone says nothing about its strength. By acceptingall acquaintances as Friends, teens can avoid offending peers who mightbelieve there to be a stronger connection. Yet an additional featureon MySpace—“Top Friends” (formerly “Top 8”)—complicates matters byforcing teens to indicate whom they are closest with among their Friends.While MySpace designed this feature to allow participants to showcasetheir actual close friends, many teens highlight that this feature is thecrux of what makes MySpace filled with social drama. These practicesof displaying friendship hierarchies online are controversial and morefraught than the simple articulation of Friend connections.Rhetoric such as “best friends forever” (“BFF”) is common among children,especially young girls (Thompson, Grace, and Cohen 2001, 62). This

Friendship 101stems from a desire by children to understand the strength of their relationshipsand embedded in this is an expectation of affirmation and reciprocity.Most friendship declarations take place verbally between friends,but girls have used symbolic accessories such as “BFF” heart charms andfriendship bracelets to formalize and display their connection. While thesepractices exist, they are far more common with elementary-school childrenand middle-school tweens than with teenagers. The idea of “best friends”does not disappear in high school, but the formal symbolism fades.In many ways, MySpace’s Top Friends forces teenagers to publicly articulatetheir best and “bestest” Friends. This feature requires participants tolist up to twenty-four Friends’ names in a grid. Designed to help participantsadd nuance to their Friends list, this feature quickly became a socialbattleground as participants struggled over who should make the list and,more important, who should be in the first position. Anindita, an Indianseventeen-year-old from Los Angeles, explains:People will be like, “Why am I number two? You’re number one on my page.” I waslike, “Well, I can’t make everyone number two. That’s impossible.” Especially withboyfriends and girlfriends, get in a fight like, “Why is she before me? I’m yourgirlfriend. I should be higher than her.” I’m just like, “Okay.” I don’t really thinkit’s a big deal, the top thing. If you’re friends, you shouldn’t lose your friendshipover that.Like many teens, Anindita finds the social dynamic around Top Friendsannoying. Yet she is not immune to its effects. Even though she thinks itshould not be important, it is a topic of regular conversation among herfriends. While Anindita may see her friends’ attitude as cattiness, TopFriends surfaces insecurities by forcing teens to face where they stand inthe eyes of those around them. As Nora, a white eighteen-year-old fromVirginia, explains on her MySpace: “It’s like have you noticed that youmay have someone in your Top 8 but you’re not in theirs and you kindathink to yourself that you’re not as important to that person as they areto you . . . and oh, to be in the coveted number one spot!” Many teens seethe Top Friends feature as a litmus test of their relations and this promptsanxieties in teens about where they stand.Reciprocity plays a central role in the negotiation of Top Friends.Many teens expect that if they list someone as a Top Friend, that personshould list them in return. Teens worry about not being listed andabout failing to list those who list them. Jordan, a biracial Mexican-white

102 danah boydfifteen-year-old from Austin, Texas, says: “Oh, it’s so stressful because ifyou’re in someone else’s [Top Friends] then you feel bad if they’re not inyours.” The struggles that teens face in constructing their Top Friendsresemble those involved in choosing whom to invite for a special occasion.Nadine, a white sixteen-year-old from New Jersey, described this on herMySpace:As a kid, you used your birthday party guest list as leverage on the playground. “Ifyou let me play I’ll invite you to my birthday party.” Then, as you grew up and gotyour own phone, it was all about someone being on your speed dial. Well, todayit’s the MySpace Top 8. It’s the new dangling carrot for gaining superficial acceptance.Taking someone off your Top 8 is your new passive-aggressive power playwhen someone pisses you off.While there are parallels among Top Friends, speed dial, and the birthdayparty, there are also differences. Top Friends are persistent, publicly displayed,and easily alterable. This makes it difficult for teens to avoid theissue or make excuses such as “I forgot.” When pressured to includesomeone, teens often oblige or attempt to ward off this interaction bylisting those who list them. Catalina, a white fifteen-year-old from Austin,Texas, says: “If you’re in someone else’s, you have to put them in yours.”Other teens avoid this struggle by listing only bands or family members.While teens may get jealous if other peers are listed, family members areexempt from the comparative urge. This is the strategy that Traviesa, aHispanic fifteen-year-old from the Los Angeles area, takes to avoid socialdrama with her friends:It’s very difficult to choose a Top 8 because when you do, your friends are like, “Well,why didn’t you choose me?” And this and that, and I’m like, “Well, all right fine,I’ll just choose,” like I choose my cousins now because I can’t deal with it. Likeeverybody’s always like, “Why didn’t you put me on, why am I not on your Top 8?You’re on mine.”In addition to having to decide whom to include, teens must also decidein what order those Friends are listed. Zelda, a fourteen-year-old boy fromBrooklyn who was born in Trinidad, told Christo Sims (Rural and UrbanYouth):It’s just your best friends; you just put them in the top whatever. If you had a girlfriendor a boyfriend, you put them first. And, then, you just go down like peoplethat you’re cool with and then people who are just normal friends. It just keeps ongoing down. But, it’s mostly, if the people who you’re really friends with, they stay

Friendship 103at the top. And, then, sometimes, because people will be, they get mad ‘cause they’relike, “Oh, I’m not your friend. I’m not your best friend.”The most valuable position—the “first”—is the one in the upper left cornerof the grid. This position is usually reserved for a person’s “best” friend,significant other, or a close family member. While few object to a significantother’s appearing first, some teens, especially girls, get jealous whenother same-sex peers are listed above them on the page of the person theybelieve to be their closest friend. Exceptions are made for family membersand it is common in some teen circles to list family first. While some teenslist family to avoid conflict with friends, others do so because they see afamily member as their closest friend. This is exemplified by Laura, a whiteseventeen-year-old with Native American roots from suburban WashingtonState, who said: “My sister is in position number one because she is oneof my best friends and she will be there for me most likely longer thananyone else.”Although most teens find a way to manage the Top Friends feature,others prefer to avoid it altogether. Some intentionally leave Tom Anderson,the site’s founder, in the first position while others find more creative solutions.One teen explained that she changed her Top Friends every month,creating themes such as “all Sagittarius Friends.” After getting frustratedwith the resultant social drama, Amy, a biracial black-white sixteenyear-oldfrom Seattle, found code that allowed her to not display her TopFriends on her profile, and, thus, no one could be upset with her. WhileAmy’s approach is uncommon, it highlights the power of this feature inshaping how teens interact with the site.Not all teens participate in the social dramas that result from Top Friends,but it does cause tremendous consternation for many. The Top Friendsfeature is a good example of how structural aspects of software can forcearticulations that do not map well to how offline social behavior works.Top Friends suggests a single, context-free, hierarchical ranking of friendsand a hard cut between “Top” friends and everyone else. This results insocial drama for multiple reasons. First, teens do not necessarily think oftheir friends as hierarchically ranked, but the technology forces thisranking. Second, teens might feel closer to different friends in differentcontexts and along different dimensions. Friends from a sports team mightbe different from friends in geometry class. All those situational distinctionsare erased in the Top Friends feature. As a result, friends from different

104 danah boydcontexts are forced into a single spot for comparison. Finally, people mightfeel close to some friends because they get them invited to parties and closeto other friends because they help them with their homework.Because of the ways in which Top Friends collapses the complexities ofsocial relations and hierarchies, teens have developed a variety of socialnorms to govern what is and is not appropriate. While common practicesease some tensions, the Top Friends feature still causes anxieties andsocial pressures. Most of these stabilize through time but not without afew battle scars.The process of articulating and ranking Friends is one of the ways inwhich social media take what is normally implicit and make it explicit.When teens are enmeshed in dramas about social categories, cliques, andpopularity, the forced nature of Friending can be turbulent. Like the practicesof accepting or rejecting Friend requests, the practices of rankingFriends translates certain forms of social connectedness into an onlinerepresentation. The problem with explicit ranking, however, is that itcreates or accentuates hierarchies where they did not exist offline, or weredeliberately and strategically ambiguous, thus forcing a new set of socialstatusnegotiations. The give-and-take over these forms of social ranking isan example of how social norms are being negotiated in tandem with theadoption of new technologies, and how peers give ongoing feedback to oneanother as part of these struggles to develop new cultural standards.Status, Attention, and DramaThe issue of whom one is friends with, and whom one is “best friends”with, is embedded in a broader set of struggles over status among peers atschool (Milner 2004). Because social media are used in a variety of friendship-drivenpractices, they are also home to the struggles that occur as anatural part of this process. Teens use social media to develop and maintainfriendships, but they also use them to seek attention and generate drama.Often the motivation behind the latter is to relieve insecurities aboutpopularity and friendship. While teen dramas are only one componentof friendship, they often are made extremely visible by social media.The persistent and networked qualities of social media alter the ways thatthese dramas play out in teen life. For this reason, it is important to pay

Friendship 105special attention to the role that social media play in the negotiation ofteen status.Teens seeking to spread rumors or engage in drama often use socialmedia. These acts may be lightweight parts of everyday teen life or theymay snowball in magnitude and become acts of bullying. Regardless ofthe intensity, our research shows that the acts of drama involving socialmedia are primarily a continuation of broader dramas. Stan, a whiteeighteen-year-old from Iowa, said: “You’d actually be surprised how littlethings change. I’m guessing a lot of the drama is still the same; it’s justthe format is a little different. It’s just changing the font and changingthe background color really.” While the underlying practices may be thesame, Michael, a white seventeen-year-old from Seattle, pointed out thatsocial media amplify dramas because they extend social worlds beyondthe school.MySpace is a huge drama maker, but when you stick a lot of people in one thing,then it’s . . . it always causes drama. ‘Cause, like . . . MySpace is, like, a really bigschool . . . school’s filled with drama. MySpace is filled with drama. It’s just whenyou get people together like that, that’s just how life works and stuff.Properties of social media can alter the visibility of these acts, making themmore persistent and more difficult for participants to get a complete pictureof what’s happening or interpret the acts accurately.Gossip and rumors have played a role in teen struggles for status andattention since well before social media entered the scene (Milner 2004).When teens gather with friends and peers, they share stories about otherfriends and peers. New communication channels—including mobilephones, IM, and social network sites—have all been used for the purposesof gossip. Some teens believe that the new media tend to replace the oldermedia as a tool for gossip. Trevor, a white seventeen-year-old from a northernCalifornia suburb in C. J. Pascoe’s “Living Digital” study, argued that“the Internet has taken the place of phones . . . it spreads all rumors andgossip.”While it is unclear whether or not the Internet has changed the frequencyof gossip, social media certainly alter the efficiency and potentialscale of interactions. Because of this, there is greater potential for gossipto spread much farther and at a faster pace, making social media a catalystin teen drama. While teen gossip predates the Internet, some teens blame

106 danah boydthe technologies for their roles in making gossip easier and more viral.Elena, a sixteen-year-old girl from Armenia who was adopted by a Mormonfamily in suburban northern California, explained:And the thing on a lot of MySpace is it brings a lot of drama. A lot of drama. Becauseit’s like, oh, well, “Jessica said something about you.” “Oh, really?” “Yeah, weheard it from this girl, Alicia.” So then you click on Jessica and talk about commentsthat Alicia did and then you go from Alicia to her friends. It’s this whole goingaround. And then I’m like, “I was on Alicia’s email last night and she’s sayingthis about you.” It just gets really out of control, I think. And you’re in everyone’sbusiness. . . . That’s what happened with me and my friends. We got into a lotof drama with it and I was like, anyone can write anything. It can be fact, fiction.Most people, what they read they believe. Even if it’s not true. (C. J. Pascoe, LivingDigital)Social media provide another stage on which dramas can be playedout. Some of these dramas are truly dramatic, while others are mundaneparts of everyday life. When content is persistent (e.g., comments onsocial network sites), teens can gain access to the content even whenthey were not present for the situation being referenced. The public natureof social network sites, in particular, makes it much easier for teens to“overhear” what is being said. Furthermore, because teens’ presence asobservers may not be noticeable online, social network sites can allowthem to “stalk” their peers, keeping up with the gossip and lives ofpeople they do not know well but with whom they are familiar. Penelope,a white fifteen-year-old from Nebraska, said: “If [the popular kids are]having a fight you know about it. They confront each other. They say,‘Well, if you’re going to leave a comment like that on her page then you’dbetter send a comment to everybody because this is a war,’ or somethinglike that.”While teens can surf through their MySpace or Facebook Friends’ profilesto read their comments, Facebook introduced a feature in September 2006that made this process much easier: the News Feed. When teens log in totheir Facebook, they are presented with a News Feed that lists actions takenby their Friends on the site. Some of the actions that are announced onthe News Feed include when two people become Friends, when someoneleaves a comment on someone else’s wall, when a Friend uploads newphotos, and when two people break up. Although teens can opt out ofthis, many of them do not, either because they do not know about theoption or because the juicy updates are too alluring.

Friendship 107Cachi, a Puerto Rican eighteen-year-old from Iowa, finds the News Feeduseful “because it helps you to see who’s keeping track of who and who’stalking to who.” She enjoys knowing when two people break up so thatshe knows why someone is upset or when she should reach out to offersupport. Knowing this information also prevents awkward conversationsthat might reference the new ex. While she loves the ability to keep upwith the lives of her peers, she also realizes that this means that “everybodyknows your business.”Some teens find the News Feed annoying or irrelevant. Gadil, an Indiansixteen-year-old from Los Angeles, thinks that it is impersonal, whileothers think it is downright creepy. For Tara, a Vietnamese sixteen-year-oldfrom Michigan, the News Feed takes what was public and makes it morepublic: “Facebook’s already public. I think it makes it way too like stalkerish.”Her eighteen-year-old sister, Lila, concurs and pointed out that itgets “rumors going faster.” Kat, a white fourteen-year-old from Salem,Massachusetts, uses Facebook’s privacy settings to hide stories from theNews Feed for the sake of appearances.As a feature that amplifies public acts, Facebook’s News Feed helpsrumors posted publicly to spread farther faster. Yet, according to the teenswe interviewed, the vast majority of rumors spread through more privatechannels such as IM and text messaging. IM allows teens to converse withmultiple people at once as well as copy and paste conversations to spreadinformation. Through forwarding, text messaging can help create gossipchains. Thus, even though these channels may be more “private,” informationcan become public through incessant sharing.While gossip is fairly universal among teens, the rumors that are spreadcan be quite hurtful. Some of these escalate to the level of bullying. Weare unable to assess whether or not bullying is on the rise because of socialmedia. Other scholars have found that most teens do not experienceInternet-driven harassment (Wolak, Mitchell, and Finkelhor 2007). Thosewho do may not fit the traditional profile of those who experience schoolbasedbullying (Ybarra, Diener-West, and Leaf 2007), but harassment, bothmediated and unmediated, is linked to a myriad of psychosocial issues thatinclude substance use and school problems (Hinduja and Patchin 2008;Ybarra, Diener-West, and Leaf 2007).Measuring “cyberbullying,” or Internet harassment, is difficult, inpart because both scholars and teens struggle to define it. The teens we

108 danah boydinterviewed spoke regularly of “drama” or “gossip” or “rumors,” but fewused the language of “bullying” or “harassment” unless we introducedthese terms. When Sasha, a white sixteen-year-old from Michigan, wasasked specifically about whether or not rumors were bullying, she said:I don’t know, people at school, they don’t realize when they are bullying a lot ofthe time nowadays because it’s not so much physical anymore. It’s more like youthink you’re joking around with someone in school but it’s really hurting them.Like you think it’s a funny inside joke between you two, but it’s really hurtful tothem, and you can’t realize it anymore.Sasha, like many of the teens we interviewed, saw rumors as hurtful, butshe was not sure if they were bullying. Some teens saw bullying asbeing about physical harm; others saw it as premeditated, intentionallymalicious, and sustained in nature. While all acknowledged that it couldtake place online, the teens we interviewed thought that most bullyingtook place offline, even if they talked about how drama was happeningonline.When teens told us about being bullied, they did not focus on thetechnology. They were distressed that others—often former friends—weremaliciously spreading rumors about them to others at school. For example,Summer, a white fifteen-year-old from Michigan, described how her bestfriend decided to reject her because she was not popular enough. Herformer friend began by spreading secrets, but these quickly got modifiedand exaggerated as they spread. Summer did not know how the rumorswere spreading, but she knew that everyone in school knew them fast andthat many believed them. In Summer’s eyes, the bullying that she experiencedtook place offline. Yet she also acknowledged that IM was extremelypopular among her classmates at the time. It is likely that some of therumors had spread through IM or phone con versations in addition toconversations in school. For Summer, it did not matter whether it wasonline or offline; the result was the same. In handling this, she did not getoffline, but she did switch schools and friend groups.Media convergence complicates bullying dynamics. Both offline andonline elements played a role in many of the stories we heard. When teensare harassed online, it is often by people they know offline. Cruelty thattakes place offline is often fueled by mediated rumors. Technology providesmore channels through which youth can potentially bully one another.

Friendship 109That said, most teens we interviewed who discussed being bullied did notfocus on the use of technology and did not believe that technology is asignificant factor in bullying.While bullying exists, the teens we interviewed did not see it as commonplace.They did, though, see rumors, drama, and gossip as pervasive.The distinction may be more connected with language and conceptionthan with practice. Bianca, a white sixteen-year-old from Michigan, seesdrama as being fueled by her peers’ desire to get attention and have somethingto talk about. She thinks the reason that people create drama isboredom. While drama can be hurtful, many teens see it simply as a partof everyday social life.The teens we talked with were also quick to point out that most dramaand gossip comes primarily from girls, not boys. As Penelope Eckert notesin her study of girls transitioning to middle school, adolescent girls takeon the role of “heighteners of the social” (1996). Mark, a white fifteenyear-oldfrom Seattle, explained that drama happens more often with girls“because they always take it more seriously.” While girls are more likely tobe agents in talking about drama, boys are frequently cited as the cause.A lot of drama that takes place involves crushes, jealousy, and significantothers. 6 For example, girls get mad when their friends text message or IMtheir boyfriends or leave comments on their social network site profiles.In general, using technology to communicate with someone who is notsingle can be seen as an affront.Anindita recounted the story of how she stopped speaking to her formerbest friend, Meghana. Anindita was dating a boy and Meghana startedtelling him privately to break up with her, even though the girls were supposedlyfriends. One day, Anindita’s boyfriend showed her a text messagehe received from Meghana. The message read, “You’re the guy I love andyou don’t understand.” This angered Anindita and she ended the friendship.From Anindita’s point of view, social media took what she saw astypical “Indian drama” and magnified it out of control. She thought thather peers enjoyed the opportunity to start a fight for no reason other thanthat it was possible.Although some drama may start out of boredom or entertainment, it issituated in a context where negotiating social relations and school hierarchiesis part of everyday life. Teens are dealing daily with sociability and

110 danah boydrelated tensions. Lila, a Vietnamese eighteen-year-old from Michigan, seesdrama as the substance of daily life while her sixteen-year-old sister, Tara,thinks that it emerges because some teens do not know how to best negotiatetheir feelings and the feelings of others.danah: Do you think that drama has value?Lila: You have something to talk about. . . . And you’re like, you want tofit in, kind of thing. You know, like way back when, when you don’t knowwho you are, kind of. Not like I know now, but you know, when you’re inmiddle school.Tara: You have something to do, like to be honest, to resolve. . . . You feellike you’re mad at somebody and you don’t know how to handle it. Soyou just kind of turn on them like that. So it’s just like, just not like havingenough experience with dealing with things.While drama is a part of teen life and Tara and Lila are accepting ofit, many teens are insecure about their friendships, unsure of whetheror not friends are truly loyal and trustworthy. Social media can feeddrama and complicate interactions, especially when things are alreadyheated. At the same time, social media also can be used to try to easetensions among friends. Teens can use the ability to publicly validate oneanother on social network sites to reaffirm a friendship. Social media areused also to negotiate attention. Teens use different channels to reassuretheir friends that they are still thinking of them. So, while drama iscommon, teens actually spend much more time and effort trying to preserveharmony, reassure friends, and reaffirm relationships. This spirit ofreciprocity is common across a wide range of peer-based learning environmentswe have observed. Trying to be nice when someone else is beingnice is one example of how this plays out. Penelope, a white fifteen-yearoldfrom Nebraska, believes in responding to comments because “if someone’snice enough to say something to you then you have to be niceenough to say it back.”Others view the social script of reciprocity from a more cynical point ofview, believing that teens are being selfish when they leave a comment.From this perspective, commenting is not as much about being nice as itis about relying on reciprocity for self-gain, as in this example of ChristoSims’s interview with Brooklyn-based Derrick, a sixteen-year-old boy whowas born in the Dominican Republic:

Friendship 111Christo: Why do you think people put those, the pictures and all thatstuff on there?Derrick: They just MySpace people. . . . That’s what MySpace people do.They send each other comments all the time.Christo: Do you have a sense of why do you think they’re doing that,though?Derrick: That’s how they talk to each other, though. They just want tolet people know that people talk to them. So if you go to their page yousee that they got a lot of comments. That makes them feel like they’repopular, that they’re getting comments all the time by different people,even people that they don’t know. So it makes them feel popular in a way.(Rural and Urban Youth)While some teens leave comments to be nice, others hope that they willget comments in return. This can be viewed as selfish, but it also can beseen through the lens of insecurity. Many teens worry that they mayappear lame if they have too few Friends or too few comments. Some optout because they fear that these tools would simply highlight the ways inwhich they are not cool. Alternatively, some who view Friends and commentsas markers of social worth believe that they must have many Friendsso as not to be alienated from their peers. Kevin, a white fifteen-year-oldfrom Seattle, believes that getting comments is cool “because it lets everyonewho goes to your page know that you’re not just a guy that hasMySpace; you’re a guy that has friends and a MySpace.”Successful participation is not simply about having an account on asocial network site but about having one with status. Yet insecure andmarginalized individuals sometimes seek the markers of cool even if theythemselves are not actually perceived as cool. Teens want to be validatedby their broader peer group and thus try to present themselves as cool,online and off. Even when status is not necessarily accessible to them ineveryday life, there exists hope that they can resolve this through onlinepresentations.Two of the teens Christo Sims (Rural and Urban Youth) interviewed inBrooklyn spoke about becoming an “Internet gangster,” which involvestrying to act tough in your profile even if you are shy in person. Shy, afifteen-year-old Guyanese American girl, and Loud, a seventeen-year-oldJamaican American girl, both see value in getting attention online, evenwhen it is not available offline:

112 danah boydShy: Like, when you have your MySpace account, you can portray yourselfdifferently than you do on the street. You can picture yourself, somebodythat’s cool and whatnot on MySpace, and do all these other things to getall the attention that you don’t really get when you’re with your familiesor with your . . .Loud: Or in your school.While some teens are happy to attain status solely within the context ofa social network site, most hope that if they look cool online, their peerswill notice and validate them. This is often not successful. Dominic, awhite sixteen-year-old from Seattle, said:I don’t really think popularity would transfer from online to offline because you’vegot a bunch of random people you don’t know; it’s not going to make a differencein real life, you know? It’s not like they’re going to come visit you or hang out withyou. You’re not a celebrity or something.Achieving status purely through social network site participation may notbe viable, but participating and being popular online can complementoffline popularity. Just as having the “right” clothes or listening to the“right” music can be an indicator of status in everyday peer groups, participatingin the “right” social media in a manner that is socially recognizedis often key to offline status. As with clothes and music, online participationalone is not enough to achieve status, but it is still important.Gossip, drama, bullying, and posing are unavoidable side effects of teens’everyday negotiations over friendship and peer status. What takes placein this realm resembles much of what took place even before the Internet,but certain features of social media alter the dynamics around theseprocesses. The public, persistent, searchable, and spreadable nature ofmediated information affects the way rumors flow and how dramas playout. The explicitness surrounding the display of relationships and onlinecommunication can heighten the social stakes and intensity of statusnegotiation. The scale of this varies, but those who experience mediatedharassment are certainly scarred by the process. Further, the ethic ofreciprocity embedded in networked publics supports the developmentof friendships and shared norms, but it also plays into pressures towardconformity and participation in local, school-based peer networks. Whilethere is a dark side to what takes place, teens still relish the friendshipopportunities that social media provide.

Friendship 113ConclusionSocial media, and especially social network sites, allow teens to be morecarefully attuned, in an ongoing way, to the lives of their friends and peers.Social media are integrally tied to the processes of building, performing,articulating, and developing friendships and status in teen peer networks.Teens value social media because they help them build, maintain, anddevelop friendships with peers. Social media also play a crucial role inteens’ ability to share ideas, cultural artifacts, and emotions with oneanother. While social warfare and drama do exist, the value of social mediarests in their ability to strengthen connections. Teens leverage social mediafor a variety of practices that are familiar elements of teen life: gossiping,flirting, joking around, and hanging out. Although the underlying practicesare quite familiar, the networked, public nature of online communicationdoes inflect these practices in new ways.First, social media tend to accentuate the longer-burning trend throughthe past century toward teens’ developing social and cultural forms thatare segregated from adult society. Although some of the later chapters inthis book look at countervailing trends, the mainstream, friendship-driventeen practices covered in this chapter and chapter 3 indicate how same-agecultural forms and sociability are being reinforced by always-on communicationnetworks. Adults’ efforts to regulate youth access to MySpace arethe latest example of how adults are working to hold on to authority overteen socialization in the face of a gradual erosion of parental influenceduring the teen years. For the most part, adults participate in these practicesas provisioners of infrastructures and as monitors, not as competent peersor coparticipants. Youth are developing new norms and social competenciesthat are specifically keyed to networked publics, such as how to articulatefriendships, how to be polite to their peers, and how to create, mediate,or avoid drama. For youth who hope to succeed socially in their schoolbasedpeer networks, these kinds of new media literacies are becomingcrucial to youth’s participation. Given the prominence of social media inboth contemporary teen and adult life, learning how to manage the uniqueaffordances of networked sociality can help teens navigate future collegiateand professional spheres where mediated interactions are assumed.Second, the particular properties of networked publics (e.g., persistence,searchability, replicability, and scalability [boyd 2008]) mean that certain

114 danah boydforms of sociability are reinforced and heightened. Teens are able to keepin closer and ongoing touch with one another and to support the relationshipsthat they are nurturing in their local peer-based networks, whichmost see as their primary source of identity and affiliation. They develop“always-on intimate communities” with their broader peer group. However,articulating those friendships online means that they become subject topublic scrutiny in new ways; teens are able to display new dimensions ofthemselves but they also may have their self-representations reframed byothers in a public way. This makes lessons about social life (both the failuresand successes) more consequential and persistent. While these dynamicshave played out through fashion, appropriating spaces and lunchroomsat school, or congregating with friends in public spaces such as the mall,social network sites make these dynamics visible in a more persistent andaccessible public arena.Social media mirror and magnify teen friendship practices. Positiveinteractions are enhanced through social media while negative interactionsare also intensified. Teens who are growing older together withsocial media are coconstructing new sets of social norms with their peersand through the efforts of technology developers. The dynamics of socialreciprocity and negotiations over popularity and status all are being supportedby participation in publics of the networked variety as formativeinfluences in teen life. While we see no indication that social media arechanging the fundamental nature of these friendship practices, we do seedifferences in the intensity of engagement among peers, and conversely,in the relative alienation of parents and teachers from these social worlds.Youth continue to experience their teenage years as a time to immersethemselves in these peer-based status negotiations and to develop theirsocial and cultural identities in ways that are independent from theirparents, and they are aided now in these practices by a new suite of communicationtools.Notes1. http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2006/03/ultrafast_relea.html.2. For an overview of social network sites and their history, see boyd and Ellison(2007).

Friendship 1153. We use the term “social media” to refer to the set of new media that enable socialinteraction between participants, often through the sharing of media. Although allmedia are in some ways social, the term “social media” came into common usagein 2005 as a term referencing a central component of what is frequently called “Web2.0” (O’Reilly 2005 at http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html) or the “social web.” All these terms refer to the layeringof social interaction and online content. Popular genres of social media includeinstant messaging, blogs, social network sites, and video- and photo-sharing sites.4. To distinguish between connections displayed on social network sites and everydayrelations (boyd 2006), we capitalize “Friend” when referring to the socialnetwork site feature.5. AOL’s IM client (AIM), popular among U.S. teens, does not require this.6. There is also a large amount of drama between significant others that plays outusing social media. This is discussed in more detail in chapter 3.

3 INTIMACYLead Author: C. J. Pascoe“I get out of the shower, get dressed, go to my PC, log on to MSN, and talkto Alice,” said seventeen-year-old Jesse about his typical morning routine.At that time of the day, he finds it easier to instant message on MSN thanto talk on the phone with seventeen-year-old Alice, his girlfriend. He hasto “do my hair” in the morning. “So I go back and forth, back and forth,”he said, miming his movements from the bathroom mirror to the computerin his bedroom. After logging off IM, the couple might talk on theirmobile phones as they commute to school. During the school day theytrade text messages about their whereabouts and plans, such as “Im in daband room.” 1 After school Alice might join Jesse at his house, completingher homework while he plays his favorite video game, Final Fantasy, orthey might continue to communicate by sending messages, such as “I’llbe here for a while, go to sleep, I love you.” The day frequently ends late,with Alice falling asleep talking on the phone to Jesse in the bedroom sheshares with her two younger siblings as they watch DVDs on the bottombunk. Though they have been dating for more than a year, Alice’s parents,Chinese immigrants, do not know she and Jesse, a charming young manof mixed Anglo and African-American heritage, are a couple. Their secretrelationship has been shaped and, in some ways, made possible, by theprofusion of new communication technologies.Though most teens do not carry on long-term relationships such as thisone outside the purview of their parents, Alice’s and Jesse’s use of newmedia exemplifies much of what we have heard from our participantsabout their new media use in intimate interactions. Young people are atthe forefront of developing, using, reworking, and incorporating newmedia into their dating practices in ways that might be unknown, unfamiliar,and sometimes scary to adults. In our interviews and observations,

118 C. J. Pascoeit has become increasingly clear that, much like in their friendship practices,teens have put new media tools to use in their courtship practicessuch as meeting, flirting, going out, and breaking up. This intimacyorientednew media use exemplifies another type of friendship-driventechnology practice introduced in chapter 2.Like chapter 2, this chapter focuses on teenagers’ normative new mediapractices. Because dating and romance are primarily teenage (as opposedto childhood) endeavors, most of the interviews are with teenagers betweenthe ages of fourteen and nineteen and the material comes predominantlyfrom studies that focus on friendship-driven sociability: C. J. Pascoe’s study“Living Digital,” danah boyd’s study “Teen Sociality in Networked Publics,”Christo Sims’s study “Rural and Urban Youth,” and Megan Finn, DavidSchlossberg, Judd Antin, and Paul Poling’s study “Freshquest.” Unlessotherwise noted, the examples in this chapter come from Pascoe’s study.In this chapter we explore teens’ normative and nonnormative patternsof intimacy practices and new media. In doing so we sketch out the trajectoriesof historic and contemporary teen courtship rituals and the waysnew media have become a part of these rituals, as well as highlight themesof monitoring, privacy, and vulnerability. Looking at these themes indicatesthat boundary work is a central part of navigating new media inintimate relationships. These intimacy practices also show how casual,friendship-driven use of new media might be a form of informal learningthrough which teens develop literacy by building relationships and communicatingwith their intimates.Dating, New Media, and YouthGiven that teens have been the developers and shapers of contemporaryyouth dating culture (Trudell 1993), it makes sense that they would quicklyput new media to use in the service of their romantic pursuits. Whilecourtship norms and practices are less formal and more varied than theywere in the early and mid-twentieth century, our research on teens’ newmedia use shows that the rituals are no less elaborate or important thanthose of their historical counterparts.Dating and courtship, as enacted by contemporary American teens, islargely a twentieth-century development, as is the life stage of adolescenceitself (Ben-Amos 1995). After the industrial revolution, when families

Intimacy 119declined in importance as economic units, romantic unions graduallysuperseded primarily economic ones as a social norm in the West. Middleandupper-class young people courted through processes heavily monitoredby parents, families, and communities in which young men would“call” on young women in their homes (Bogle 2008). Dating, as we nowrecognize it, emerged out of working-class “calling” practices, in whichyoung ladies lacked the domestic space to entertain young men in theirhomes and thus the couple would go out somewhere together, a practicereferred to in early slang as a “date” (Bogle 2008). As the 1920s progressed,rebellious middle-class youth emulated these working-class rituals (Bogle2008). These imitations, along with the movement of youth from workplacesto public schools, the development of school dances, and the independenceafforded by the spread of automobile ownership, laid thegroundwork for contemporary teen dating culture (Modell 1989). In the1950s teen dating norms were formalized, became close to a universalcustom in America, and were solidified by the practice of “going steady”(Bogle 2008; Modell 1989). Youth who “went steady” indicated to onlookersthat they were unavailable by trading class rings, letter sweaters, IDbracelets, or by wearing matching sweater jackets—their answers, as onehistorian puts it, to the “wedding ring” (Bogle 2008, 17).In the 1970s and 1980s, these types of formal dating and “going steady”practices declined as dating became “merely one form of social contactamong many” (Modell 1989, 291). The decline in formality is reflected incontemporary teens’ language about these types of relationships, whichfrequently lack a clear vocabulary to define relationship status or practices:“The terms courtship and even dating have given way to hanging out andgoing out with someone” (Miller and Benson 1999, 106). However, thedecline in the formality and uniformity of dating practices does not meanthat the centrality of romance to teenagers’ lives has declined in salience.One study showed that the strongest emotion during puberty was “thespecific feeling of being in love” (Miller and Benson 1999, 99), and developmentalpsychologists consider romantic relationships an essentialfeature of social development in adolescence (Connolly and Goldberg1999). Contemporary relationships among teens tend to be “casual, intenseand brief” (Brown 1999, 310). They are also, for all their emphasis onprivacy and exclusivity, profoundly social (Brown 1999). In adolescence“peers provide opportunities to meet and interact with romantic partners,

120 C. J. Pascoeto initiate and recover from such relationships, and to learn from one’sromantic experiences” (Collins and Sroufe 1999, 126). Especially in theearly flirtatious stages, “romance is a public behavior that provides feedbackfrom friends and age-mates on one’s image among one’s peers” (Brown1999, 308). 2 Teens learn about dating, intimacy, and romance from theirfriends and social circles. Further, while we usually think of these intimacypractices as individual and private, teen romance and dating rituals takeplace, in many ways, publicly and collectively.Dating and romance practices and themes, so central to contemporaryAmerican teen cultures, not surprisingly are a central part of teens’ newmedia practices (Lenhart and Madden 2007; Oksman and Turtainen 2004).Using social media, contemporary teens continue to craft and reshapedating and romance norms and rituals that are now deeply tied to thedevelopment of new media literacies. Social media technologies haveprovided a more extensive private sphere in which youth can communicateprimarily with age-clustered friends, acquaintances, and sometimesstrangers outside the purview of their parents or other authority figures.These more private channels of communication have allowed an elaborationof teens’ intimacy practices, especially in forming, maintaining, andending romantic relationships. The familial negotiations over the spheresof privacy in which these practices take place will be elaborated upon inchapter 4.In their intimacy practices youth use three primary technologies—mobilephones (though many do still use home phones), instant messaging (IM),and social network sites. Mobile phones provide youth a way to maintainprivate channels of communication, maintain continual contact, and alsoserve as a “leash” through which teens in a relationship keep “tabs on”one another. Teens use instant-messaging technologies to maintain frequentcasual contact with their intimates. As described in chapter 2, socialnetwork site profiles are key venues for representations of intimacy, providinga variety of ways to signal the intensity of a given relationship boththrough textual and visual representations. While most of their onlinerelationships map closely to their offline ones, these digital spaces giveteens the ability to reach beyond institutional and geographic constraintsto forge romantic relationships. All these technologies allow teens to havefrequent and sometimes constant (if passive) contact with one another,something Ito and Okabe call “tele-cocooning in the full-time intimate

Intimacy 121community” (Ito and Okabe 2005a, 137). Many contemporary teens maintainmultiple and constant lines of communication with their intimatesover mobile phones, instant-message services, and social network sites,sharing a virtual space that is accessible only by those intimates.Surprisingly, given its centrality to teen culture, very little has beenwritten about teens’ contemporary romance and courtship practices.Researchers have directed their studies of romantic relationships towardadults (Hartup 1999) and focused on teens’ sexual practices (e.g., Ashcraft2006; Martin 1996; Medrano 1994; Moran 2000; Strunin 1994; Trudell1993). This research orientation likely reflects an American concern withteen sexuality as out of control and dangerous (Schalet 2000). In focusingon teens’ intimacy, though not necessarily sexual, practices, we take asociology-of-youth approach, following the categories and practices importantto the teens we talk to, not allowing adult anxieties to guide ourresearch. As a result we report little about teens’ sexual experiences. Giventhe preoccupation with youth sexual practices, not to mention currentpopular concerns about sex predators and youth exposure to sexual contentonline, it seems odd to leave sex out of a chapter on intimacy practices.However, we simply did not hear a plethora of stories about sex in ourinterviews, as youth tended to discuss dating, crushes, romance, and heartbreak.This omission could be due to several factors. First, such intimatedetails might emerge in a second or third interview, which most researchersdid not conduct. Second, we conducted these interviews under constraintsimposed by our universities’ institutional review boards, which heavilydiscouraged talking to youth in general and about issues of sex and sexualityin particular. Finally, it may be that intimacy practices were simply moresalient to these youth than sexual ones. 3So even though romance is one of the focal points of youth popularculture, because of researchers’ focus on sex, we know surprisingly littleabout teen romance, dating, and courtship practices, apart from scatteredstories on historical dating practices (Diamond, Savin-Williams, and Dube1999). This chapter begins to remedy this problem by examining the waysteens talk about their use of new media to craft, pursue, and end intimaterelationships. In the first section we trace the practices of contemporaryteen courtship and its relationship to the “domestication” of technology,or the way technology defines and is defined by those communities ofwhich it is a part (Hijazi-Omari and Ribak 2008). Teens’ stories revealed a

122 C. J. Pascoeset of norms about new media use and intimate relationships. Accordingto most of the teens we talked with, it is appropriate to meet people offlineand then pursue the relationship online; if one does meet someone, oneshould meet that person through friends; one should proceed slowly as heor she corresponds online using the appropriate communication tool; andwhen breaking up, one should do so in person, or at least over the phone.In the second section we discuss some of the emergent themes about relationshipsand technology we see from our interviews and observations.Youth Courtship: Meeting, Flirting, Going Out, and Breaking UpLiz and Grady, white sixteen-year-olds, sat at the dining room table duringour interview, in Liz’s family’s comfortable middle-class suburban tracthome, explaining the role that MySpace played in the origin of their relationship.Grady said that he developed a crush on Liz during the past year,and while he had known her since freshman year, flirting with her inperson felt daunting, because, as he put it, “they didn’t really talk.” Luckily,because they shared a mutual friend, Liz said of her MySpace, “I had himon my Friend list from freshman year . . . and that’s how you can befriends, just because your friend knows this guy and you kind of hung outwith them, so you’re like, ‘Okay, I’m going to start talking to you.’ ” Gradyused this loose friendship on MySpace to his advantage: “When I had acrush on her, I made sure I talked to her first in class before I sent her acomment on MySpace.” Grady carefully planned his first comment tobe casual: “My first comment to her was ‘Oh, wow, I didn’t know wewere Friends on MySpace,’ ” though of course he knew full well they wereFriends. After trading flirtatious messages online, they began dating. Lizand Grady are a fairly typical example of the role new media can play inmeeting, flirting, and going out. As Grady put it, it is “easier to talk tothem [girls] there” than in person, because one can manage vulnerabilitythrough what Christo Sims (2007) has termed a “controlled casualness.”Indeed, their process is paradigmatic of teens’ contemporary meeting, flirting,and dating practices, in which they can pursue casual offline acquaintancesas romantic interests online.Teens have told us that certain technologies and certain mediated andnonmediated practices are more appropriate for certain types of relationshipsor relationship stages than are others (Sims 2007). As Christo Sims

Intimacy 123found in his study, “Rural and Urban Youth,” in the initial getting-toknow-youpart of a romantic relationship, the asynchronous nature ofwritten communication (private messages and comments on social networksites, text messaging, and the more synchronous IM) allows for slower,more controlled intimacy exploration and development. If a given relationshipintensifies (because certainly not all flirtatious relationships do),couples typically shift to phone calls, text, IM, and in-person conversations.Social network sites play an increasingly larger role as couplesbecome solidified and become what some call “Facebook official.” At thispoint in a relationship, teens might indicate relationship status throughordering Friends in a particular hierarchy, changing the formal statementof relationship status, giving gifts, and displaying pictures. Youth can alsosignal the varying intensity of intimate relationships through new mediapractices such as sharing passwords, adding Friends, posting bulletins, orchanging headlines. When relationships end (for those that do), the publicnature and digital representations of these relationships require a sort ofdigital housecleaning that is new to the world of teen romance, but whichhas historical corollaries in ridding a bedroom or wallet of an ex-intimate’spictures. In the following section we trace the different types of teen courtshippractices and the role of new media in these practices.Meeting and FlirtingAs Grady and Liz’s story indicates, digital communication often plays acentral role in casual relationships and the early stages of serious relationships.New media have provided a variety of venues for teens to meet and/or further potential romantic interests. Instant messaging, text messages,and social network messaging functions all allow teens to proceed in a waythat might feel less vulnerable than face-to-face communication. Thesemultiple lines of communication allow teens to follow up on casual meetingsor introduce themselves to someone with whom they have only looseties, perhaps sharing a mutual friend on- or offline. At present, teens’ normativepractice is not necessarily meeting strangers online (though thatdoes happen) but rather using these mediated technologies to get to knowthe friend of a friend or further get to know someone with whom one hashad only a casual or brief meeting.For teens interested in someone they may not know well, the plethoraof publicly accessible information on a given individual provides a fresh

124 C. J. Pascoeway to “research,” or get to know, those on whom they have a crush.Melanie, a white fifteen-year-old from Kansas, in danah boyd’s study “TeenSociality in Networked Publics” said that she does not “talk to people Ihave a crush on, but I did look up the Honduran twins in our class. Welooked at their MySpace.” Like Melanie, a teen can research a crush’s interests,likes and dislikes, friendship circles, and online behaviors through hisor her publicly available social network profiles. John, a white nineteenyear-oldcollege freshman in Chicago, disclosed that instead of asking fora phone number he will “Facebook stalk them” to discover more, thoughpossibly superficial, information about a girl he has met briefly but findsinteresting. Much like teens may have historically researched potentiallove interests through their friendship networks, contemporary teenshave additional new media tools for laying the groundwork for flirting andrelationships.After an initial meeting and possible research on their object of affection,teens often use a social network site or an instant-messenger program tointensify a relationship or get to know another person better. This is whatadults might think of as flirting or what teens sometimes call “talking” or“talkin’ to” (Bogle 2008; Pascoe 2007a). After an initial meeting, a teenmight initiate this “talkin’ to” by following up through digital communication.As Sam, a white seventeen-year-old from Iowa, said, “The next step,I guess, in this situation is wall posts 4 [on Facebook]—that’s kind of lessformal. . . .” (boyd, Teen Sociality in Networked Publics). Sam noted thatif he liked a girl he would post “stupid flirty stuff just trying to make herlaugh or whatever through Facebook.” At this point, teens flirt, proceedingcautiously, indicating that they like each other, trying to gauge the other’sfeelings while simultaneously not showing too much earnestness.The asynchronous nature of these technologies allows teens to carefullycompose messages that appear to be casual, a “controlled casualness.”John, for instance, likes to flirt over IM because it is “easy to get a messageacross without having to phrase it perfectly” and “because I can thinkabout things more. You can deliberate and answer however you want.”Like John, many teens said they often send texts or leave messages onsocial network sites so they can think about what they are going to sayand play off their flirtatiousness if their object of affection does not seemto reciprocate their feelings. Bob, a white nineteen-year-old 5 living in ruralnorthern California, says he carefully edits his grammar and spelling to

Intimacy 125give the appearance of an “off-the-cuff” comment. These kinds of deliberatelycasual messages are evidence of what Naomi Baron (2008) describesas the “whatever theory of language” supported by online communication,in which people are increasingly using more informal linguistic forms towrite and communicate. It is important, however, to recognize that theseforms of literacy are not a “dumbing down” of language but a contextuallyspecific literacy practice, acutely tuned to the particulars of given socialsituations and cultural norms.For example, youth use casual online language to create an intentionalambiguity. From the outside, sometimes these comments appear so casualthat they might not be read as flirting, such as the following wall posts bytwo Filipino teens—Missy and Dustin—who eventually dated quite seriously.After being introduced by mutual friends and communicatingthrough IM, Missy, a northern Californian sixteen-year-old, wrote onDustin’s MySpace wall: “hey.. hm wut to say? iono lol/well i left you acomment . . . u sud feel SPECIAL haha =).” 6 Dustin, a northern Californianseventeen-year-old, responded a day later by writing on Missy’s wall: “hellothere.. umm i dont know what to say but at least i wrote something . . . youare so G!!!” 7 Both of these comments can be construed as friendly or flirtatious,thus protecting both of the participants should one of the partiesnot be romantically drawn to the other. These particular comments tookplace in public venues on the participants’ walls where others could readthem, providing another layer of casualness and protection.Generally, though not always, teens prefer to flirt with people onlinethat they or their friends know or have at least met offline. A minority ofteens we interviewed find meeting potential romantic interests online nodifferent from meeting or flirting with attractive strangers they might meetin public, but the general sentiment was that meeting people only onlinewas “weird,” “unnatural,” “geeky,” or “scary.” Ellie, a first-year student atthe University of California, Berkeley, and respondent in Megan Finn andher colleagues’ “Freshquest” study, described her best friend’s meeting ofher boyfriend on MySpace as weird: “It was really weird at first. She didn’twant to tell anyone because she thought it was weird too. But they hadsuch a strong connection that they thought they should meet. And nowthey’re going out.” Grady, Liz’s sixteen-year-old boyfriend, said somethingsimilar about meeting girls online: “I’m not going to start a conversationwith a girl on MySpace or text messaging. I’m going to start in person first.

126 C. J. PascoeThen it’s kind of like weird and geeky, you know?” The reasons vary as towhy meeting someone online feels weird to some teens. But they all have,in some way, to do with insecurity about authenticity. Brad, a first-yearstudent at University of California, Berkeley, said, “It doesn’t seem natural,I guess. ‘Cause you’re not actually meeting the person face-to-face” (Finn,Freshquest). It is as if that face-to-face meeting allows one to verify whothat other person is before embarking on a relationship with him or her.If teens do meet initially online, they might use their offline friendshipnetworks to verify the authenticity, safety, and identity of the person withwhom they are corresponding. Dana, a Latina fourteen-year-old fromBrooklyn, New York, met her boyfriend online through mutual friends.Her best friend’s boyfriend’s best friend saw her MySpace andhe requested me ‘cause he liked what he seen, and then my best friend talked tohim about me and then because of MySpace we were goin’ out. . . .’ Cause if MySpacewasn’t there, then I woulda not had him as boyfriend. We talked on AIM and thenwe exchange the numbers, and then I met him. I seen him before, but I got himnoticed on MySpace and now we’re together. (Sims, Rural and Urban Youth)Like other teens we talked to, Dana and her boyfriend flirted online beforethey moved to offline communication and eventually met in person. Danasaid, “He usually started getting on AIM every day, and I started talking tohim from there.” They communicated for two days through MySpace untilthey traded phone numbers and “talked like from twelve to six in themorning.” Eventually they met in person in a public space—a local park—in the company of groups of friends. Dana’s story is not an uncommonone. Teens regularly meet romantic interests through shared friends inonline environments, using these online networks to further offline meetingsor deepen casual ties to online friends. Teens rely on their networksto do some of the verification work in these online settings.Though the in-person meeting went well for Dana, other respondentsexpressed hesitancy about moving online relationships offline for fear thatpeople might not live up to their online personas. John, the Chicago freshman,asked, “What happens after you’ve had a great online flirtatiouschat . . . and then the conversation sucks in person?” He experienced thisphenomenon firsthand as he transitioned from high school to college.John had used Facebook to add as Friends “the girls you wanted to meetbefore school started that you thought were hot and wanted to get a headstart on.” However, once he reached his university in the fall, “you actually

Intimacy 127saw them and didn’t say anything . . . the game was over.” When askedwhy he didn’t talk to them in person, he said, “You didn’t say anything,because what are you gonna say . . . ‘Hey, you’re my Facebook Friend?’ Thekey is to meet them in person . . . then Facebook them.” Brad, the Berkeleyfreshman, expressed similar hesitancies about meeting people offline. “Youdon’t know that’s who you’re meeting. It isn’t a smart thing. And you’llend up idolizing the person, thinking they’re just this perfect thing. Butthey probably aren’t because no one is perfect. And it’s just a big letdown.”This “hyperpersonal effect” indicates that intimacy might be heightenedonline in a way that might not translate seamlessly into offline relationships(Walther 1996).While most teens express hesitation about meeting people online, inthe case of marginalized teens, the Internet allows them to meet otherpeople like themselves (Holloway and Valentine 2003). This sort of digitalcontact provides a means for youth who didn’t feel heard or whofelt otherwise disenfranchised in their communities to participate inother ways (Maczewski 2002; Osgerby 2004). For example, Gabbie, aseventeen-year-old first-generation ethnically Chinese teen from California,wanted to find a Chinese boyfriend, but potential suitors were in limitedsupply in her immediate community. In part because of this desire, shejoined the social network site Asiantown.net and struck up communicationwith a young man she found attractive. “Well, right now I’m talkingto this guy. But he has a girlfriend. I don’t know. We’re just talking as likefriends. It seems like he’s being a little flirty, but then . . . I don’t know.”The boy she is talking to lives in the Central Valley, about an hour fromwhere Gabbie lives. We rarely heard teens such as Gabbie, who lack specificoffline social circles, talk about moving these relationships offline as beingunnatural or weird.In a similar way, new media also are important tools for gay teens whowant to date, because “the biggest obstacle to same-sex dating amongsexual minority youth is the identification of potential partners” (Diamond,Savin-Williams, and Dube 1999, 187). It allows them to meet other teensfor friendship or dating and affords them a level of independence, as itdoes for straight teens, to carry on relationships outside the purview oftheir parents if need be (Hillier and Harrison 2007). The Internet can putgay teens in touch with other teens so that they can have the romanticexperiences that their heterosexual counterparts presumably find more

128 C. J. Pascoereadily in offline contexts. Robert, a white seventeen-year-old at a privateschool in Chicago, became so frustrated about not finding other guys todate through his offline friendship circles that he wrote a Facebook “note”about his difficulties dating as a gay teen:Every time I have a crush or something, it doesn’t work out (he’s not gay, not enoughtime, etc). I’m not a downer, but I’m just realizing that if a straight person’s chanceof compatibility is 1 in 100. AND only about 3 in 100 are gay, and the compatibilityis still 2%, then my prospect is .03 in 100, or 3 in 10,000. That is not veryencouraging!Robert said that a friend set him up on a blind date as a direct result ofthe announcement he placed on Facebook: “Andrew, another gay guy atmy school, and [my] friend, set me up with Matt because he saw my desperatenote on Facebook!” Matt and Robert were introduced throughFacebook and after the initial setup, Robert was giddy with excitement andsaid, “We’ve been texting the past few days a lot; he is really good looking,and a jock, believe it or not, but we seem to really have hit it off. I hopefor the best.” The two had a very sweet day picked for their first date:Valentine’s Day. Much like Dana, Robert found a date through a sharedfriend. But unlike straight, more mainstream teens, he expressed no hesitancyabout meeting in person someone he had met online.Going OutTechnology also mediates teens’ long-term, steady, and committed relationships.Teens in relationships have high expectations of contact withand availability of their significant others as well as expectations thatthe relationship will be publicly acknowledged through digital media.These expectations of availability are compounded by the “always on”(Baron 2008) possibilities of new media. Additionally, these media helpteens reach out beyond their institutional constraints, allowing themto maintain romantic relationships their parents wouldn’t necessarilyapprove of as well as sustain relationships that might be geographicallychallenging. Like Jesse and Alice, introduced at the beginning of thischapter, teens who are steadily dating frequently text or call each other,post pictures of each other on their social networking sites, rank order theirFriends in a particular way, and exchange digitized tokens of affection,signaling to their significant other and their online publics that they arein a relationship.

Intimacy 129Being in a relationship increases expectations of availability and reciprocity,which has implications for how teens use new media, given this“always on” potential. In practice this means that youth in a relationshipexchange several phone calls, texts, and/or IMs a day. Teens use this intensifiedcontact as a way to differentiate romantic relationships from otherrelationships—to indicate that their relationship is special or different.Zelda, a Trinidadian American fourteen-year-old from Brooklyn, New York,explained that if one is in a relationship and doesn’t respond to a message,the other person will “probably get mad. If they call you and you don’tpick up, they probably get mad. If they write a comment on your pageyou have to comment them back” (Sims, Rural and Urban Youth). Hedistinguishes this from interacting with friends through digital media:“It’s not like it’s a normal friend; it’s your girlfriend or whatever. You’re ina relationship; you’re not supposed to just answer whenever you want.”As noted in chapter 2, youth have expectations of reciprocity in onlinecommunications, and these are heightened in intimate relationships.Teens now do much of their relationship work by using new media—reciprocating in comments, differentiating their romantic attachmentsfrom less intimate friends, and giving priority to phone calls from significantothers.To signal to each other that they care and are in an intimate relationship,teens exchange small digitized symbols of affection, much like teens in the1950s traded rings, jackets, or bracelets. Champ, a nineteen-year-old Latinowho also lives in Brooklyn, explained, “Like if she’s already your girlfriend,you probably send a little text message, ‘Oh I’m thinking of you,’ or somethinglike that while she’s working. . . . Three times out of the day, youprobably send little comments” (Sims, Rural and Urban Youth). These commentsare the digital interactional work that cements contemporary teenrelationships. Derrick said,You know in your head you’ve just got to do it. It’s like she writes you a comment;write her a comment back. It’s not like a friend thing. It’s not like your homeboyjust wrote you a comment like “oh man, this kid wrote me a comment again.” Writeher a comment back. (Sims, Rural and Urban Youth)Youth do emotional work to maintain a relationship through digitizedmedia. Rather than (though sometimes in addition to) love notes exchangedin between classes, youth demonstrate affection through private and publicmedia channels.

130 C. J. PascoeThese tokens are part of the interactional relationship work that happensthrough new media; another is the expectation of availability. Teens findthat their significant others expect frequent check-ins, usually by mobilephone. Derrick said,When you’re in a relationship one thing I learned [is] always pick up the phone foryour girl because she complains if you don’t. . . . The thing about a cell phone whenyou’re a teenager is if you have a cell phone and you don’t pick it up you’re doingsomething that you’re not supposed to be doing. (Sims, Rural and Urban Youth)As Christo Sims notes in his research on urban and rural teens, teenagersare expected to account for their whereabouts. They are beholden toparents in this sense but also to significant others, especially in relationshipsin which trust might be missing or weak. As a result it might be hardto preserve space or time for oneself outside this frequent contact. In fact,Zelda said he knows he needs to answer the phone regularly because if hedoesn’t, “they probably going to get mad” (Sims, Rural and Urban Youth).The phone especially acts as a sort of leash, a way to keep tabs on a significantother, much like parents keep track of their teens. Teens seeminglyendure this leash because of the increased independence afforded them bythe phone.In addition to the expectations of regular, if not continual, contact, teensaffirm and are expected to affirm their relationships online, both by andfor their significant others and for their networked publics. Zelda underscoredthe importance of representing relationships online: “You gottaacknowledge on your page that you [are] like with her” (Sims, Rural andUrban Youth). They define and affirm their relationship status, give publictokens of affection, and post pictures. On Facebook, default relationshipoptions are preset, so in addition to indicating an “official” status, teenshave creatively developed ways to include nuance and detail in their relationshipdescriptions. The existing categories hide a variety of relationshipsand elide the depth or length of a given relationship, so teens sometimesremedy this by indicating the seriousness of a particular relationshipthrough noting its duration, a particularly popular practice among youthinterviewed by Christo Sims in Brooklyn, New York. According to Dana,mentioned earlier, couples write a relationship-origin date in their MySpaceheadline “to show that they have a relationship or something, so like that’sshowing more, and it shows that he’s in a relationship” (Sims, Rural andUrban Youth). The statement of a relationship anniversary is both a signalof intimacy to one’s significant other and a hands-off signal to other teens

Intimacy 131who might be interested in one member of a couple. Nini, a Latina thirteen-year-oldfrom Brooklyn, said,If you put the relationship date, whenever you got together, the girls know thatyou’re in a relationship and this is the date, so don’t really get into it with theboyfriend, ‘cause you are really falling for each other . . . they know that you’re ayear, so I’m not gonna mess with the boyfriend. (Sims, Rural and Urban Youth)Nini highlights the “hands off” message, arguing that the length of timea couple has been together indicates the intensity of their relationship topotentially meddlesome outsiders.Couples typically negotiate offline the act of putting their relationshipstatus online, whether it be a simple “in a relationship” status on Facebookor a more nuanced relationship date on MySpace, notes Christo Sims.Teens dismiss the practice of posting these sorts of public notificationsabout changes in their relationships through online venues before discussingit with their partner first, usually offline. Joan, a first-year student atthe University of California, Berkeley, said,Yeah, I have friends [who] have confirmed they have gone official with their boyfriendsthrough Facebook, which is ridiculous. I have known people that are datingand they’ll get a request “so and so said that you are their girlfriend.” They pushedthe button and they are like, “Oh my God, we’re official.” (Finn, Freshquest)Teens seem to have the sense that this sort of intimate decision should bemade interpersonally, not just announced digitally.The whole of these social network profiles, not just the relationshipstatus, are the digital embodiment of teens’ relationships. When in a relationship,teens rank their Friends to indicate the seriousness of their commitment.Derrick said that “you probably write something, have her onyour Top Friends, don’t put other girls, don’t have girls write messages toyou saying anything crazy. Just to make her feel better” (Sims, Rural andUrban Youth). When teens in a relationship do not rank their Friends ina way that reflects their relationship status—that is, they do not rank theirsignificant other high among their Friends—conflict might result, as it didwith Jesse and Alice. Jesse confessed, as he showed off his MySpace site,“Alice was actually not my original top one.” Alice paused from her needleworkto jump in the conversation and said, indignantly, “I was like numbertwelve or something.” Jesse, clearly defensive, his voice growing higher,cried, “Does it really matter? You know! Really? My number one? Really?”Alice responded a little sarcastically, rolling her eyes, “Like he’s not numberone on my account.” Clearly, it was not the first time they had had this

132 C. J. Pascoediscussion. While for these two teens, the tension did not challenge thebasic foundation of their relationship, their disagreement indicates howimportant these public representations of relationship intensity are. Alice’sfeelings were hurt by Jesse’s refusal to place her above his other Friends onhis list.In addition to ranking Friends, youth in relationships need to leavepublic messages for and post pictures of their significant others. Doing sosends messages to their significant others about their dedication and totheir digital public about the nature of the relationship. Zelda said,“Sometimes, like on MySpace, you will leave a comment, and you leave awhole bunch of stuff on there ‘cause they your girlfriend and stuff, soeverybody can see your name. Girls get happy for that. I don’t know why.They just get happy” (Sims, Rural and Urban Youth). Zelda explained thathe comments “on their pictures. Like if they got a new picture up, leave acomment ‘oh, that’s a nice picture you got up’ or whatever.” Zelda indicatedthe dual message contained in this sort of digital relationship work—the girlfriend is happy because this sort of work feels attentive and lovingand Zelda sends a message to their community, “everybody can see yourname,” about his dedication to his relationship. Another form of relationshipwork includes posting “couple” pictures on one’s social networkprofile. As Derrick says, “Throw a picture in there of her on your profile.Have it in your pictures like when people look at your pictures they seeyou and her together or something. Something that makes her say,‘Aaahhhh.’ To show her that you care for her” (Sims, Rural and UrbanYouth). Again, Derrick’s comment shows that these tokens are both for asignificant other and a teen’s audience. These practices also hold membersof a couple publicly accountable. Once one states that she or he is in arelationship, this insures that both members of a relationship agree ontheir status and are ready to make it public, thus prohibiting one memberof the couple from arguing that “it wasn’t official.”Breaking UpBecause of the integration of new media into their relationships, teens alsoexperience mediated breakups. These new communication practices oftenrequire that teens take a variety of steps to sweep up the digital remnantsof a given relationship and to deal with access to and the continuing digitalpresence of their former significant others.

Intimacy 133The media that some youth laud as a comfortable way to meet and getto know a romantic interest are viewed as a poor way to break up with anintimate. Billy, a white seventeen-year-old from a northern Californiasuburb, said that as he was IMing with a friend he advised his friend tobreak up with his girlfriend. Apparently his friend did so right then,through IM. Representative of other teens, Billy said, shaking his head,“That was bad.” Grady, Liz’s sixteen-year-old boyfriend, agreed that breakingup through IMs or text messages was “lame” but that only “somepeople do it; most people don’t.” In line with a theme we heard, Gradyclaimed that breaking up in writing either through a social network siteor through a text message was “disrespectful. Because they can’t say anythingback or anything.” Teens acknowledge that breaking up in person ispreferable to using text messages, instant messages, or messaging functionson social network sites, because face-to-face interaction is more respectful.Just as teens are thankful for the ways in which they can manage vulnerabilityusing new media in the early stages of relationships, they sense thatthis vulnerability should not be managed in the same way at the end of arelationship.New media have created a public venue for digital remnants, wheredigital representation might outlast the relationship. For instance, Gary, aseventeen-year-old Filipino senior from northern California, had createdhis MySpace site with his now ex-girlfriend. He laughed sheepishly duringan interview as he logged on to his profile and the site title bore both hisname and that of his ex-girlfriend, reading, “Sarah will always love Gary.”This passive digital residue of their history together remained long afterthe relationship was over.Box 3.1 The Public Nature of Mediated Breakupsdanah boydWhen I first met them, Michael and Amy, a white seventeen-year-old and awhite-and-black sixteen-year-old, respectively, had been dating for a fewmonths. Amy was one grade below Michael at the same school in Seattle, butshe was much more social. Her friends had introduced her to MySpace; she,in turn, had introduced him to MySpace. Amy created Michael’s first MySpaceprofile specifically because she wanted him to have one so that she couldsend him messages and comments.

134 C. J. PascoeAs Michael learned to modify his MySpace profile, it became an homage tohis three favorite things: football, his friends, and his girlfriend. Michael’sprofile picture showed the couple embracing. His About Me section beganwith “I love my girlfriend Amy.” Amy’s profile also reflected their relationship;she wrote about how Michael “has my heart” and included pictures. Bothwere in each other’s Top Friends list and they performed their relationshipthrough comments, leaving standard messages as well as sweet nothings. Theirfriends responded by leaving comments, teasing them about their publicintimacy.For Amy, MySpace and school were the two places where she could be withMichael. She is allowed out only on weekends and, even then, rarely. MySpaceis the centerpiece of Amy’s social life. As she explains, “My mom doesn’t letme out of the house very often, so that’s pretty much all I do is I sit onMySpace and talk to people and text and talk on the phone, ’cause my mom’salways got some crazy reason to keep me in the house.” Amy’s lack of mobilityfrustrated Michael, who has much more freedom. His father is usually outwith his girlfriend and thinks Michael is mature enough to take his car anddo as he pleases. Michael noted that “it’s almost like we’re roommates morethan anything.” While he can do as he wishes, Amy follows her mother’srules and this means that the couple rarely saw each other except online.Being able to interact with Amy motivated Michael to log in to MySpaceregularly. In some senses, the mediated performance of their relationship wastheir relationship.A week after I interviewed the couple, Michael and Amy broke up. ThroughMySpace, I was able to watch this breakup play out. Their digitally professedlove turned into a performance of animosity. The entire tone of Michael’sprofile changed. He changed his headline to “Michael is no longer fuckingwith stupid bitches.” His status changed to “single.” The About Me sectionon his profile still referenced Amy, although not by name. Rather than showcasinghis love, his About Me section now proclaimed, “I hate my stupid bitchex girlfriend.” The photos were gone. Additionally, the two were no longerlinked as Friends, let alone on each other’s Top Friends. With the eradicationof the connection, all comments also disappeared.Amy’s profile also revealed traces of the breakup. She had obliterated therelationship throughout her profile, removing all photos and textual referencesto Michael. He was removed from her Friend list and the list of guysshe called heroes. What appeared in the place of his name was “boyfriend”with a link to a new boy: Scott. While Michael had written Amy into his bio,Scott proclaimed his love for Amy even more loudly. He had changed hisname on his profile: “Scott + Amy,” and his profile photo depicted the happycouple smooching. He had written two blogs: “I have fallen in love with Amy”

Intimacy 135and “Rawr! Amy is Awesome.” One of these blogs contained a love poemwritten about Amy and the other contained a prose version of his feelings;Amy responded to these blogs with comments professing her love and otherfriends added approving comments. Loving messages from the new couplepeppered each other’s profile. Scott wrote, “I Love You” two hundred timeson Amy’s profile, followed by “here is the translation . . . i love you toobaby. . . .”The messages on Scott’s blogs from Amy’s friends made it clear that someknew that her relationship with Michael had ended, but not all appearedaware of the story behind the event. In Amy’s comments, there were ahandful of posts with messages such as, “what happened with you andMichael?” Amy responded to these by posting to each Friend’s commentsection with some variation of “alotta bullshit.” Third-party references toMichael littered Amy’s comments section but Michael himself was no longerpresent—Amy’s new love had usurped him.I was unable to ask Amy and Michael what happened, but there also wasno need to. Just as they had performed their togetherness for all who werecurious, so too did they perform their breakup. Michael performed the newlysingle angry ex-boyfriend while Amy simply replaced all references to Michaelwith references to Scott, erasing Michael’s existence without comment. Thepublic performance of breakups goes beyond he said/she said stories; it showcaseseach person’s emotional reaction to the situation.By publicly documenting their relationship and their breakup, Amy andMichael are looking for validation and support from their peers. Amy’s commentsare filled with supportive words from her girlfriends and she acknowledgesthese on their profiles. Conversely, Michael’s posts about “stupidbitches” provoke his guy friends to leave comments teasing him about gettinginto drama with girls. When I checked back a month later, Michael hadremoved his picture, cleared his background and content, and deleted all hisFriends. He had not deleted his profile, but his last log-in date suggests thathe stopped logging in. Amy had continued to use MySpace, but every traceof Scott had been replaced with a new guy.Even though teens say that the actual act of breaking up should nothappen in a mediated way, breakups do take place online as youth sweepup the digital remainders of their relationships. Teens’ breakups can bereflected passively through status changes or displayed actively throughhostile public messages and announcements. Michael and Amy (see box3.1 for their story) exemplify an actively public breakup—public animosity,

136 C. J. Pascoeangry messages directed specifically at an ex-intimate, and the seeking ofpublic validation from their friends. Conversely, passively public breakupsentail quietly removing pictures, changing one’s relationship status, andreordering Friends. While these breakups also happen in public, they aretamer and perhaps more representative of the customary way teens endrelationships. Trevor’s most recent breakup exemplified this passivelypublic practice. The white seventeen-year-old from suburban northernCalifornia said that he usually places the person he is dating as the topFriend on his MySpace and moves people instantaneously when they breakup. But “the latest ex stayed on there for six months because I waswaiting. . . . I thought I’d be in a relationship really quickly.” Trevor saysthat his ex-girlfriends weren’t upset when he removed them. “There wasnever drama about it. They got it. They understood. . . . I always try forthat, because I really don’t want to be the jerk.” For teens, changing apublic representation of a relationship is a normal part of these nowmediatedrelationships; thus, unless the couple does not agree on the statusof their relationship, they are rarely surprised by this sort of alteration ofan ex’s profile.After a relationship ends, teens often inhabit the same, or overlapping,networked publics. Frequently, members of a former couple can still seeeach others’ profiles, see messages left by their ex–significant other onshared Friends’ social network profiles, and receive automatic updatesabout their ex, should they retain him or her as a Friend. As Christo Sims’sresearch has highlighted, these indirect communication channels meanthat youth can still be in touch with and possibly monitor each other afteran intimate relationship has ended. These communications can be caring,respectful, retaliatory, hurtful, or angry, or they can be ways to send messagesto an ex–significant other without having to interact directly withhim or her. While teens may have the sense that they should sever realworldand digital ties with their former girlfriends or boyfriends, Bob, thewhite nineteen-year-old from suburban northern California, said thatmonitoring one’s ex on a social network site isone thing that you shouldn’t do but everyone does. You can go check all their stuff.Like you look at their Facebook, you look at their MySpace, you see if they take offthe photos of you, you see if they changed their relationship status to something,you see if they’ve got a new person writing on their wall. Like you become a stalker,and a highly efficient stalker. Because all the information is already there at once.

Intimacy 137You don’t have to ask your friends or her friends if she’s seeing someone new. Likeyou know. And then they want you to know. (Sims, Rural and Urban Youth)Teens are aware that their exes see them in these networked publics anduse the opportunity to communicate with them, though not directly. Ono,a Haitian American sixteen-year-old from Brooklyn, New York, used theopportunity provided by social network sites to communicate her angertoward her ex-boyfriend.You want to make them feel so bad that the relationship ended. So you take out allthe comments, unless, it depends, unless you are still friends with that person. Takeout all the pictures. Put some other person, or maybe delete him from your Friendslist, and, but you know that he’s gonna look at your profile anyway, so you putother males next to you, or put pictures of another male and say how nice he looksin that outfit or whatever, or my future man, or whatever, so you could put as muchanger in that person as you can, or if you guys have the same Friend, like if me andmy boyfriend have you as a Friend, I’ll use you to get his attention. (Sims, Ruraland Urban Youth)Ono strategized about how to use her shared public to make her exboyfriendfeel bad by signaling that she had severed ties with him, that hewas no longer her Friend, and that she was intimately connected to otherboys. The same technology used to publicly affirm intimate relationshipscan be used to publicly demonstrate their demise and to communicateanger toward someone with whom a teen may no longer have directcontact.Bob used the same technology to communicate to an ex-girlfriend agentler message. He had just endured a “really rough breakup” with a girlwho wanted to “get back together” with him, though he did not reciprocateher wish to reunite. He wanted to communicate to her the fact thathe was not willing to reconcile, but he felt constrained because he hadlearned of her desire in confidence from a mutual friend. To communicatehis feelings to her, he changed his relationship status on Facebook to “ina relationship,” even though he was not involved with anyone. At thatpoint his ex-girlfriend realized that “I was unavailable. I knew she wouldread that; I didn’t tell her or anything, but I knew that she would find it.And so that ended it officially.” His ex-girlfriend communicated back tohim in a similarly passive way:I go on her MySpace and there’s a blog about how she can finally move on. But it’saddressed to no one. Right? I know who it’s talking about; she knows who it’s talking

138 C. J. Pascoeabout. So that was a weird instance where “I’m not telling you but I know you’regoing to find this.” (Sims, Rural and Urban Youth)These sorts of indirect communications can enable teens to exit relationshipsin a dignified way and enable them to “have their say.” Instead ofcommunicating through oral conversations, or less directly through handwrittennotes or chains of friends, teens can passively communicatethrough their online profiles and presence.Despite popular emphasis on the one-to-one communication opportunitiesprovided by these technologies, youth often use them to communicateindirectly, both through the technology and through intermediaries.Christo Sims’s research on the ends of relationships shows that throughnew media, teens can retain an indirect channel to communicate afterbreaking up. While teens stop engaging in continuous contact after abreakup, they still use new media to communicate indirectly with eachother and their larger mediated publics. Mechanisms on social networksites for indicating status or posting to an undefined public enable teensto delegate some of the more awkward social articulation work to technology-based,mediated forms of communication.Intimate Media: Privacy, Monitoring, and VulnerabilityThemes of privacy and vulnerability weave through teens’ new mediapractices. The ability to monitor one another and be monitored, emotionaland physical vulnerability, and tensions around privacy thread throughthe variety of intimacy practices in which teens engage. Digital communicationsallow teens a sphere of privacy, when they don’t have their ownspaces, to communicate with their significant others through a circumventionof geographic and institutional constraints. The ability to talk beyondthe earshot of one’s parents and other adults, such as teachers, is part ofthis circumvention. Teens told us that the ability to communicate outsideof adults’ view and hearing was important. For instance, Joan, the Berkeleyfreshman, claims that she and her first boyfriend would talkonline all the time, all the time. Like, we talked on the phone but then sometimeswe talked on the phone and IMed at the same time . . . especially it’s like our parentswas in the room and then we would talk to them and then if there is somethingthat you don’t want your mom to hear you could type it and then you could talkabout it. (Finn, Freshquest)

Intimacy 139Similarly, youth are able to maintain relationships with people of whomtheir parents might not approve, much like Jesse and Alice, because of thisprivacy. However, given the expectations of high contact with other teensand the amount of personal information in a semipublic realm, teens alsohave to negotiate new boundaries and spheres of privacy in their intimaterelationships (Livingstone 2008). In this sense, social media carve out anew private realm in which teens can communicate, largely outside thepurview of adults, while simultaneously redrawing and often weakeningboundaries around their personal spheres of privacy.Monitoring and BoundariesFrom investigating crushes, to being in contact with significant others, toenduring breakups, the aspects of digital media that let teens be constantlyin touch also allow them to monitor one another more intently. Thismonitoring varies from researching potential love interests to using ashared password to check up on one’s significant other to attempting torestrict one’s significant other’s communications with his or her friends.Some youth regularly check on their significant other’s websites simply tosee what they are up to. Gabriella, a Latina fifteen-year-old from LosAngeles, logged on to her boyfriend’s profile daily as part of her routineafter she logged on to her own, “just to check” (boyd, Teen Sociality inNetworked Publics). Similarly, Samantha, a white eighteen-year-old fromSeattle, admitted, “I have done some checking up [on my boyfriend]”(boyd, Teen Sociality in Networked Publics). This sort of “checking” behaviorhappens when one has a crush, when one is monitoring one’s romanticpartner, and sometimes after a breakup.The importance of passwords to one’s online presence is central to thesemonitoring practices. Sharing a password both denotes intimacy andallows a significant other to monitor the private portions and manipulatethe public parts of a social network profile. For some couples, such asClarissa and her girlfriend, Genevre, white seventeen-year-olds in northernCalifornia, sharing a password feels like a way to maintain a connectioneven when they are apart. In fact, as Clarissa logged on to her MySpaceprofile she laughed, seeing that her girlfriend had updated it andaltered the background to a more attractive one. However, not all teensfeel comfortable with the amount of power a significant other wieldswith the password. Derrick, the Dominican American sixteen-year-old

140 C. J. Pascoeliving in Brooklyn, New York, argued that girls want the passwordsbecausethey want to check up on you all the time. They want to get your MySpace password,they want to get your AIM password, they want to get your phone, your answeringmachine, the password. They want to get anything they . . . know that another girlcan get in contact with you through. (Sims, Rural and Urban Youth)While Champ, the Latino nineteen-year-old from Brooklyn, shares hispassword, he protects his privacy by changing his password regularly. “Yougotta change it. . . . I’ll be changing mine like every three weeks” (Sims,Rural and Urban Youth). Clarissa’s, Derrick’s, and Champ’s varyingresponses to sharing a password show how this practice is both a sign ofintimacy and a possible invasion of privacy. By refusing to share it, someyouth attempt to set a boundary around their intimate relations, sometimesto the frustration of their significant others, usually girlfriends. Thismay be because some girls feel powerful when they know their boyfriend’spassword. Dana, the Latina fourteen-year-old living in Brooklyn, explained,“I made my boyfriend give me his password and that shows power” (Sims,Rural and Urban Youth). Given the research that documents continuinggender inequality in heterosexual adolescent dating relationships (Hillier,Harrison, and Bowditch 1999; Hird and Jackson 2001; Jackson 1998), it isnot surprising that girls are strategizing ways to feel more powerful in thesepartnerships.In a similar move, some of the youth we spoke with draw boundaries byaltering digital footprints that might make their significant other questiontheir commitment. These footprints may be messages, search histories,phone numbers, or texts that reveal one’s intimacy practices to families,siblings, friends, or significant others. Zelda, the Trinidadian Americanfourteen-year-old living in Brooklyn, New York, actually deletes informationon his site to get rid of evidence that might anger his girlfriend:“Sometimes I’ll just go in there and I delete stuff that girls wrote me. I’lljust delete it.” To avoid these privacy compromises, Champ and Zeldachange the names on their mobile phones. To prevent his girlfriend fromscrolling through to look at his contacts and call logs, Champ records“their names different,” explaining, “Yeah, if it’s a girl’s name, you put aboy’s name that probably sounds similar to it. . . . Like, let’s say the girl’sname is Justine, you’ll probably put Justin” (Sims, Rural and Urban Youth).While these technologies have provided a greater realm of privacy, digital

Intimacy 141footprints might compromise this privacy and thus youth are often drawingdigital boundaries to protect a personal sphere.Some of the monitoring that happens during teens’ relationships veerseerily close to serious emotional control or abuse. Lolo, a fifteen-year-oldLatina from Los Angeles, said that her boyfriend did not like the fact thather social network profile was public. Using the password she shared withhim, “He kinda put it on private, hello. He’s like, ‘I don’t wanna knowevery boy’s going in there searching you’ ” (boyd, Teen Sociality inNetworked Publics). We heard this insecurity over their claim on theirromantic partners throughout our interviews with youth. Teens may intensifysome of the monitoring practices we found as a way to attempt tocontrol some of their anxiety about the stability of their relationships.This sort of control might also intensify when economic transactions areinvolved. In our research, teens sometimes paid their own phone bills, butusually their parents paid. This meant that teens needed to obey theirparents’ rules (to the extent the parents could enforce them) about mobilephone use. Something similar happened when one’s significant other paidthe phone bill. Ono, the Haitian American sixteen-year-old living inBrooklyn, New York, said that her friend’s boyfriend pays her friend’sphone bill and as a resulthe expects when he calls, even if she’s not available, to just pick up and say, “I can’ttalk to you right now, I’ll call you back.” Or if he’s with her, then he would be askingwho else is calling if it’s not her parents or something. That’s what happens whenhe pays your bills. And yeah, he can talk to you every day, even if you’re not free,because he pays for it. (Sims, Rural and Urban Youth)Girls in this type of relationship seemingly trade one type of control,parental, for another (Hijazi-Omari and Ribak 2008). Their privacy is compromisedbecause they do not retain economic control of their mobilephones.Youth monitor one another in the early stages of, during, and after theending of the relationships. This monitoring manages anxiety so centralto teen relationships in which teens for the first time are crafting intimateties with one another. The monitoring capabilities afforded by digitalmedia seem like a way to manage such anxiety as teens seek to put to resttheir fears about vulnerability and betrayal. The ability to monitor othersthrough these new media venues both allows teens to learn about othersand makes them vulnerable to surveillance and control by others.

142 C. J. PascoeVulnerabilityNew media simultaneously increase teens’ vulnerability and their controlover their emotional exposure. This heightened vulnerability may allowteens to craft new and strong emotional connections with one another(e.g., see box 3.2) as well as render them more open to being victimizedby their friends, acquaintances, and other adults. However, the removedand asynchronous nature of some new media also allows them to manageemotional exposure and render teens less vulnerable, especially in the earlystages of a relationship.Box 3.2 Bob Anderson’s Story: “It Was Kind of a Weird CyberGrowing-Up Thing”Christo SimsWhen Bob Anderson was in middle school and the first few years of highschool, social network sites such as MySpace and Facebook had not yet takenhold in the rural region of California where he lived. The popular socialapplication was instant messaging (IM), and Bob would log on for hours aday to chat with other teens. As is emphasized in chapters 2 and 3, theseonline engagements typically enact and extend offline relationships and theidentities associated with them. Bob’s use of IM supports this observation ashe primarily chatted with teenagers from school. Yet Bob, who is now incollege, also tells of using IM to chat with teenagers beyond his given socialworlds. While this book illustrates many instances in which interest-drivenpractices transcend given social worlds, Bob’s story is unique as it falls withinthe realms of friendship and intimacy.Bob recalls forming a friendship through IM with a teenager from the EastCoast. The friendship lasted about two years but the friends never met. Ittook place toward the end of middle school through the early part of highschool. Via conversations on IM, he and his new friend created a space wherevulnerable subjects could be broached and swapped:We kind of went back and forth on a personal level. Talking about a range of things.But we were really just going back and forth with fundamental problems and questionsthat people have with growing up. Going through puberty. Sexual experiences. Whereyou fit in society. Real friends, fake friends.When reflecting on the experience now, he frames the experience as partof the growing-up process:It was kind of a weird cyber growing-up thing. Just like checking in. . . . I was findingout more about myself, and trying to figure out what I was about, and trying to figureout what people were about, and trying to figure out what the world was about.

Intimacy 143Bob makes the point that these were topics that could not be easily discussedin other contexts. As he puts it, “You can suddenly say things you wouldnever say in person.” As chapter 3 shows, new media have become integralto the ways teenagers try to manage exposure and publicity. When it comesto vulnerable subjects, there are particularly good reasons to be cautiousas to what one exposes and to whom. In Bob’s case, he perceives it as saferto expose vulnerabilities to a stranger than to someone he already knows.This may seem counterintuitive but actually makes a lot of sense when oneconsiders the context of his social world. At fourteen, Bob’s given social worldwas small and persistent. His growing up in a rural area meant that his peerbasedsocial world was largely bound to his school. His graduating eighthgradeclass had fewer than thirty students, his high-school class fewer thantwo hundred. Short of a major family transition, these schoolmates wouldmake up his peer-based social world until he left for college. Within thissmall-world context, the consequences of embarrassing exposures and publicmissteps can seem global and resilient.Through IM, Bob and his friend created a space that seemed safely distantfrom these given and ongoing social worlds. As such, personal vulnerabilitiescould be swapped without risking lasting local consequences to reputationand identity. It was a place in which private thoughts, experiences, and feelingscould be voiced for the first time, an intimate sphere, confidential bymeans of a perceived disassociation from the given and ongoing social worldsto which he belonged.Boys in particular, because of contemporary association of vulnerabilitywith a lack of masculinity (Korobov and Thorne 2006), express relief aboutthe extent to which new media allow them to control what they perceiveas emotional vulnerability. They feel less exposed because they can text agirl or leave a message on her MySpace page rather than risk embarrassmentby calling her and stumbling over their words or saying somethingembarrassing. Bob, for instance, said,It’s a lot easier to flirt digitally than it is in person ‘cause there’s no awkward silence.You can’t say something you don’t mean ‘cause you could sit there at one commenton a person’s profile and spend a half an hour making sure that everything is right.Like some words are lowercase on purpose. The punctuation’s just the way . . . I wantit to look sloppy, but it really has this, you know, acute meaning to it. (Sims, Ruraland Urban Youth)The asynchronous nature of texting and leaving messages allows boysto save face when flirting with a new girl. In this way, the controlled

144 C. J. Pascoecasualness discussed earlier is a form of emotion management and a wayto control vulnerability.The same technologies that allow youth to manage emotional exposuremight also render them more vulnerable, in part because of the amountand type of information shared and the speed at which it can travel. Teensare not necessarily in control of digital representations of intimate practicesor in control of the audience who sees those representations. For instance,Elena and Brett, two gregarious white sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds,respectively, from northern California, talk about how embarrassing picturesmight be forwarded. Elena said, “That’s a lot of drama too. They cansend pics to other people.” Brett continued, laughing, “People might takea picture of other people making out at a party.” Elena continued, “Likeso-and-so was kissing so-and-so or that so-and-so made out with so-and-soat a party. Then the next week they’re like, ‘Look at the picture; obviouslyit meant something.’ Then they’re with somebody else.” Elena said that thepicture might get “around school and you’re like, ‘Wait, how did you evenget this picture? You weren’t even at the party.’ It goes further than youthink sometimes.” In this way, even teens’ offline practices may be monitoredonline if people forward compromising pictures of them. This digitalproof of one’s intimate life may spread rapidly, outside of one’s control.The other vulnerability teens talked about is that of the stereotypical riskconveyed through fear-based narratives of the Internet, that of the stalker,the stranger, and the predator. Teens rarely mentioned these stories in ourresearch (apart from noting that this was what adults were concernedabout), but a minority of youth reported having negative interactions withpredatory-type adults online. Those youth who seek out intimate communitiesonline, such as gay teens, might be more at risk for this sort ofunwanted stranger intimacy. For all the opportunities to create communityfor gay teens, the Internet also puts them at risk as they seek this community.Robert, the white seventeen-year-old from Chicago, told a particularlyaffecting story about his experience on the Internet as he was cominginto his early teens.A couple times a week, after my parents went to bed, I visited some Internetsites . . . then after a while, I found a chat room website, a gay teen chat room. Ichatted with a lot of guys; eventually I started to talk to people outside of the chatroom, on MSN Messenger. There were people who wanted to do things with camerasand pictures, and for a while I went along with some of it, not really doing too

Intimacy 145much. Then one day, it wasn’t a teenager who sent me their pic, but an old fat man.I was disgusted, beyond words. I smashed my computer camera, deleted my MSN,and barred any memory from those times out of existence until I recollect now.Robert was trying to explore his sexuality the best he could, as a single gayteen, but in doing so, he ended up on non-age-graded sites, which, thoughnot inherently risky or problematic, may be dangerous for marginalizedteens looking for community. Instead of getting to experiment in morepublic and socially acceptable ways, through structured rituals of heterosexuality,gay teens often must find their own way. On the one hand, theInternet is an invaluable lifeline, but on the other, it renders gay teensmore vulnerable to situations such as this one.New media allow teens to manage their vulnerability; permit them tohave intensely emotional, vulnerable conversations; and render thempotentially susceptible to the forwarding of information about them andvulnerable to those who wish to take advantage of them.Conclusion: Controlled Casualness, Continuous Contact, and PassiveCommunicationWhile many adults may perceive social network sites as being simply glorifieddating sites, this chapter, in conjunction with chapter 2, on friendship,demonstrates that teens are not one-dimensional beings interested only inprurient communications and subjects; rather they craft complex emotionaland social worlds both publicly and privately on and offline.Academic work has rarely taken youth courtship practices seriously, but inexamining the way teens talk about these practices and their emotionsabout them, our project demonstrates that romance practices are centralto teens’ social worlds, culture, and use of new media. For contemporaryAmerican teens, new media provide a new venue for their intimacy practices,and render these practices simultaneously more public and moreprivate. Teens can meet people, flirt, date, and break up beyond the earshotand eyesight of their parents and other adults while also doing these thingsin front of all their online friends. As chapter 2 also points out, participatingin these mediated relational and emotional practices is central to beinga part of an offline social world. Youth are developing new kinds of socialnorms and literacies through these practices as well as learning to participatein technology-mediated publics. These sites of peer-based learning

146 C. J. Pascoeneed to be taken seriously, as they are structuring social and communicativepractices that differ in some important respects from the experiencesof these teens’ parents, and they can become a site of intergenerationaltension and misunderstanding.When meeting and flirting, teens find online communication extremelyuseful. This is especially true in terms of furthering casual acquaintances.They have more freedom to get to know friends of friends or others theyhave met briefly at parties or other group gatherings without risking toomuch embarrassment. They can also use social network sites to learn about,usually unbeknownst to the other person, someone in whom they havean initial interest, be it someone they see every day in class or the personwho sells them burgers at the local fast-food restaurant. While meetingpeople solely online is not the norm, some teens do meet and flirt thatway. Others consider this brave, scary, or weird, depending on their perspective.Their messages and interactions during this time might be characterizedas a “controlled casualness.” Dating teens use new media often,engaging in what one might think of as “continuous contact.” When in arelationship, teens frequently communicate with each other and expecttheir significant others to publicly acknowledge and maintain their relationshipon their social network profiles. Teens’ relationships also endin the presence of their networked publics. The breakups might be activeor passive, but because of their shared publics, teens retain the ability topassively communicate with each other even after ending intimate ties.Their continuing indirect communication about relationship status is away in which these sites enable intimate content to be made very public.This publicity both allows teens to exact revenge and communicate important,but indirect, messages about their emotional states to their formersignificant others. Because of the dearth of research on teens’ intimacypractices, we lack comprehensive comparative case studies, but it seemsthat teens’ current use of new media might be a unique moment in therecent history of teen dating practices. New media allow, and seem toencourage, teens to make relationships and relationship talk explicit. Theylet teens access romantic others’ personal information and share versionsof or information about themselves that might not be done as easily inoffline circumstances. Much as friends have in the past, technology nowacts as a social intermediary, enabling communication that is passive, butvery important, at liminal relationship stages, such as beginnings or

Intimacy 147endings. Finally, among teens in relationships, technology allows them tomaintain a passive copresence with each other and provides new ways tosubvert expectations of that copresence.As we saw in the case of friendship practices, these online tools andcommunication practices make peer-based interaction and pressures moreconsistently available to teens. Unlike more familiar forms of public space,networked publics and private communication channels such as IM andmobile phones can make it harder for parents to passively monitor theirchildren’s romantic communications (though written records of thesecommunications often linger in digital environments should parents knowhow to access them). Youth call and send messages to each other directly,bypassing mediation by parents or siblings. This is part of the trend towardwhat Misa Matsuda (2005) has called “selective sociality,” in which youthcan make more intentional decisions about those with whom they affiliate.Further, some parents do not fully understand the norms that govern teens’online interactions, and the literacies they deploy in these interactions,and thus they may be tempted to resort to blanket prohibitions rather thanmore nuanced forms of guidance. These dynamics are explored further inchapter 4.The snapshot of contemporary teens’ intimacy practices presented inthis chapter indicates that today’s teens are part of a significant shift inhow intimate communication and relationships are structured, expressed,and publicized. Networked publics of different sizes and scales contextualizethese intimate communications and practices, allowing youth toobserve the intimate interactions of others, and conversely, to display theirown emotions, practices, and relationships to select publics. The new possibilitiesof self-expression available online, characterized by more casualand personal forms of public communication, complicate our existingnorms about the boundaries between the public and the private.Notes1. This practice has varied with Alice’s changing access to the text-message functionon her mobile phone, because she depended on her parents’ phone plan.2. As with other parts of teen culture, contemporary practices of dating and romanceare deeply gendered (Best 2000; Martin 1996; Pascoe 2007a). Gender difference andinequality is central to heterosexuality and thus is embedded in dating practices.

148 C. J. PascoeContemporary dating practices emphasize a gender-differentiated heterosexuality inwhich girls frequently possess less subjectivity than boys and in which “power isnaturalized through a discourse of romance” (Best 2000, 67).3. Indeed, in spite of the current flurry of concern over what kids are doing online,the Internet and social network sites have hardly led to an explosion in teen sexualbehavior. In fact, the number of teens who say they have had sex before they graduatedhigh school has declined from 54.1 percent in 1991 to 47.8 percent in 2007(CDC 2007).4. A “wall” is the place on a typical social network site where someone’s Friendmight leave a message for him or her to read. These messages are usually visible toothers, but their public nature depends on the privacy settings of a given profile.5. Christo Sims interviewed Bob several times, such that during the course of ourresearch Bob’s age ranged from nineteen to twenty-one.6. Like many teens, Missy wrote using typical social media shorthand. Translated,her comment would read: “Hey, hmm, what to say? I don’t know. Laughing outloud. Well, I left you a comment. . . . You should feel special haha (smiley face).7. “G” is slang for “gangsta,” in this case an affectionate term for a friend.

4 FAMILIESLead Author: Heather A. HorstTrudy lives in a working-class neighborhood on the outskirts of SiliconValley, where she attends middle school (Horst, Silicon Valley Families). Atthe time of her interview with Heather Horst in the spring of 2006, Trudyand her other twelve-year-old friends recently had taken an interest inMySpace. During the course of the evening, Trudy decided to show Heatherher MySpace page and all the things she was learning to do, which includedcreating a page that she thought would express her personality. She alsotalked about how she used MySpace to stay linked to her friends and saidthat in the past few months she had managed to “Friend” forty-two people.As each Friend appeared on the page, she proceeded to describe eachperson and the various aspects of that person’s MySpace profile that sheliked or disliked. Eventually she came to the profile of her friend Amanda,whose picture was an uploaded image of Hello Kitty. As Trudy talked moreabout Amanda’s page, Heather asked if she knew why Amanda decided toplace Hello Kitty as her main picture. Before Trudy could answer, Trudy’smother, who was washing dishes nearby, chimed in and reminded Trudythat one of the conditions of Amanda’s participation on the site was thatshe agreed to use unidentifiable pictures or images; Amanda’s mother didnot want any real pictures of her daughter on the Internet. However,during the course of browsing through her profile, Trudy discovered thatshe still possessed a picture on her page “tagged” (labeled) with Amanda’sname. Trudy’s mom, who was still looking over her shoulder, remindedher daughter that she should delete or replace Amanda’s residual pictureout of respect for Amanda’s parent’s wishes. Annoyed with what Trudy feltrepresented an invasion of her privacy, she rolled her eyes and said shewould take down the photo “later.”

150 Heather A. HorstThis book focuses on new media engagement, peer-based sociability, andlearning from a youth perspective, with particular attention to learningwith new media that takes place outside of traditional learning institutions,such as schools and families. As noted by Christo Sims in his summary oflarge quantitative surveys of new media use in the United States (see box1.1), however, the vast majority of American households—89 percent—now possesses some form of access to the Internet at home. Alongside theInternet, many families throughout our study also owned mobile phones,portable music players, and gaming systems, although it is important tonote that the latest gaming systems (e.g., PlayStation 3, Wii, Xbox) anddevices such as BlackBerrys and iPhones remain out of economic reach forthe vast majority of our study participants. In effect, a large share of youngpeople’s engagements with new media—using social network sites, instantmessaging services, and gaming—occurs in the context of home andfamily life.Parents, the guardians of the home and family, take seriously their roleas guides and regulators of their children’s participation in this new mediaecology. Just as young people engage with new media based on friendshipdrivenand interest-driven genres of participation, parents and adults’attitudes toward new media reflect their own motivations and beliefs aboutparenting as well as their personal histories and interests in media. Indeed,parents often frame their purchase of new media in relation to the educationalgoals and broader aspirations they hold for their children. From thisvantage point, computers, video cameras, and digital cameras as well asrelated software, education, and training become meaningful to manyfamilies because they represent an investment in their child’s future, onethat they hope will ensure their children’s success in education, work, andincome generation (Bourdieu 1984; Haddon 2004; Lally 2002; Livingstone2002; Sefton-Green and Buckingham 1996; Seiter 2007; see also chapter 7in this book). Parents also leverage new media as motivators or rewardsfor good grades and behavior; graduation or a good report card may resultin a new game, mobile phone, or digital camera. While parents makeefforts to embrace their kids’ interest in new media, they admit that newmedia also incite anxiety and discomfort, which are often tied to moralpanics surrounding media as well as what Ellen Seiter (1999b) has referredto as the “lay theory of media effects,” or the belief that media cause childrento become antisocial, violent, unproductive, and desensitized to a

Families 151variety of influences, such as commercialization, sex, and violence (Altersand Clark 2004b; Cassell and Cramer 2007; Clark 2004; Lusted 1991). 1 Eventhe most media-immersed parents in our study described a deep ambivalenceabout the prominence of new media in their children’s lives and theirrole as parents in influencing their children’s participation in the mediaecologies that structure their sons’ and daughters’ lives.This chapter considers the home and family as an important structuringcontext for informal media engagement 2 and, in turn, explores how parentsand other adults negotiate the incorporation of media in young people’slives. Drawing research materials from a wide range of studies—primarilyChristo Sims (Rural and Urban Youth), Heather A. Horst (Silcon ValleyFamilies), Katynka Z. Martínez (Pico Union Families), Lisa Tripp and BeckyHerr-Stephenson (Teaching and Learning with Multimedia), C. J. Pascoe(Living Digital), danah boyd (Teen Sociality in Networked Publics), PatriciaG. Lange (YouTube and Video Bloggers) and Dan Perkel and Sarita Yardi(Digital Photo-Elicitation with Kids)—we examine parenting strategiessurrounding new media, with particular attention to the structuring andregulation of family life in the home and through new media. The threenumbered boxes in this chapter illustrate the ways in which the use of newmedia in homes and families differ regionally. We begin by concentratingon the spatial and domestic arrangements that shape new media use inthe home, such as the placement of computers. We then turn to the creationof routines and other forms of temporality, including the amount oftime and the textures of kids’ media use. In the final section, our analysiscenters on parents’ and kids’ rules, and the creation, bending, and breakingof rules. We conclude by considering how parents and young people transform,negotiate, and create a sense of family identity through new media.Parenting in the New Media EcologyHome and family environments reflect the values, morals, and aspirationsof families as well as beliefs about the importance and effects of new mediafor learning and communication. Writing in the moment of the first homecomputers, Silverstone, Hirsch, and Morley (1992) observe:Media pose a whole host of control problems for the household, problems of regulationand boundary maintenance. These are expressed generally in the regular cycleof moral panics around new media or new media content, but on an everyday level,

152 Heather A. Horstin individual households, they are expressed through decisions to include andexclude media content and to regulate within the household who watches whatand who listens to and plays with and uses what. (20)As research on youth and the family reveals, the anxiety surrounding theintegration of new media into the home also reflects concerns about independence,separation, and autonomy that, at least in the context ofWestern societies, occur during the teenage years. Parents throughout ourstudies worried about the amount of time that kids spent online and not“with real people,” as one mother described her son’s “addiction” to networkedgaming. Some parents lamented that they felt they had lost control,or that their kids had become too dependent upon their portable games,iPods, and mobile phones. Still other parents expressed concern over theextent to which their kids were spending “too much time” talking withtheir friends over instant messaging, on social network sites, or on themobile phone. While these concerns over dependence and independenceas well as control and autonomy appear to be a persistent family dynamic(Spigel 2001), Alters (2004) argues that during the past forty or fifty yearsthere has been a shift in the nature of parenting in American family life; 3“Since the 1960s, parents have become uneasy about how to raise childrenin light of increases in drug use, delinquency, pregnancy, and suicidesamong children and adolescents” (Alters 2004, 59) as well as broader societalchanges, such as the entrée of women into the workforce and theincrease in divorce rates during the past three decades. Alters further contendsthat parents now feel aware and accountable to themselves, and tosociety at large, regarding the decisions they make in the domestic sphere,a phenomenon she refers to as “reflexive parenting.”The particular expressions of this sense of responsibility or reflexivity—present among most, if not all, of the families we interviewed—remainclosely intertwined with the cultural, social, economic, and educationalcapital associated with class dynamics. In a seminal ethnographic study ofparenting in the United States, Annette Lareau (2003) explores parentingstrategies and the implications of different approaches to parenting forchildren’s chances in life, what she terms the “transmission of differentialadvantages to children.” 5 Examining the ways these patterns of parenting,or the “dominant set of cultural repertoires,” are traversed in everydaylife, Lareau outlines two approaches to parenting that, she argues, correspondwith class positioning. According to Lareau, working-class parents

Families 153in the United States believe in what she terms “the accomplishment ofnatural growth,” a parenting strategy that emphasizes informal play, oftenin and around the house. Lareau outlines how working-class parents, usingwhat she considers a more hands-off approach than their middle-classcounterparts, believe that kids will grow and develop naturally as theynavigate the world. By contrast, middle-class parents operate with a beliefthat it is their responsibility to develop their children through sports,music lessons, and other activities, a practice Lareau terms “concertedcultivation.” One of the main differences between the two parenting strategiesrevolves around the organization of children’s daily lives as well asthe extent to which parents think they should be involved in the innerworkings of their children’s activities in schools and other institutionalizedsettings. Lareau suggests that whereas middle-class parents tend to advocatefor their children in institutionalized settings, working-class parentsvalue respect for authority, particularly of teachers and principals, andprefer to give their children the autonomy to navigate their own relationshipswith peers and the outside world.The dynamics that Lareau describes in school settings and nonmediatedenvironments also emerge in parents’ approaches toward managing mediain the home. For example, Ellen Seiter’s Sold Separately (1993) explores therole of parenting styles and attitudes toward children’s media culture. 4Conducting her research on television and the use of kids’ videos andcartoons, Seiter draws connections between class, education, and aspirationin her analysis of children’s media and family life in the United States.In particular, Seiter focuses on the relationship of the media industry,parents, and kids in shaping values and attitudes toward particular formsof media consumption and participation. Based on her textual analysis ofchildren’s toy advertisements and the ways in which parents interpret andattempt to control children’s use of commercial television characters intheir everyday play, Seiter reveals how middle- and working-class parentsexternalize their values through the toys and media they encourage theirchildren to play with and ultimately demonstrates how class biases towardtoys and media are reinforced (cf. Chin 2001; Livingstone and Bovill 2001;Roberts and Foehr 2008; Seiter 2005; Thorne 2008). 5Whereas much of the early literature on parenting and media attributeddifferential adoption of new media in the family to class dynamics, a recentstudy by Hoover, Clark, and Alters (2004) attempts to situate family modes

154 Heather A. Horstof media incorporation in relation to the construction of family identity(see also Matsuda 2007; Spigel 1992). Building on their work based in themetropolitan areas of Colorado, the authors focus on how religious andother sociomoral beliefs, values, and worldviews (and to a lesser extenteducational, social, and cultural capital associated with class dynamics)influence parenting styles and attitudes toward new media. MirroringSilverstone and Hirsch’s 6 (1992) notion of the moral economy of the household,Hoover, Clark, and Alters (2004) contend that many parents feel thepressure to restrict and control their children’s use of new media due tothe cultivation of their family identity, or reputation. 7 Throughout thischapter, we examine how these different discourses and parentingapproaches become embedded in the strategies parents employ to regulateand maintain control over media and media uses among the family. In thefollowing section, we describe the ways in which parents and families craftmedia spaces, the first of three strategies we observed being employedthrough the course of our research.Crafting Media Spaces at HomeThe decision to acquire new media means making decisions about wherenew media will fit within the current domestic ecology of media objects. 8These decisions may revolve around the affordability of a particularmedium, as well as infrastructural issues, such as the potential location ofa desktop computer, laptop, or gaming system in the home (Alters 2004;Lally 2002; James, Jenks, and Prout 1998). Holloway and Valentine (2003)contend that where families place computers and other new media in thehome often shapes whether they are used individually or collectively aswell as how long and how frequently new media might be used. Forexample, when parents put a computer in their children’s bedroom, kidstend to associate its presence in their bedroom with ownership. As a result,kids often take on a role as a person who can restrict the amount of timethat others can access “their” digital camera, iPod, gaming machine, orother new media (Holloway and Valentine 2003; Livingstone 2003).Public Media Spaces: Halls, Dens, Kitchens, and Recreation RoomsGiven parents’ concerns over the ability to control and monitor theirchildren’s media use, many parents elect to place larger media objects, suchas gaming systems and desktop computers, in the public spaces of the

Families 155home. Bakardjieva (2005) finds that many Canadian families place mediain the living room and construct family computer rooms as well as “wired”basements, which are designed for new media usage (Lally 2002; Livingstone2002). Like many of the families in Bakardjieva’s study, the families whoparticipated in the Digital Youth Project situated computers in kitchens,hallways, and other spaces of the home where parents possessed the optionto monitor what their kids were doing. This pattern was particularlycommon in many of the Los Angeles households with space constraints,as well as in Silicon Valley households, where families used kitchens anddining rooms to eat together and complete homework. Other families,such as those who live in the suburban-style developments of ruralCalifornia (Sims, Rural and Urban Youth), prefer to place their computersin a shared family “den” or “study” (Bakardjieva 2005; Clarke 2001).In some of the wealthier households in Silicon Valley (Horst, SiliconValley Families), families designed new spaces to house new media, suchas home offices, playrooms, and recreation rooms (Clarke 2004, 2007;Gutman and de Coninck-Smith 2007; James, Jenks, and Prout 1998). Forexample, the Chens, an Asian-American family in Silicon Valley, lived ina large five-bedroom house and were in the process of remodeling theirhome to integrate a recreation area as an extension on the back of theirgarage. The Chens planned to add a Wii to their existing media collection,which included a large-screen TV, speakers, and a PlayStation 2, so the kidscould practice tennis and play other “physical” games with their friends;their dad also expressed excitement at the prospect of practicing his golfswing. Mrs. Chen hoped that this new entertainment space apart from themain house would become a gathering place for her two teenage sonsand their friends. She thought that the space would enable her to knowand monitor where they were as well as what they were doing. Indeed,Mrs. Chen’s plan to create a house-based entertainment center for her twosons and their friends reflected the centrality of kids’ engagement withgames and gaming in their everyday social lives. While the full-scale reconstructionof a garage was an extreme example of household modificationsto accommodate new media, 9 most families opted to modify or convertexisting spaces (e.g., playrooms or family rooms) into media rooms.Private Media Spaces: The BedroomWhile some parents prefer to place media in the public spaces of the home,the bedroom holds a special place in the imaginations of many youth. As

156 Heather A. HorstMcRobbie and Garber ([1978] 2000) argued three decades ago, girls typicallyview bedrooms as important spaces where they feel relatively freeto develop or express their sense of self, or identity, particularly throughthe decoration, organization, and appropriation of their bedroom space(Clarke 2001; Kearney 2006; Mazzarella 2005; Steele and Brown 1995). Inmany homes, the arrival of relatively affordable and portable media hassolidified the importance of the bedroom as a space where one can usenew media in these endeavors and assume individual control over one’sown media world. As Livingstone and Bovill (2001) assert, “What is clearis that the media—particularly screen media—are playing an increasinglysignificant role within the more solitary, more peer-oriented space ofthe bedroom” (180–81). They further suggest that the more “media-rich”bedrooms are, the more likely it is that kids will spend time in theirbedrooms using the media, away from the rest of the family and the morepublic spaces of the home.As Livingstone and Bovill observe, many parents believe that when kids’bedrooms become the focal point of their activities at home, they lose theability to monitor and guide their children’s activities. For this reason,many parents fear what happens behind closed doors. Kira, a seventeenyear-oldin Seattle who lives with her aunt and uncle (boyd, Teen Socialityin Networked Publics), describes the tension surrounding her bedroom andher aunt’s regulation of her media usage:[My aunt] just always wants me to be involved with the family, but then when I’msitting out [in the living room] I get completely ignored so I don’t like being outthere. I mean I’ll sit out there because I know she wants me to, but then once shegoes to bed at 8:00 I’m in my room where I can turn on my music and watch myTV or talk on my phone or whatever. I can’t pretty much even look at my cell phonein front of her because she gets mad, thinks I’m on it all the time. I’m like I justignored five calls. How am I on it all the time? She makes me so mad.Kira continues,I have a TV in my room with cable and everything but my aunt flips out if I go inmy room. She’s like, you’re always in there, you’re always hibernating in there, andshe thinks I’m smoking pot in my room because I light incense. Incense relaxes me;I mean I’m not stupid; I’m not going to smoke pot in my room. Like you guys aren’tgoing to smell it?Kira’s desire to relax and be herself, what her aunt interprets as “hibernating”in her bedroom, appears to affirm Livingstone and Bovill’s (2001)

Families 157findings in the United Kingdom. However, Kira’s own awareness that herroom is not completely separated—that her family can smell what she isdoing in her room—suggests that teens do understand that bedrooms aremuch less private in practice than they are in the popular imagination anddiscourse. For example, Sam, a seventeen-year-old in Cedar Rapids, Iowa,described to danah boyd (Teen Sociality in Networked Publics) that whilehe sees his room as relatively private, he still refrains from using mediaand technology while in his bedroom:When the door is closed, but I don’t . . . I don’t like talking on the phone in myhouse at all. Just because, it’s not like a two-room shack, but it’s not huge, and younever know what’s going to go through those walls. What’s going to make themthink that something . . . this is happening or whatever, so, I don’t.Similarly, fourteen-year-old Leigh in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, told danahboyd that her house does not feel private to her “just because my familyis just . . . I don’t know. My mom comes and looks in my room and stuff.I don’t really like that” (Teen Sociality in Networked Publics). Sixteen-yearoldMelissa of Marion, Iowa, complained to danah that while her roommay be nominally private, her mother possesses the freedom of movementto come and go as she pleases:Because there are a lot of things that my mom does that make me feel like it’s notprivate. I can be taking a shower and she’ll come in, go to the bathroom, and leave.She has no respect for my personal privacy. I can be sitting on the computer talkingto a friend and she’ll be reading over my shoulder and I don’t want her to. That’snot really private to me. . . . Private is kind of like a place where I can kind of goand just be by myself and not have to worry about anyone doing anything. . . . Mymost important thinking goes on when I’m either in bed, in the shower, or in mycar. (Teen Sociality in Networked Publics)As becomes evident, parents sometimes assert their status in the familyhierarchy by moving through the home freely, even when a space isdeemed to belong to their kids. In addition, sharing a room or a computerwith a sibling has an impact on the sense of privacy teens feel and, in someinstances, renders privacy almost impossible. Numerous teens discussedhow their siblings used their computer or accessed their accounts to talkto their friends through IM or social network sites while pretending to bethem. Ana-Garcia, a half-Indian, half-Guatemalan fifteen-year-old fromLos Angeles (boyd, Teen Sociality in Networked Publics), described howher brother

158 Heather A. Horsthacked onto my AIM and my MySpace, and he just started talking to people, andthen the next day when I went on, they were like, “What was wrong with youyesterday? Why were you acting all mean to me?” I was like, “It was not me. It wasmy brother,” so he does that a lot.Ana-Garcia explained to her friends that her brother was the one responsiblefor being “mean.” While many of her friends believed her, she worriedthat one day he might take his pranks too far. In an effort to make herbrother stop, Ana-Garcia told her parents, but, she said that because he isthe boy in the family, her brother rarely gets punished. The lack of privacysurrounding Ana-Garcia’s new media usage reflects a general frustrationAna-Garcia holds about being a girl and the lack of freedom, privacy, andcontrol this entails, at least in her family.Alongside age and gender dynamics, the size and infrastructure of homesalso contributes to the negotiation of privacy in domestic spaces. AsKatynka Martínez suggests in her description of Maxwel Garcia and hisfamily (see box 4.1), for many other low-income families who live in tightquarters, the retreat into the bedroom and the creation of bedroom cultureis simply not an option.Box 4.1 The Garcia Family: A Portrait of Urban Los AngelesKatynka Z. MartínezMaxwel, a fourteen-year-old seventh-grade boy, lives in a studio apartmentwith his mother, Lydia, and two older sisters. The tight living quarters makeBovill and Livingstone’s (2001) concept of a “bedroom culture” difficult toapply to these kids’ digital-media environment. Since the family’s livingquarters do not include traditional bedrooms, the increasing availability ofmedia in such rooms becomes a nonissue. This is not to say that digital mediaare absent from the kids’ home environment. Maxwel’s oldest sister owns adigital camera and he owns a Game Boy. In addition, there are two televisionsets in the apartment, one hooked up to a VCR/DVD player and one hookedup to a Nintendo 64. Maxwel’s favorite TV shows are Yu-Gi-Oh! and Lilo andStitch, but the family makes joint decisions about what to watch on television.On the day of my interview with the family, the television was set to thelocal news on Spanish-language television. By the time the interview wasover, Maxwel and his sister had watched Spanish-language news, the localnews on an English-language television station, X-Men 2, and Bend It LikeBeckham. The family does not pay for cable television or satellite service soboth movies were viewed as broadcast television programming.

Families 159In the case of this family, the television set is the media object that hasbeen used to create a shared family time-space. For example, Maxwel oftenwatches telenovelas, Spanish-language soap operas, with his mother. Maxwelmentioned watching “the one at seven,” and when I asked if he was referringto the telenovela Peregrina, Maxwel and his mom immediately answered withan enthusiastic “yes.” During the interview with Lydia, she struggled toremember the title of an English-language television program that she likes.She asked her son for the title and he asked her “el de los que siempre estánfumados?” (“The one where they’re always stoned?”) This description of That’70s Show resonated for Maxwel’s mom and she said that she enjoyed watchingthe program because “Cuando uno esta joven, todo se te hace fácil.” (“Whenone is young, everything seems easy.”) Lydia does not understand the Englishlanguage but says that she can follow the physical humor used in Englishlanguagesitcoms. She also enjoys watching wrestling with her kids. Thetheatricality and physicality of World Wrestling Entertainment make it easyfor a non-English speaker to follow the television programs.Lydia was able to attend school up to only the fourth grade in her hometownof Mexico City. She came to the United States with her then husbandand two daughters. Maxwel was born in the United States a few years afterthe family arrived in the country. Lydia explains that while she encouragesher kids’ use of computers, she hasn’t tried to incorporate computers into herown life. She says that she often joins her children on their trips to the publiclibrary or the local community center and looks on while they use computers.However, she does not actually use them herself because, as she explained,her first goal is to make sure that her kids have everything they need tosucceed in school and her second goal is to learn English.Lydia was unemployed at the time the interview was conducted. Her lastjob had been as a garment worker using embroidery machines in a factory.She brought out a hat and showed it off as both an example of the work thatshe did and also to draw attention to her favorite Mexican soccer team. WhenLydia was employed at the sewing factory she often worked nights and didnot see her children in the morning or immediately after school. When sheworked into the early morning she used her mobile phone to call her kidsand remind them to eat breakfast. She also expected them to call her mobilephone when they came home from school. She explained that her phonerecorded the time and place from where the call was made and that shereturned her kids’ phone calls during her break.Maxwel and his sisters have asked their mom for mobile phones butshe does not have the funds to buy them. Her eldest daughter is twentyyears old and bought her own mobile phone. This daughter sells carpetcleaner door-to-door and is the owner of the family’s digital camera. WhenMaxwel was asked what he used the camera for, he explained that it was used

160 Heather A. Horst“on my confirmation, or on my sisters’ birthdays, or my birthdays, or mymom’s birthday or special occasions.” In addition to snapping pictures onthese “special occasions,” Maxwel had recently used the camera for a scienceexperiment and his mother used the camera to take pictures at the marchfor immigrants’ rights that was held in Los Angeles, and nationwide, onMay 1, 2006.The digital camera also has been used to document apartment fixtures invarious stages of decay. Lydia explained that she took classes at a local communitycenter and learned about her rights as a tenant. She also learned abouthow to use photographs to record landlord negligence by watching La Cortedel Pueblo (The People’s Court), a Spanish-language program that presents reenactmentsof actual court cases. She said that the ceiling in her bathroom wasinflated and one day caved in, almost hitting her daughter. Another time, thekitchen ceiling caved in and released rat feces all over the room. This happenedon Maxwel’s birthday. Lydia said that she had made multiple pots of tamalesand that she was lucky the ceiling did not fall apart while she was cooking. Shetook pictures of both the bathroom- and kitchen-ceiling incidents and thenused these photos to argue against having to pay a full month’s rent.Lydia explained that she can barely afford to pay the rent for her apartment,let alone buy the kids video games. The family buys video games, which costabout thirty-five dollars, on credit at a local indoor swap meet. The Nintendo64 that Maxwel owns was a gift from a friend with whom they shared anapartment. The family computer was also a gift. Maxwel’s godparents gavehim this computer for his birthday but it broke and his godfather took thecomputer to be repaired. This was a year ago. Lydia explained that Maxwel’sgodfather “llevó la cabeza o el monitor, cómo se llama? Y no lo ha traída” (“tookthe brain or the monitor, what is it called? And he hasn’t returned it”). Thegodfather had taken the hard drive and Maxwel’s family was left with onlya printer and monitor. The monitor has been laid to rest with a plastic coverand is kept in a walk-in closet that also functions as a small bedroom (seefigure 4.1). The desk that the monitor was on now serves as a table for stuffedanimals and knickknacks. Although the printer is not connected to a computer,it is still kept on the bottom shelf of the desk.While the Garcia family does not represent a media-rich household, thefamily was eager to share stories and artifacts related to their media practices.During the course of the interview Maxwel and his mom brought out photoalbums with pictures of graduations, first communions, baptisms, and birthdayparties. They also brought out their digital camera and displayed thephotos of the immigrants’ rights march that were still stored on the device.Lydia was asked how the immigrants’ rights march compared to these familyevents. She explained:

Families 161Figure 4.1The Garcia family’s closet/makeshift bedroom also stores a broken computer. Photo byKatynka Z. Martínez, 2006.Nosotros decidimos sacarles fotos de toda la marcha porque para mí fue un día . . . gracias aDios . . . especial. Todos los días son especial. Pero de ver de que si todos de nosotros estamosapoyandonos va a cambiar todo. Entonces, para mí esos fotos me sirvieron en lo personal paradecir de que si yo apoyo a mi hijo él puede llegar más arriba. Para bien. No para cosas malas.Pero si yo no lo apoyo, es como . . . está solo. No hay quien lo escucha, quien lo va a ayudar,quien lo va a apoyar, quien le va a decir, “Sigue adelante.” Entonces esas fotos que saqué contanta gente allí me hizo ver que la unión hace la fuerza para cada persona para lograr lo quequeremos para bien. No para mal.

162 Heather A. Horst(We decided to take pictures of the entire march because for me it was a day thatwas . . . thank God . . . very special. Every day is special. But to see that if all of us supporteach other everything is going to change. So, for me those photos served a personalpurpose because they say that if I support my son he can achieve something higher. Forgood. Not for bad things. But if I don’t support him, it’s like . . . he’s alone. There is noone to listen to him, who will help him, who will support him, who will say, “Continuemoving forward.” So those pictures that I took with so many people there made me seethat unity brings strength and makes it possible for every person to achieve what wewant for good. Not for bad.)By using the family’s digital camera to collect visual evidence of landlordneglect and by also taking her kids and the camera to an immigrants’ rightsmarch, Lydia is demonstrating the multiple ways that this simple device canbe used as a tool of empowerment for the whole family and even for a largerimmigrant community.Moreover, and as much of the work on domestic space and childhoodreveals (Aries 1962; Clarke 2004; Miller 2001), homes and bedrooms arenot static entities. Just as families upgrade media or shift the ownership ofnew media objects among parents and kids, homes also change throughtime as children grow older and families disperse. Indeed, going off tocollege remains an important landmark. For example, Ben, a participantin Megan Finn, David Schlossberg, Judd Antin, and Paul Poling’s“Freshquest” study, described how he shared his first computer, a handme-downfrom his parents, with his brother in their bedroom after hisparents bought a “new, fancy computer.” Later, he managed to acquire hisown computer. Ben explained:When my sister moved out and went to college, my half sister, yeah, she went tocollege, then I moved into her room. And the computer was, I mean, then therewere three people in different rooms and the computer was going to be in one ofour rooms. And obviously we can see a lot of frictions building up, whose room is,whose room is it gonna be? Right, [my twin brother] wanted [the computer] in hisroom, I wanted [the computer] in my room, and finally my parents caved and justbought [a] new computer all together.As Ben suggested, parents often expect siblings to share computers andbedrooms when they are younger. However, when Ben’s sister moved outand went to college, Ben and his brother each received their own bedrooms.To resolve the conflict over where to put the shared “kids’ computer,”Ben’s parents decided it was simply easier to buy a new computer

Families 163than mediate between arguing siblings. As this example illustrates, youthare constantly struggling to gain privacy and autonomy to engage withmedia and online communication, and this often plays out in negotiationsover the location and ownership of media in the home.Mobility and Other Media SpacesWhile homes continue to be viewed as the nexus for modern family life,families are certainly not restricted to the bounded space of the home.Parents work outside the home, and kids attend school and participate inafter-school and enrichment programs. Young people also hang out at theirfriends’ houses. These spaces provide kids with opportunities to use medianot available, and sometimes not allowed, in their own home(s). AsDominic, a sixteen-year-old from Seattle, explained to danah boyd (TeenSociality in Networked Publics) while sitting with two of his friends, “I don’tplay [World of Warcraft], because I don’t have the money for the monthlyfee, but these two do, and I . . . I’ll watch them sometimes when I go overto their house, and some, maybe, occasionally I’ll play with them.” AsDominic suggests, many teenagers and kids learn about new media whilehanging out with friends whose parents make different rules about the typeand extent of media their kids can play, watch, or use. With a few exceptions,parents acknowledge that their kids do use and gain access to newmedia elsewhere. While they might prefer that their kids follow the sameguidelines they outline at home, typically to not play first-person shootersor watch sexually explicit movies, they also recognize that what happensoutside their own domestic domain remains largely out of their control.Moreover, an awareness of the potential social implications of enforcingthese restrictions also play a role in parents’ decisions about the extent towhich they attempt to impose their own rules at other families’ homes.Young people also take advantage of opportunities to operate under adifferent set of rules when they visit family members whom they do notregularly live with. Andrew, a ten-year-old elementary-school student wholives in Berkeley, California, told Dan Perkel and Sarita Yardi (Digital Photo-Elicitation with Kids):At our house we only have computer games . . . where you learn stuff. We don’thave fighting games. . . . The only game that doesn’t have to do with adding orsubtracting or dividing or multiplying or anything that’s really close to math iscalled Sim Theme Park, which is where you make a theme park on the computer.

164 Heather A. HorstWhile games at home are restricted to the computer and the genre ofedutainment (Ito 2007; see also chapter 5), Andrew’s grandmother’s houseis a place where “we get to watch TV, watch movies, play videogames . . . once a month for a weekend. And we just came back from springbreak, ten days with them.” In fact, Andrew’s uncle and grandparentsbought a variety of game systems and games for Andrew and his brother,Nick, over the past few years, including a GameCube, Super Nintendo,Nintendo 64, PlayStation, PlayStation 2, Game Boy, Game Boy Color,Game Boy SP, Game Boy DS, and Sega Dreamcast, as birthday and holidaygifts. Out of respect for their parents, the boys’ grandparents store all thegames at their home, the only place where the boys can play. In fact, whentheir uncle buys games for Andrew and Nick on holidays and birthdays,he sends them directly to the boys’ grandparents’ house. Andrew andNick’s parents may not like the fact that they play games during the visitsto their grandparents’ house, but they also recognize that it is a differentdomestic space and therefore out of their control.In this section, we outline the physical and social contexts that structurewhere young people access media, whether that is in the public spaces inthe home, more private spaces such as the bedroom, or in the homes offriends and extended family. In all these settings, youth may desire autonomyand independence from the rules and regulations of their everydayhome and family life. However, given parents’ concerns about and senseof responsibility over their children’s lives and activities, most parents donot grant their sons and daughters full autonomy and control over theirmedia and communications. Rather, and as we continue to see throughoutthis chapter, young people’s attempts to maintain privacy and ownershipover their media usage and the media spaces where their engagement withnew media takes place remain an ongoing struggle in their everyday lives.Making, Taking, and Sharing Media TimeIn addition to structuring the place of media in the space of the home, thefamily context also shapes how and when family members spend theirtime using new media. The temporal rhythms of the family and the householdtake a variety of forms, from media engagements that are sharedamong family members to the varied ways in which parents regulate howand what forms of media their children use. As we demonstrate, the rou-

Families 165tines that guide new media use and family life are closely intertwined withthe organization of domestic space.Spending Time TogetherAlmost all the families we spoke with explicitly expressed how much theyvalued spending time together as a family, although many teenagers notedthat they still preferred to spend time with their friends, boyfriends, andgirlfriends. In Heather Horst’s study “Silicon Valley Families,” parents whopossessed disposable income noted that their family holiday representeda time to “unplug” from the mediated environment and busy-ness ofeveryday life (see Darrah, Freeman, and English-Lueck 2007). However,even in the families who idealized unplugging, scheduling time to watchtelevision shows, movies, or videos together also emerged as a time to relaxand take a break from the fast pace of life. Many families came to viewusing media as a way to facilitate communication and bonding.Within some families, games can become the primary vehicle for parentsand kids, and particularly fathers and sons, to connect (see chapter 5).Miguel, a ten-year-old who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, describedthe relationship with his dad to Dan Perkel and Sarita Yardi (Digital Photo-Elicitation with Kids) that developed over playing games. Perkel and Yardiwrite in their fieldnotes:The only time Miguel talked about his father during the interview (his parents wereseparated) was in reference to the fact that he and his dad used to play PlayStationtogether. He recalled a time some years prior when his dad and older cousins allplayed the PlayStation together and teased him for how he used the controller. These“motivators” seemed to be a powerful, good memory for him.Miguel explained this to Dan Perkel in their interview:Dan: Where did you learn to play all of the games on your PlayStation?Miguel: Well, my dad, we used to play like every night . . . every Fridaynight, Saturday night, Sunday night, whatever.Dan: You used to play with your dad?Miguel: Yeah, and he would invite my cousins to come over and stuff.We’d borrow games from my uncles.Dan: Were they all older than you?Miguel: Yeah.Dan: And did they teach you how to play or did you figure it out foryourself?

166 Heather A. HorstMiguel: They taught me how to play. Like, I used to . . . you know howwhen you play car games the car moves to the side and stuff? I would golike this with the control [moves arms wildly from side to side simulatingholding a game controller as if he were racing]. So . . . they taught me howto keep still and look at the screen . . . hand-eye coordination.Dan: Hand-eye coordination? Where did you here that term from?Miguel: TV.Both: [laugh]Other families view gaming as a more persistent site of family togethernessthat they move in and out of fluidly (see figure 4.2). Patricia Lange (YouTubeand Video Bloggers) interviewed Akmalla, a twelve-year-old white girl inLos Angeles, who regularly plays World of Warcraft with her parents.Patricia: So for weekends you’re pretty much at your computer?Akmalla: Yeah, weekends I’m at my computer in front of the TV screenwith a couple sodas in front of me. But my mom and dad play World ofWarcraft as well.Patricia: Oh, do they?Figure 4.2Two sisters playing games together. Photo by Heather A. Horst, 2007.

Families 167Akmalla: So we’re usually just sitting in the same exact room on the samecouch playing the same game going, “Oh, what are you doing?” “Oh, that’snice.”Patricia: And so do you play with, like, do you play by fighting your momand your dad?Akmalla: Yeah, we can play alongside each other. We can fight each other.Patricia: Do you usually fight each other or do you band together andfight like others?Akmalla: Well, we try to get in a group to do a quest or something andwe usually end up yelling at each other because it’s just a family thing. It’slike we’re walking and it’s like, “Where are you?” “We’re on the beach.”“Which beach?” “This beach.” “What? You ahhh!”Rather than a forced family gathering (e.g., “family time”), the socialatmosphere as well as her parents’ own interest in and skills playing Worldof Warcraft enable the family to be together by participating in an activitythat the entire family now shares as an interest.Whereas some families spend time together hanging out playing gamesor watching television, other families gather around a variety of media tomake websites and videos and edit digital photographs while together. Inthese spaces, kids are often given the opportunity to work alongside theirparents (typically their father), and parents continue to support their kids’interests by buying new media for the next project. In middle-class homes,such as that of the Millers (see box 4.2), families gather around a varietyof media in effort to learn about and gauge interest, practices that parentsdescribe as taking an interest in or, in the words of many parents, “stayinginvolved with” their kids.In many of the studies in Los Angeles (e.g., Tripp and Herr-Stephenson,Los Angeles Middle Schools; Martínez, Pico Union Families), kids play animportant role as the technology expert or broker in the family, translatingwebsites and other forms of information for their parents. Twelve-year-oldMichelle in Lisa Tripp and Becky Herr-Stephenson’s study “Teaching andLearning with Multimedia” noted what she taught her mother, a singleparent, from El Salvador:How to send emails, but sometimes, I check it first, because she does it wrong. AndI taught her how to like . . . sometimes, she wants to upload pictures from mycamera, and I show her, but she doesn’t remember, so I have to do it myself. Mostly,I have to do the picture parts. I like doing the pictures.

168 Heather A. HorstBox 4.2 The Miller Family: A Portrait of a Silicon Valley FamilyHeather A. HorstThe Miller family lives in a leafy-green suburb of Silicon Valley in a fourbedroomhome with a yard, dog, and basketball hoop at the bottom of thedriveway. Like other middle-class professional parents in this study, Eli andMiriam Miller work in the technology industry and view themselves as theproducers of software, code, and other systems that fuel the literal and figurativeengine of the Silicon Valley economy. This close relationship with technologyand the technology industry shapes the ways that families such as theMillers think about, use, and imagine the possibilities of technology anddigital media.In the construction of their family identity, the Millers decided to developa family website that includes photographs, descriptions of family vacations(their “trip log”), as well as details about key family events, such as birthdayparties, anniversaries, graduations, and bat and bar mitzvahs for their threechildren. The front page of the family website consists of the beaming familygathered in the water in wet suits around a dolphin after a recent visit toSeaWorld, Mom and Dad on the left of the dolphin and the three kids gatheredin birth order on the right. Each family member created a funny quote typedin different-colored ink next to his or her picture—Dad typed “I think I mightbe touching something I shouldn’t be” above his head; Iraina wrote, “I havesalt watter in my mouth!!! Can we PLEESE gett this over with?”; and Jonathancommented, “I feel like a dork in this life jacket.” Originally Eli Miller, whois a consultant with training and experience in engineering, created andmaintained the site. Each of the kids has his or her own webpage, whereEli encourages them to express and explore their individual interests,which include information about the Darfur conflict, the youngest son’sdevelopment of a podcasting site called Reality, and Iraina’s recent tripto Israel.Along with creating the family website, the Millers like to mess aroundwith digital media. Iraina explained the use of new media when they are athome:My brother just got a digital video camera for his birthday; it was his big present thisyear. And I was like . . . like I was having fun with it. I always thought it’s kind of coolerin theory because for me I don’t want to actually take the time and sit down and edita whole movie because for me that’s just not worth it. I love to come up with the basicconcepts and then give people advice if they do it. . . . But to actually sit down and hearsomeone say the same words over and over and over again while you’re trying to getthe right cut would drive me crazy. I heard my dad trying to do it for my grandparentswhen we filmed them for their anniversary and we were talking about their wedding.And it was kind of a little documentary thing. Only we forgot to bring a stand that day

Families 169and my mom let us kids film them. And so my dad was trying to edit it and put picturesin where it was really bouncy and stuff. . . . It would just drive me crazy because youhave to hear the person say the same words over and over and over again. . . . I don’tthink I would ever be able to do that.Another thing is Daddy, for his birthday, just got kind of from himself, kind of frommyself—he told everyone he wanted one. He got a professional radio mic [microphone],so we’ve been playing around with that. And he’s been tampering with it [also forJonathan’s podcasting] and you can put the sound through headphones and you cansing around with your own voice. We were just playing with it before and he got a soundboard and a mic so it’s really cool.As a family, Iraina and her family’s collaboration strategy involves anegalitarian-expertise model in their incorporation of digital media. Eachfamily member—Iraina and her brother, sister, mom, or dad—develops aninterest and, in turn, gets involved in the use and/or process of using thedigital media that he or she enjoys. Other family members, usually their dad,then tries to develop the technical expertise that will enable everyone toexperiment and play with the media objects. Eli Miller, in particular, sees themaintenance of this expertise as a way to make sure the kids extend theirknowledge and interests. However, despite the relatively egalitarian ethos ofcreating websites and videos, there are times when the development of expertisefor the family turns competitive. Jonathan suggested this when discussinghis new podcasting project:Jonathan: I think with podcasting is one of the first things I kind of gottenmy dad into. He doesn’t actually subscribe to podcast, but he’s thinking aboutmaybe making his own podcast or thinking of ideas even. So it’s . . .Heather: You’re the one who influenced?Jonathan: I’m the one who’s doing it. So it’s kind of a cool thing.When families work together, the leadership continues to come fromparents, and particularly fathers, at the beginning and end of the collaborationprocess, sometimes regardless of experience or expertise. But whentalking to kids about the role of their parents in this process, we find that thekids who engage in these familial collaborations discover that there are opportunitiesto subvert the normal power dynamics in the family by becomingparticularly good at or interested in a technology or practice. In such families,the proliferation of new media and technologies in the household provideskids and parents with a space to explore the possibilities of these tools. Ratherthan learning skills for specific educational outcomes, upwardly mobile middle-classfamilies such as the Millers view these tools as contributing to thewider development of their kids as individuals as well as the construction ofa family identity.

170 Heather A. HorstSimilarly, Lisa Tripp talked to a mother named Rita about her motivationfor spending time on the computer with her middle-school-aged sonAndrew. Rita, a single parent in Los Angeles, explained:Se me hace más para estar cerca de él, estar jugando con él, porque él es un niño muy serio.De repente es más separado. Es bien tierno, pero es de repente separado. Entonces, a él legusta, de repente que yo esté con él. O él me dice: “mami: esto;” o “¿me ayudas a buscarpalabras?” “¿Me ayudas?” Que le dejan muchas letras y le gusta buscar palabras. Y a mícomo me encanta eso, y de rompecabezas también, es la forma de acercarme a él y estarmás cerca con él, y que él me tenga confianza y ganas de estar siempre ahí. . . . Casi siempreme gusta estar más cerca de él, porque él tiene carácter de repente más explosivo. Y, a veces,la computadora nos sirve para quedar más en una zona de acuerdo.(It is to be close to him, to be playing with him, because he is a very serious quietkid. He can be very sweet, but tends to hang out by himself. Sometimes he growsdistant. And then, suddenly, he’ll want me to be with him but sometimes he likesme being with him. Or he might say, “Mommy, look at this,” or, “Would you helpme look for words?” “Would you help me?” Sometimes he gets an assigment tostudy several new letters at once. He gets many letters, and he likes looking forwords. And since I like all that, and I also like puzzles, it is a way for me to get closerto him and be together. It is an opportunity for him to get to trust me, and continueenjoying being together for him to know that I am always there. . . . In general, Itry to get I have always liked to be close to him because he has a strong temper.And sometimes the computer helps us get along better.) (Translation by MartinLamarque and Lisa Tripp)As Rita suggested, this give and take surrounding media is a way tobecome closer and feel connected; the computer mediates between thegenerations.Whereas watching DVDs together on Sunday evening, helping out onthe computer, or editing recordings of matches or family events structuredmany of our participants’ use of media as a family, we also observed theimportance of new media for families separated by vast geographic distances.For example, transnational families take advantage of the possibilitiesof new media, including cassette tapes, videocassettes, DVDs, andonline media, to intensify their sense of connection and communication,such as producing videos of graduations, weddings, funerals, and otherevents to circulate among family members living abroad (Basch, Schiller,and Szanton-Blanc 1994; Horst 2006; Panagakos and Horst 2006; Wilding2006). Among Silicon Valley families with transnational connections, oneof the most popular ways of feeling like a family involved the exchange

Families 171of emails, which were typically written by the mother in the family. Familywebsites and online photo albums, including photos shared through publicsites such as Kodak Gallery and Shutterfly, emerged as important spacesfor families to share information and pictures of one another. Familieswithout regular or reliable Internet connections, such as in the studies offamilies in urban Los Angeles, viewed mobile phones and phone cards thatcatered to the Central American market as an important communicationmedium.In addition to various forms of personal media sharing, online conversationalmedia are increasingly used by transnational families to communicate.Transnational families with greater economic means also use newmedia such as Skype and webcams to enhance their sense of connectionand communication. 10 Raj, a freshman who participated in Megan Finnand colleagues’ “Freshquest” study, noted:It’s pretty neat to be able to see my brother, my family twelve thousand miles awayover the sea. . . . I just use Skype [Internet telephony software] for the voice capabilityand my webcam has some inbuilt software. . . . It’s nice to be able to see eachother and talk at the same time.Voice and vision are often viewed as the ideal modes of communicationbecause they mitigate the distances in time and space that typically plaguetransnational families.Although the particular expressions of sharing media and knowledgebetween parents and kids vary with parents’ own technical expertise, education,gender, time, and command of English, many parents expressedthe desire to create spaces and times for hanging out, messing around, and,as we see in box 6.2, geeking out with their kids. Much like after-schoolprograms that attempt to harness the passion for media in the name oflearning, families may also try to leverage media in their everyday interactions.While it is promising that parents and kids can come togetheraround interest-based practices (see chapters 5, 6, and 7), the gendereddimensions of spending time together with media—from a kids’ perspective,mothers are often described by kids as “clueless” or “hopeless” outsidethe domain of communication technologies and fathers as being the oneswho play or tinker with technology alongside their kids—suggest that newmedia continue to contribute to the production and reproduction of classand gender inequities in American society.

172 Heather A. HorstRoutines and RhythmsAlthough parents value the potential of new media to bring familiestogether, they also recognize that young people’s use of new media causesdisruptions to school and family life. Parents attempt to counteract thepossibilities for distraction from activities that they believe are more importantby restricting their kids from playing games or going on IM and socialnetwork sites before schoolwork, household chores, and other productiveactivities are completed. In addition, they set time limits on media use,such as thirty minutes or one hour per day. Peter, a thirteen-year-old participantin Matteo Bittanti’s study “Game Play,” explained, “My parents letme play between four and ten p.m. during the week, but the schedule ismore flexible during weekends.” Twelve-year-old Akmalla notes that herparents have set controls on World of Warcraft so that she will go to bed.As she described to Patricia Lange (YouTube and Video Bloggers), “like ifyou try to log on after a certain hour when your parents have said no, it’llsay, ‘You cannot log on because your parents are controlling it.’ ” Suchexternal control features are used by parents who possess a more sophisticatedknowledge of computers.In some cases, parents prohibit their kids from using new media altogetherduring the school and workweek, saving weekends for unstructured,nonproductive play. Nineteen-year-old Torus, who is an Indian-Italianfrom the Los Angeles area, discussed with Patricia Lange (YouTube andVideo Bloggers) how his parents structured his time for gaming:Before I kind of got to college and my senior year of high school, it was pretty muchyou play on weekends for just a couple of hours, but you have to study, all the restof the time. So, even when we were very young . . . even when I was like eight ornine, my dad required us to study for two hours before we could play two hours ofgames, so it was those kind of . . . it was very clear to us that our parents thoughtof it as definitely a reward system, not a privilege, not a right, sort of thing. Like Icould never play during the week and I hardly watched TV during the week, but onthe weekend, I could usually play. Me and my brother would play.Such routines changed seasonally. Many of the young people we interviewednoted that their parents closely monitored their use of new mediaduring the school year, but summers and breaks remained relativelyunstructured. Kids report playing games or checking social network sitesup to five or six hours a day during summer breaks and other less structuredtimes of the year. Many young people value this time because it enables

Families 173them to play games that require more strategy and time investment, whatis described in chapter 5 as recreational gaming.The time allotted for media use also varies in relation to economicand other family circumstances, such as divorce or separation (Clark 2004).In Heather Horst’s study “Silicon Valley Families,” seventeen-year-oldArchibald compared his media ecology at his mother’s house with that athis father’s house. Archibald spends most of his weekdays living with hismom and sister in a three-bedroom townhome on the periphery of awealthy area of Silicon Valley; Archibald’s mom works two jobs to supportArchibald and his sister’s attendance at a well-respected school. Archibald’sfather, a doctor who lives about two hours away, pays for train tickets forArchibald and his sister to visit him each weekend. They spend part oftheir summers with their father, at least when Archibald is not busy withsoccer and volunteer activities in Latin America. Archibald described hismedia environment at his dad’s house as well equipped with the latestcomputers, software, and other media, but his access is restricted since hisdad always wants to spend time with Archibald and his sister during theirlimited time together. By contrast, at his mom’s house, Archibald’s mediaenvironment is more limited, but Archibald and his sister possess relativelyunfettered access to the computer and other media because of his mother’sbusy work schedule. While the two media environments provide opportunitiesfor accessing different media, the kids must also navigate two differentseries of time restrictions and rules.One of the most striking aspects of the role of new media and technologyin the home is that mothers bear most of the responsibility for upholdingthe morality of the family, especially in nuclear and extended families. Inher study of American families, Hochschild (2003) notes that since the1970s women carry out most of the care work within the family, a practiceshe terms “the second shift.” Where the integration of new media andtechnology into the home is concerned, mothers tend to be the parent whomaintains the temporal rhythms of the household, structuring what kidsshould be doing with their time, when kids should and should not bewatching television, playing games, and going online. The exception tothis rule is in single-parent families where the father is the primary caretakerand, to a lesser extent, in places such as Silicon Valley, where fathers arefamiliar and reasonably fond of these tools. For example, kids note thattheir fathers tend to be much more lenient about games, and in some cases,

174 Heather A. Horstspend time with their sons and daughters messing around with new media.As Heather Horst discusses in box 4.2, some fathers become heavily investedin their kids’ interests, such as music making and podcasting, expressingtheir support by buying accessories for these activities. Yet, much like theliberal fathers Hochschild describes in her study, fathers tend to restricttheir control to the technological capacities of their home computer networksand tools, leaving mothers to be the enforcers of the family rules andregulations. Java, a twelve-year-old white middle-school student who livesin one of the wealthier areas of rural California, described to Christo Sims(Rural and Urban Youth) who is in charge of restricting new media: “Mymom. Most of the time my mom comes up with the rules.” By contrast,Java depicts her dad as a person who is into music and technology:Well, we’re basically allowed . . . that’s actually my dad’s thing. The music and thecomputers are his thing. But if they don’t know the artist, the person, the CD is,then they like to listen to a few songs or they’ll ask people, different people, aboutit before they let us buy it. But normally the mix CDs are fine. . . . Well, ‘cause mydad’s more into the technology and stuff. And he . . . well, he works with computersobviously so he’s more into that.In some instances fathers join forces with their kids to actively subvertthe mother’s rules. Kim, a participant in Megan Finn and colleagues’“Freshquest” study, described how her father bought games for her behindher mother’s back:My dad. And every time he went to Costco, he’d surprise me with just a little gamewithout my mom knowing. My mom would get so pissed that he waste[d] moneyon that. “Ooh, a game.” So I’d go ahead and play. After a while I think he hit upona couple that really got me into gaming. Either it was Warcraft or something else.So he got me really into gaming and then I forced my parents to buy me a gameafterwards. Like every day, I’d be, “Can we go to Computer City? Can we go [to]Electronic Boutique in the mall?”The relatively playful nature of dads’ engagements with media in domesticsettings often results in negative characterizations of moms either asnagging enforcers or “hopeless,” as a twenty-five-year-old AMV creatordescribed his mother’s technical skills to Mizuko Ito (Anime Fans). OneLos Angeles mother named Anita (Tripp and Herr-Stephenson, Los AngelesMiddle Schools) explained:Pues . . . como le digo yo . . . casi no conozco la computadora; yo no sé usarla . . . casi yono conozco. . . . O sea, entonces, por eso me preocupo; porque como yo a veces no sé lo queestán haciendo.

Families 175(Like I said, I barely know the computer. I don’t know how to use it. I don’t knowit. So, that is why I am worried, because sometimes I don’t even know what theyare doing.) (Translation by Lisa Tripp)Although parents, particularly mothers, feel responsible for monitoringand regulating their kids’ media engagements, they are often hamperedin their efforts by their children’s resistance to control, their own lack oftechnical expertise, and the subversion of their rules by other familymembers.Growing UpThe rules and boundaries surrounding new media typically begin to changeas kids grow up and develop judgment, “a process of critical evaluationthat develops as one matures, with help from parents” (Alters 2004, 114).As Liz’s mother explained to C. J. Pascoe (Living Digital):She’s going to be seventeen. She’s going to graduate next year. I think she needs tobe responsible. . . . Her dad would have it differently, but since I’m in control, andthey’re lucky that I am because I pretty much . . . I just look at them more as adults.They can figure things out. They’re not doing anything against the law. They’rehome. She’s a great student. You know?While there is a sense of a loosening of control tied to allowing teenagersto exercise their own judgment, it is clear that parents expect their teenagersto know and, to some degree, internalize their parents’ values. In thecase of games, parents typically allow kids to engage with different gaminggenres depending on how capable they think their children are in makingthese judgments. Somewhere between the ages of five and eight, kids(typically boys) tend to shift away from the edutainment genres of Leapsterand other desktop computer games and upgrade to the Nintendo DSor PSP, a transition that tends to occur when the family plans a lengthiercar or plane journey (see box 7.2). A few years later, in the kids’ preteenand early teen years, middle-class parents “give in” (as kids describe it),or determine that their kids are mature enough to exercise judgment (seeAlters 2004; Clarke 2004). As thirteen-year-old white teenager namedPeter discussed with Matteo Bittanti (Game Play), “I was not allowed toplay Grand Theft Auto when I was eleven because my parents felt that thecontent was inappropriate for me.” As Peter suggested, violence and violentvideo games remain a particularly important preoccupation, especiallyfirst-person shooters (see box 5.2). Another gamer, twenty-two-year-old

176 Heather A. HorstEarendil, reflected upon his parents’ boundaries concerning violentgenres of video games with Mizuko Ito (Anime Fans): “Ah! But whenwe all hit about thirteen years old, mom didn’t worry about whether wecould distinguish fantasy violence with real violence and allowed morecomputer use!”As has been well established in the literature on youth and mobilephones (Baron 2008; Goggin 2006; Horst and Miller 2006; Ito, Okabe, andMatsuda 2005; Katz 2006; Ling 2004, 2008; Matsuda 2005; Miyaki 2005),giving kids possession of a mobile phone also involves a determination ofkids’ judgment. As a general rule, few elementary-school students ownedmobile phones and there was a general sentiment among parents thatthey should avoid buying a mobile phone for children while they are inelementary school. An exception to this rule was single parents and working-classparents who buy their kids phones in the interest of safety, sincethey tend to navigate independence at an earlier age (Chin 2001; Lareau2003). Families who could not afford the cost of after-school and otherenrichment programs also felt compelled to give their children mobilephones, or access to a mobile phone, while they were away from home.As CrazyMonkey, a fourteen-year-old white middle school student wholives in a single-parent household in Silicon Valley (Horst, Silicon ValleyFamilies), recounted, “I’ve had a cell phone since fourth grade because Ihad to start figuring out my rides home . . . to and from school . . . well,just from school to home almost on a daily basis, and so my mom wantedto be able to reach me easily.” But rather than owning the swanky newmobile device desired by most teenagers, CrazyMonkey had a thick, blackphone that she used as her mobile to arrange for rides and check in withher mom, who could not be physically present to take her from point topoint. In such cases, the mobile phone becomes a safety gap when kidstake the train or bus or walk to and from school, work, or home.In middle-class families, the decision to give kids a mobile phone typicallyoccurs during middle or high school as teens start to invest more timein their peer worlds. As Jennifer, a white seventeen-year-old in Lawrence,Kansas, recounts to danah boyd (Teen Sociality in Networked Publics),“‘Cause junior high you start, you do more stuff, your parents let you domore stuff so they were like, well, we’re not gonna know where you’re atall the time, so you should have a phone just in case something happens,so their reasoning was.” Kids in middle-class families tend to acquire

Families 177mobile phones when they are deemed old enough or responsible enoughto take on the responsibility of using or owning a phone. Parents alsoprovide their kids with mobile phones when they obtain a driver’s licenseor a car, in the interest of safety should they run out of gas or have cartrouble. Jordan, a biracial Mexican-American fifteen-year-old in Austin,Texas, recalled (boyd, Teen Sociality in Networked Publics):Well, I got my first phone in seventh grade so looking back, it might have been tooearly, but it’s important now. Like starting driving, like you go out a lot more, andI think my parents feel better that I have one. Also, so I can call them at any timeand if I need them, we’re connected.In these cases, the mobile phone represents a symbol of freedom, one thatis used by kids to justify movement outside the home and outside thepurview of their parents; when they want to go somewhere, they remindtheir parents that they will call and check in to let them know they aresafe and parents provide their kids with the phone and freedom as anopportunity to exercise judgment.However, it is also clear that kids do fail to exercise judgment and, whenmajor indiscretions occur, parents place temporary restrictions on computeraccess, gaming, and other new media as a form of punishment. Awhite sixteen-year-old named Liz and her mom discussed with C. J. Pascoewhy she was grounded from instant messaging (IM) (Living Digital):Liz’s mom: Well, what happened with the IMing thing is that the kidshave a tendency to type things in that they normally would not verbalizeto anyone. And it can get pretty vulgar and disrespectful within themselves.And it got to that point, of arguments and things happening in that aspect.So we took it away because we saw the vulgarity coming out and didn’tlike it. It shouldn’t happen. We took it away. And then she lost interest,obviously.Liz: No, I got it back. And then I was like, okay, I have to have it becauseI haven’t had it in a long time. But then I started losing interest.For Liz and her mother, being grounded was recognition of Liz’s lack ofjudgment, her failure to meet the behavior expectations that her motherhad for someone Liz’s age. As Liz’s mother noted, the secondary effect ofbeing grounded helped Liz lose interest in instant messaging, a processthat Liz’s mother attributes to growing up. In the following section, wefocus more explicitly on the negotiation of rules between kids and parents.

178 Heather A. HorstMaking, Breaking, and Bending the RulesAs we have outlined, parents use space and time to help guide their kids’use of new media at home. Throughout many of our interviews, parentsreadily articulated the various rules they attempted to establish as well ashow these rules reflected their beliefs about new media. Kids, by contrast,often claimed to forget rules, or stated that their parents made rules butthat they were either open to negotiation or not regularly enforced. Hoodet al. (2004) found in their Colorado-based study that the family discoursesurrounding new media reflected the parents’ intentions rather than actualpractices. Rather than defining this discourse as failure or irony, Alters(2004) argues that rules are “part of the family’s project of building andmaintaining a family identity” (128) and, for this reason, parents becomeinvested in the rules and the importance of having rules, although theyacknowledge that breaking and bending the rules regularly occurs. These“media transgressions,” or points at which the normal, discursive rules arebent, were pervasive among all families who struggled to uphold theirown rules on a daily basis (Alters and Clark 2004a; Clark 2004). In thissection, we focus on young people’s engagements with mobile phonesand online spaces, with particular attention to the ways in which parentsand kids make, break, and bend the rules.Plans, Minutes, and CardsThe decision to give a son or daughter a mobile phone is often motivated bythe desire to maintain a sense of control over kids’ movements and activities.While parents value the leash function of mobile phones, they also strugglewith the day-to-day management of their kids’ phone use. Typically, parentsof younger kids attempt to restrict the number and types of people enteredinto their kids’ phones. Indeed, companies such as LG, which makes theMigo, and Firefly Communications, which sells the Firefly mobile phone,have attempted to capitalize on parents’ desires in their design and marketingof a phone that restricts calls to a small number of people or places (inthese phones “Home” is marked as the most important number in thephones). Other parents try to control the extent to which their kids makecalls on the mobile phone by providing the phone on a need-to-use basis,such as buying a “kids’ phone” to be shared among siblings. This oftenresults in conflicts, particularly if one sibling decides to assume ownership

Families 179of the phone. A seventeen-year-old Mexican-American named Federicorecounted the trials of sharing a phone with his sister to Dan Perkel (MySpaceProfile Production): “Because my parents can’t afford to pay too muchmoney, so we have to share a phone most of the time. So she’s pretty hoggyabout the phone, so if I get a text message or a phone call she’ll be like . . . oh,I don’t know that person. Delete.” Depending on the economic situation inthe family, the shared-phone strategy works for only a year or two before theparents give in and buy each child his or her own phone.By far the most effective form of parental control emerges through theselection of mobile phone plans. In many cases, parents regulate their kids’use of the phone by limiting the number of calls they can make. Nini,a thirteen-year-old Latina in Christo Sims’s study of teenagers inBrooklyn, New York (Rural and Urban Youth), reflected upon her use ofthe mobile phone:To call my mother, to call my father, or other important people like my grandmotherto tell her to come pick me up if I need to come . . . leave out of school early, orwhatever. Then I had a phone . . . like my father . . . I lost the one when I was seven,so my father didn’t let me get one until I was ten, and then he gave me anotherone that he uses it, so I used it to call my mother. Like I only had certain friends’number, but my father says to not use my minutes, ‘cause I have prepay, so he saidnot to use it, just put the number in if anything . . . so I always had their numberin my phone. Then I lost that one, and then my father gave me one last year. Icall . . . I put all my family numbers in, and then he let me put certain friends inthat I really hang out with, and I could call them, but he says to make it fast sothen all my minutes don’t run out, and then I just got a new one because the oldone . . . it got messed up, like the memory was all blurry, or whatever, so he boughtme a new one.As Nini suggests, her father imagined that the preprogrammed and prepaidphone card minutes would encourage Nini to preserve the minutes, facilitatingher ability to use the phone for what he perceived to be essentialcalls to family. As with many other parents, over time Nini’s father beganto make exceptions to the rule, allowing certain friends’ names andnumbers to be entered into the phone.Parents’ attempts to shape kids’ phone usage therefore involves arange of strategies, such as buying basic phones that come with a familyplan and avoiding upgrading features, such as multimedia messagingservice (MMS) or short messaging service (SMS). Middle-class families takeadvantage of their reliable credit history and the ease of paying bills by

180 Heather A. Horstenrolling in family plans for their cell phones, which allow two or morephone subscribers to share a finite pool of minutes that are are billed to asingle person or address. Family plans usually include phones for three tofive family members and offer cheaper rates for calls within the networksand, in the United States, typically require a two-year commitment withcompanies such as AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile, and others. Many kidscomplained about their parents’ selection of phones or plans without thelatest or desired features. However, within the family plan model, parentseffectively acknowledge that at least some amount of time will be usedtalking to friends. While there are other negatives for kids, such as parents’having access to the times, dates, and numbers that kids call, family plansmake it easier and cheaper to keep in touch with family (and others onthe same network) and it also guarantees that their kids will be able to callshould they find themselves in difficulty.One interesting implication of the different plans is that kids on familyplans tend to have less awareness of how these plans work, or what a callor text message costs, unless their parents make them pay for certain features,such as SMS. In fact, many teens do not generally know what theirparents pay each month or what the different mobile-phone plans offeruntil they “go over.” Gabbie, a seventeen-year-old Chinese girl living in amiddle-class suburb in the San Francisco Bay Area, described her experienceof “going over” to C. J. Pascoe (Living Digital):Gabbie: I have, actually. On text messages. Because we don’t have thatplan. And then my mom is like, “Why are we over two dollars this month?”And I was like, “Because I was text messaging.”C.J.: But only like two dollars. I’ve heard stories of like eight hundred ornine hundred dollars.Gabbie: I think I’ve gone over fifty dollars once. And then that didn’t goover very well.C.J.: Did they make you pay for it?Gabbie: No. They just got mad for a couple of days. After that they werefine [breathy giggle].By contrast, many of the kids who lived in urban New York were awareof and adept with the various plans and possibilities of mobile phones.Dana, a Latina fourteen-year-old in Brooklyn, discussed with Christo Sims(Rural and Urban Youth) the way she tries to balance her mother’s selectionof a mobile-phone plan with her relationship with her boyfriend.

Families 181Dana: Yeah, but you . . . like when I first . . . uh-huh, when I started talkin’to ‘im, when I started with my man, I was like, “You got Sprint, right?”[laughter] ‘Cause I got worried, because then I’m the one that gets introuble because I don’t work, you know, and I gotta be careful with mymom, and text messages . . . they be like fifteen cents per message, andwhen my mom finds out that the bill is more, I’ll be like, “I don’t know,it’s probably because my phone is modern,” and that’s my lie because myman’ll be like, “Well, I miss ya,” and I’m like, “Yo, stop text messaging me,‘cause they charge,” and then he’ll keep on, but . . .Christo: So you don’t have a text-messaging plan?Dana: Nah.Christo: Who . . . your boyfriend will text message you?Dana: Yeah, all the time, and my mom will . . . he always sends mepictures, too, and my mom she’ll be killin’ me. Like she don’t know it yet,but I told her that, “Oh,” I lied, “Oh, I was talkin’ to my friend fromGeorgia, and she sent me a text message and I had to write back to her.”“All right, don’t do it again,” so I haven’t been using text messages.This situation differs dramatically from that of low-income and workingclasskids such as Elena, a sixteen-year-old of Armenian descent, who isnot on her parent’s family plan and therefore must maintain a continuouscycle of credit on her own. Elena clarified her situation to C. J. Pascoe(Living Digital):We are all independent kind of thing because we don’t have jobs kind of thing. Mysister has a job. And we won’t be able to afford if there’s a plan kind of thing. Butmy mom and my dad have a plan. But all the kids, like me, my sister, and mybrother, have pay-as-you-go cell phones.When she ran out of money, her phone number could not be renewedand she lost the number. After losing her phone, which in many lowincomefamilies can be akin to losing one’s identity (see Horst and Miller2006), Elena started negotiating with her brother to buy his old mobilephone. In contrast to kids in middle-class families, working-class andlow-income kids such as Elena are often acutely aware of the cost of calls(Chin 2001).Alongside controlling and managing costs, owning a phone gives kidsand parents more freedom to control how and when they use their phonesand their private communication. One mother named Geena in SiliconValley mentioned that she bought a keyboard-enabled phone on which

182 Heather A. Horstshe has learned to “type.” Now that she uses SMS to communicate withher son, she thinks it is easier to keep abreast of her son’s activities andmovements throughout the day when she just wants to know where he isand if he is all right. She believes that the increase in communicationactually improved their relationship. Geena also discovered that textingover SMS makes it easier to parent her son. As she described it, texting“takes the emotion out of” the moments when she is checking on her son’swhereabouts or telling him to come home when he is out too late orsomewhere she doesn’t think he should be (Horst, Silicon Valley Families).By contrast, voice conversations typically lead to arguments because shecan “hear” the tension in her son’s voice or potentially distracting soundson the other end of the phone. Indeed, many teens acknowledged that iftheir parents called when they were out late, they would answer but “Imake excuses. I’m like, ‘I’m at my friend Cathy’s house and they really likeCathy’ so they go with that [giggle]” (boyd, Teen Sociality in NetworkedPublics). Hearing the excuse is something Geena thinks she can avoid, orat least circumvent, via texting.Going Online: Bandwidth, Passwords, and PrivacyParents, guardians, and other significant adults in kids’ lives spend a greatdeal of time managing their kids’ opportunities to go online at home. Atthe lowest income levels, such as in urban Los Angeles, the lack of accessto computers and online spaces at home, as well as the public nature ofdomestic life, often mitigated the issues of privacy that were available topeople in better economic circumstances. Many low-income families weinterviewed did not have a working computer or Internet connection inthe home. In cases where computers and the basic infrastructure werepresent, connection speed remained a central issue. For example, Lou, asixteen-year-old white student who lives with his grandfather and aunt ina suburb on the fringe of an upper-middle-class area in the San FranciscoBay Area, felt frustrated by his family, who refused to upgrade their dial-upconnection. Lou described his Internet connection as “not even fifty-six;it’s thirty-two on a good day,” and he perceives his inability to obtain aquality connection at home as a severe restriction on his social life (Pascoe,Living Digital).While in Lou’s case the slow connection speed reflects apathy or lack ofappreciation for the importance of going online for many teens, in other

Families 183families the lack of high-quality infrastructure is intentional. Mic, a fifteenyear-oldof Egyptian descent in Los Angeles, noted that his parents willnot allow him to have the Internet at home: “I don’t really have access tothe Internet at home because my dad always hears bad things happeningon MySpace and he doesn’t think I’m mature enough to get the Internetat this point” (boyd, Teen Sociality in Networked Publics). The mediaaccess of one of Lisa Tripp’s interviewees is restricted for similar reasons;she reported that her mother will allow her online only if she is in thesame room, and that her mother often hides or takes the ethernet cableand modem with her when she leaves the house (Tripp and Herr-Stephenson, Los Angeles Middle Schools). In their “Teaching and Learningwith Multimedia” study, parents consistently expressed concern aboutchild predators’ using sites such as MySpace to find kids.Whereas concerns over child predators preoccupied some parents, othersstruggled with the Internet’s ability to distract kids from the main work ofchildhood: education. Juan, a working-class Mexican immigrant supportinghis two daughters as a single parent, described this dilemma:No, no. Hay que tener Internet pero quitar esos programas. Porque muchos los quitaron,¿verdad? Porque si no ya no se van a dedicar al estudio sino a lo demás.(No, no. It is okay to have Internet, but you have to remove those programs [pornographyand MySpace]. Many parents have removed them, right? Otherwise kidswon’t study, and are only going to be doing that.) (Translation by Lisa Tripp)As Juan suggested, many parents feel compelled to be very strict aboutwebsites that are oriented to entertainment or communication with friends.Juan, and other parents like him, feels it is important to send a clearmessage to his kids about the value of the computer for education. Anita,a Mexican immigrant in a working-class family in Los Angeles, talked toLisa Tripp about how she routinely argues with her thirteen-year-olddaughter Nina about going online (Tripp and Herr-Stephenson, Los AngelesMiddle Schools 2006).Anita: [Mi hija] se pone en la computadora y le digo que la computadora espara hacer tarea, no es para estar buscando cosas en la computadora. Y a veces[mis hijas] se me enojan por eso. Y les digo: “No, la computadora yo se las tengopara que hagan tarea.” A veces les pregunto: “¿tienen tarea?” O: “estás haciendotarea.” Pero a veces tengo que estar lista a ver qué es lo que están haciendo.Se meten a la Internet y tantas cosas que sale salen ahí. Y se ponen a mirar

184 Heather A. Horstsus amigas y eso. . . . Entonces, es lo que no le gusta a ella que yo le diga:“¿sabes qué? La computadora no es para que andes buscando; es para lo dela escuela.”([My daughter] sits in front of the computer and I tell her that the computeris for doing homework, not for looking around. And sometimes [mydaughters] get mad at me because of that. And then I say, “I got thiscomputer so you could do your homework.” Sometimes I ask, “Do youhave homework?” Or, “Are you actually doing your homework.” ?” I haveto keep a close eye on them to see what is going on. They get on theInternet, and with so many things there. They look for their girlfriendsand all. . . . They don’t like me saying, “You know what? The computer isnot for you to be looking around. It is for schoolwork.”)Lisa: ¿Qué es lo que más le preocupa a usted acerca de la Internet y sushijas?(What is your main concern with the Internet and your daughters?)Anita: Lo que me preocupa . . . ya ve . . . es que salen muchas cosas ahí que semeten con niños, y a veces platican con ellos, y a veces no saben ni qué gentees. Es lo que me preocupa, porque digo “no.” Y a ver qué es lo que están mirandoellos y uno tiene que estar siempre listo con ellos. A veces estoy que les quieroquitar la Internet, pero a veces me dice él: “por su tarea está bien. Porque despuésvan a andar que ‘me voy a hacer tarea,’ ‘que no tengo computadora,’ ‘que notengo esto.’ ” Pero es por lo que más peleo ahorita con ellos.(My main concern is . . . you see . . . you hear all the time that people tryto reach kids and talk to them. Sometimes [kids] don’t even know whothey are talking to. That is my concern. That is why I say, “No.” I need to.And I keep an eye on what they are looking at. One always has to stayalert. I always need to be attentive. Sometimes I feel like canceling theInternet, but my husband says, “It is good to keep it because of theirhomework. You don’t want them saying ‘I need to go somewhere else todo my homework,’ or ‘I don’t have a computer,’ or ‘I don’t have this.’” Butthis is mostly what I fight about with them these days.) (Translation byMartin Lamarque and Lisa Tripp)Given the economic burdens that they take on to obtain a computer inthe first place, many parents in low-income households and in workingclasshomes believe that the primary purpose of a computer and theInternet should be educational pursuits, such as homework.

Families 185While parents may be in control of basic access, once young peoplego online kids assume much of the responsibility for structuring theironline worlds. In much the same way that teenagers now hang outwith their friends at the local Starbucks, the parking lot at In-N-Out(a popular fast-food restaurant in California), and the mall, kids definesocial network sites, online journals, and other online spaces as friendand peer spaces; adult participation in these spaces is problematic or“creepy.” With the ability to control who can and cannot view one’sprofile or page with passwords, nicknames, and other tools, kids use newmedia to facilitate and reinforce the segmentation of their peer-drivenworlds and their familial worlds (see chapters 2 and 3). Fourteen-year-oldLeigh, a white teenager living in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, said, “My momfound my Xanga and she would check it every single day. I’m like, ‘Uh.’I didn’t like that ‘cause it’s invasion of privacy; I don’t like people invadingmy privacy, so.” When asked why Leigh does not want her mom toread her Xanga, Leigh responded, “I don’t know, ‘cause I just put stuff onthere that maybe I don’t want her to know” (boyd, Teen Sociality inNetworked Publics).The expressions of tensions surrounding going online varied acrosssocioeconomic class, geographic location, and even religious background.As Christo Sims discusses in box 4.3, many rural kids who are homeschooledconnect to their friends in front of their parents using sites suchas Bebo. Parents in middle- and upper-middle-class families varied fromparents who completely restricted their kids from going on MySpacebecause of the fear of, if not panic over, child predators to those who sawnew media as a space to mess around and learn. Many of the parents inthe latter category religiously followed the advice of parenting organizationsto navigate the changing media ecology. These parents typicallymonitored and regulated their kids through the placement of computersand laptops in the home. Although there are a range of sites, these organizationstend to offer rules and guidelines (e.g., no more than one hourof television per day) for families to adopt. Other parents tried to educatetheir kids about the dangers of digital personhood. For instance, by thetime many of the kids in Silicon Valley were in high school, their collegeapplications loomed large (Horst, Silicon Valley Families). In the competitiveacademic environment that constitutes this particular region, manyparents, teachers, and guidance counselors had successfully convinced

186 Heather A. Horststudents that a “bad” profile on MySpace or another site represented apotential threat to their record, and that this could be the differencebetween Stanford, Berkeley, or one of the private Claremont colleges anda less prestigious California State University school. Still other parentsemphasized independence, discipline, and the need for instilling judgment.Although their particular practices differed, many of the SiliconValley parents were quite comfortable with the role of technology in theirown lives and, therefore, did not fear it in the same way as those who didnot or could not use computers, mobile phones, and other new media. Bycontrast, many of the parents who were strict or overtly tried to ban theirkids from going online often acknowledged that their own lack of familiaritywith computers contributed to their anxieties.Box 4.3 The Milvert Family: A Portrait of Rural CaliforniaChristo SimsAt first glance, Lynn Milvert’s use of digital media seems to resemble theimage of the wired white fifteen-year-old so often portrayed in popularculture. She spends hours each day in her music-filled bedroom, sitting infront of a computer and effortlessly switching between a social network site,multiple instant messaging applications, and even a little homework. At thislevel of detail her routine seems quite similar to those enacted by teenagersfeatured in Heather Horst’s study “Coming of Age in Silicon Valley,” C. J.Pascoe’s study of suburban northern California teenagers (Living Digital), andmany of danah boyd’s teenage participants from various urban and suburbancontexts (Teen Sociality in Networked Publics). What makes Lynn’s caseunique, however, is that she lives in a remote region of the upper foothillsof California’s Sierra Nevada range. And while on its surface her use of technologylooks similar to that of many other youth, both the local geographyand her family’s unique relations to the local community—its schools, itschurches, and its politics—shape the particularities of her practices with newmedia in quite distinct ways.Lynn lives at the end of a meandering driveway, which branches from asingle-lane private road, which, in turn, forks from a quiet two-lane countyroad. Homes are few and far between in this high region of the Sierra Nevadafoothills. Lynn lives in a single-story three-bedroom house with her father,mother, and seventeen-year-old brother, Nate. Lynn’s father grew up a quickwalk down the road from where they live now. He built their current houseon a part of what used to be a family ranch. Lynn’s grandma, aunt, uncle,and cousins all live within walking distance. This geographic closeness affordsfrequent family-centered social time for Lynn. At least once a week Lynn’s

Families 187family tries to have meals with members of the extended family. Almost dailyLynn walks down to her grandmother’s house to watch satellite TV. Duringthe summer, she babysits her infant cousin between roughly 9:00 a.m. and5:00 p.m. four days a week.While most local kids attend the regional public schools, Lynn has beenhomeschooled since sixth grade, largely with a group of other kids from herchurch. Lynn’s particular form of homeschooling is not conducted alone,with a parent as the tutor, but instead with a group of roughly twenty kidswho share a tutor and even attend class together for three hours three timesa week. Lynn’s class consists of both boys and girls, ranging in age from twelveto twenty-two. She considers everyone to be friends with everyone else’sfriends and few people have joined or left the group since Lynn was a youngchild. As Lynn put it, “Most of us have known each other all our lives.”Her family’s participation in the local First Baptist church reinforces thegroup’s durable composition. While the homeschool program is administeredby a separate organization, many kids in her school program also belong tothe church. The church, in turn, sponsors opportunities beyond school forthe homeschooled youth to get together in social settings. Every Friday thechurch youth group organizes a social event. Out-of-town trips are plannedfor roughly one weekend a month. And every Sunday afternoon the youthgroup holds its own session after the regular service.At the time I visited her, Lynn’s engagement with new media usually tookplace at home, in her room, with the door open. The computer that she andNate share—her mom, who works from home, has her own laptop—sits ona desk with its back pressed against the wall directly across from where thebedroom door opens to the hall (see figure 4.3). Lynn’s parents moved it fromNate’s room after he got in trouble. Most of Lynn’s practices with digitalmedia align with her participation in, and the relations between, family,school, and church. As with many teenagers, her favorite digital technologyis a social network site. But unlike most teenagers who attend the regionalhigh school “down the hill,” she chose Bebo instead of MySpace or Facebook.She perceives it as safer. And unlike some teenagers who participated invarious studies for the Digital Youth Project, she doesn’t use social networksites and instant messaging to build new relationships at school or to maintainweak ties across expansive networks. Instead, she uses them to participatein her existing peer group. Her friends on Bebo match her densely interconnectedfriends from homeschool and church almost exactly.Contrasting with the dense composition of Lynn’s social network is thegeographical dispersion of homes in her neighborhood. Being an “up-thehill”family means much greater distance between homes; in most cases, itis not possible to walk or bike to the house of a friend. This is particularlytrue in the snowy winters. Without a driver’s license, Lynn’s collocated socialactivity with peers either requires routine, formalized group activities—such

188 Heather A. HorstFigure 4.3Lynn’s bedroom with the computer she shares with her brother. Photo by Christo Sims,2006.as school sessions, sports practice, work, and church—or convincing a parent,or other older person, to transport them to a common location. In bothscenarios, spontaneous collocated peer gatherings are difficult to achieve.These constraints on her mobility lead Lynn to spend a good deal of timeat home. As a social space largely defined by her parents, home has been aplace for family, schoolwork, and, occasionally, planned socializing withfriends. On the Internet, Lynn finds ways to redefine the social possibilitiesof time spent in the home, beyond family, beyond working alone, beyondplanned sociability, and toward unplanned peer-based socializing. Yet thistechnological reach out of the home is not directed toward the distant, unfamiliar,and global world of the Internet; it is not even directed toward mostof the other teenagers who pepper the local rural landscape. Rather, it honestoward the small, and well-established, group of friends from her homeschooland church. This dense group places each individual member in a uniquelycentral position, a position that contrasts with the geographic dispersion oftheir homes and neighborhoods, a position in relief with the group’s marginalrelation to the teenagers who attend the public high school down the hill. Itis an inversion of geographic and social isolation, a counterpoint to theirperception of living “in the middle of nowhere.”

Families 189As with locked diaries and closed doors, some parents admitted theysimply could not resist the temptation to see for themselves what sites suchas MySpace and Facebook are all about by sneaking around online behindtheir kids’ backs. For example, Amy, a biracial (black and white) sixteenyearold in Seattle, described to danah boyd her mom’s efforts to see whatwas on her MySpace account (Teen Sociality in Networked Publics): “Mymom made [a MySpace], just so she could look at my page, so I made itprivate, and I won’t let her on there.” James, a biracial (white and NativeAmerican) seventeen-year-old in Seattle, noted:[Mine’s private] just because of the fact that my dad made a MySpace, and there’sthings on there that I probably don’t want my parents to see, so I set mine as private,so someone has to request me as a Friend before they can actually look at my profile.(boyd, Teen Sociality in Networked Publics)Other parents waited until problems emerged. Gameboy, a white sixteenyear-oldwho participated in Heather Horst’s study “Silicon Valley Families,”was caught smoking pot. After Gameboy’s parents found out, his dad satdown with Gameboy and went through his MySpace page to identify “thestoners,” which his father claimed to identify through the pictures andimages posted on Gameboy’s friends’ profiles, their music preferences (e.g.,heavy metal), and comments on their profiles about drugs and drinking.After examining their MySpace profiles, his dad then proceeded to closelymonitor Gameboy to see if he “got high” after he returned home fromhanging out with the stoners.Many kids reference similar “horror stories” of parents’ breaking intotheir sites, pages, and profiles, acts that teenagers view as invasive andembarrassing. In some cases, parents’ transgressions into their kids’ mediaworlds are humiliating. For example, fifteen-year-old Traviesa, a Hispanicgirl in Santa Monica, California, described her own horror story to danahboyd (Teen Sociality in Networked Publics):My mom, she found out [my password] one time. I was like, “Oh, shit.” And thenshe wrote, “Oh, I’m sorry to everybody that’s on here but my daughter is fourteenyears old,” or she didn’t even know my age, I was fifteen at the time; she was likeI’m fourteen. She was like, “Oh, yeah, she’s fourteen years old and she doesn’t needto be talking to all you old people and this and that, and she’s not going to haveMySpace anymore so bye.” And then she wrote that on the About Me section andI read it. I was, “what is this? Oh my God, how retarded.” I think it’s funny, though.Parents are stupid. I don’t know, most of the time they do it for our well-being, butsometimes they just don’t know what they’re doing. It’s really sad.

190 Heather A. HorstAs Traviesa acknowledged, most of these parental acts are motivated bythe protection of kids’ “well-being” rather than harassment for the sake ofharassment. However, kids view these acts as a violation of trust, muchlike parents’ listening in on their conversations or coming into their bedroomswithout knocking. They also see these online invasions as illinformed and lacking in basic social propriety. A small number of teensdo share with one another what they do when they go online, such asseventeen-year-old Anindita, who told danah boyd that “[My mom] goeson [my MySpace] all the time. I even show it to her. She knows my password.I really don’t care ‘cause I’m not hiding anything” (Teen Socialityin Networked Publics). Yet, most families admitted that the issues ofprivacy and control were contentious. Teens noted that they tried not todo anything wrong, but they wanted to maintain their privacy and autonomyand felt that they possessed the skills to judge their own actions andbehavior when using new media.ConclusionThroughout this project, we carried out research in a range of homes andcommunities across urban, suburban, and rural locations, revealing theways in which the institution of the family remains a powerfully determiningforce in young people’s new media practices. Resisting the urge toclassify or evaluate families in terms of language such as “divides” and“gaps,” we chronicle parental attitudes toward new media and technologyas well as a broader set of beliefs about how learning and education continueto shape what becomes possible for youth of different backgrounds.The ways in which young people and their families take up new media intheir everyday lives cannot be viewed as a simplistic equation betweenaccess or divisions such as “rich kids” and “poor kids.” Rather, the need tobalance independence and dependence, parents’ values and beliefs, andparenting style shapes participation. For example, many parents worriedabout the allure of social network sites in their daughters’ lives or theaddictive power of video games for boys, but the tactics to control participationin these activities varied. While all families used time—restrictinggoing online until kids completed their homework and giving kids moretime to play on the weekend—parents who were economically well offtried to regulate their kids’ participation by creating rooms specifically for

Families 191playing games, homework, and socializing with their friends. By contrast,many of the less well off families in urban Los Angeles and the SanFrancisco Bay Area took away the power cord, deleted programs, and keptlow-speed access. However, these strategies were not just a matter of economicconstraints; rather, beliefs about the correlation between computerownership and education, and parents’ anxieties about their own lack ofexperience with media, influenced their decisions and the type of regulationparents employed. Moreover, the extent to which parents were willingto give their kids autonomy over their day-to-day media usage also revolvedaround the assessment of whether parents thought their kids could or, insome cases, needed to exercise judgment, as was the case with manyparents who gave their kids mobile phones. Parents noted that this decisioninvolved a consideration of their children’s gender, age, as well asmaturity. For example, after Heather Horst’s interview with Trudy, describedin this chapter’s introduction, Trudy’s mother explained that she neededto create different rules for Trudy and her elder brother. Because shethought Trudy was more trusting than her brother, she believed Trudy wasmore vulnerable to answering messages from unknown solicitors. By contrast,Trudy’s parents closely monitored the completion of their son’shomework and even considered placing their son in counseling for whatthey felt was a video game addiction when his grades dropped. For Trudy’sparents and others, the ever evolving media ecology compounds the challengesof parenting kids and teenagers.This chapter examined how families deal with media and the internaldynamics that often structure the extent to which the use of new mediais encouraged, restricted, and regulated. We began with a discussion ofthe role parents see themselves playing in their children’s (and in somecases grandchildren’s) use of media, and of the relative importance of rulesin shaping family life as new media take on an increasing presence in thedomestic ecology. In the first section, “Crafting Media Spaces at Home,”we focused on the creation of public media spaces such as recreation roomsand of private media spaces such as the bedroom. The second sectionexamined how parents make, take, and spend time with media by focusingon the ways in which families structure time for media use during theschool year and summer as well as during the weekdays and weekends. Wealso explored instances of families’ spending time together in and aroundnew media, a practice not commonly discussed in much of the literature

192 Heather A. Horston the generation gap. This sense of capturing family time is closely relatedto the ever present sense that kids are growing up, and that there is onlya limited amount of time to spend with family and to impart family values.Whereas the first two sections analyzed the spatial and temporal dimensionsof new media in family life, the third section looked at the microdynamicsof rule making and rule negotiation in families in relation tothe debates and practices of using mobile phones and going online.Unlike the other chapters in this book—which discuss peer-based sociability,communication, and expression—this chapter analyzes the influenceof families in shaping new media practices. We aimed to provide animportant piece of the overall contextual ecology of youth new mediapractices; other components of this new media ecology, such as the roleof commercial industries, schools, and community institutions, are touchedon in relation to specific practices of interest. With our attention to therole of new media in young people’s everyday lives, we believed thatfamilies, and the domestic context generally, required an extended treatmentbecause of the powerfully determining role that parents and siblingsplay in shaping conditions of access. In addition, families constitute oneof the primary social contexts for ongoing informal engagements with newmedia. In many instances in our studies, new media represented a site ofconflict between parents and children, and between siblings, over issuesof access and control, and much of the social negotiation around newmedia centered on setting boundaries and rules of various kinds. In thesesettings, parents are often seen as clueless or incompetent in dealing withthe norms and literacies of online peer culture. However, we also chronicledmany instances of parents and kids coming together around newmedia, even for media production. These acts became moments for crossgenerationalcommunication as well as an expression of family identity.These antagonistic and cooperative forms of parent-child dynamics appearthroughout this book as structuring contexts in our descriptions of peerbasedpractices.Notes1. While acknowledging the voluminous literature on media effects (Bryant andZilman 2002; Gunter and McAleer 1997; Singer and Singer 2001; Strasburger andWilson 2002), our work attends to the struggles around kids’ participation with newmedia and, in this chapter, parents’ use and regulation of new media.

Families 1932. Although it is outside the scope of our work here to define “American families”or the relationship between families and the broader category of households(see Netting, Wilk, and Arnould 1984), we recognize that “family” is a mutablecategory that changes in relation to the social, historical, and cultural contexts(Alters 2004; Coontz 1992). The families in our study vary from the nuclear familyand divorced and single-parent households to blended, extended, and transnationalfamilies.3. Alters draws upon Mintz and Kellogg’s (1988) study of parenting in Americanfamily life.4. In the context of Europe, Sonia Livingstone (2002) argues that household incomeand education remain the key factors for the strategies parents take to control andmanage new media in their kids’ lives. For example, she argues that for individualswith high income and low levels of education, cable and satellite television, gamemachines, and camcorders are viewed as important. By contrast, the Internet andbooks are valued in homes with both high education and high income levels.5. Recent survey work in the United States indicates that some of these dynamicsmay be shifting. While in the past, families with high education tended to consumeless-popular media, comparisons between 1999 and 2004 indicate a changing trend.Today families with college degrees and those with less than high-school educationare high media consumers and families in the middle socioeconomic bracketsconsume the least amount of media. Roberts and Foehr (2008) take this as evidencethat economic barriers to media are no longer as salient as they once were, and thateducated parents are less critical of media than in the past.6. Silverstone and Hirsch (1992) also argue that media serve dual functions in thehome, what they term “double articulation,” in that media are both physical objectsas well as objects that convey meaning. Lally (2002) and others have criticizedSilverstone and Hirsch for attributing too much credence to the uniqueness of newmedia and technologies.7. Reflecting their textual and discursive approach, Alters and Clark (2004b) use theterm “public scripts” to account for the ways in which families describe how theyrelate to media.8. While in the past, community and neighborhoods functioned as the locus ofinteraction (see Castells 1996; Lievrouw and Livingstone 2002; Low 2003, 2008;Miller 2001; Miller and Slater 2000; Morley 2000), today the home represents theprimary space for family and community life and for engagement with mediaand public culture. We found that the home was the dominant context for youthsociability and for new media practice in almost all the regions where we werecarrying out research. The one exception was the case study in Brooklyn, New York,in Christo Sims’s “Rural and Urban Youth” study, in which he found that teenagersspend a great deal of time outside and on the street hanging out with friends and

194 Heather A. Horsttraveling on the subway system. We also found this to be the case amongDilan Mahendran’s Hip-Hop Music Production study participants, who took advantageof the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system to move from their residentiallocations in the hinterlands of the San Francisco Bay Area and into the city. We didnot see this mobility among our Los Angeles study participants (see Martínez’s studyPico Union Families), a fact we attribute, in part, to the lack of viable public transportationin the city.9. In other parts of the United States, basements are often converted into recreationand media rooms. Given the potential for earthquakes, basements are not commonin California.10. As Benitez (2006) has argued for Salvadoran immigrants in Washington, DC,the ability to hear and see other family members during annual teleconferencingsessions helps to counter the distance and the difficulties of travel in the wake ofdifficult economic circumstances and undocumented status.

5 GAMINGLead Authors: Mizuko Ito and Matteo BittantiIn a lengthy interview over instant messenger (IM), twenty-two-year-oldEarendil described the role that gaming played in his growing up. Earendilwas largely homeschooled, and though his parents had strict limits ongaming until he and his brother were in middle school, Earendil and hisbrother got their “gaming kicks” at the homes of their friends with gameconsoles. After his parents loosened restrictions on computer time whenhe was fifteen, his first social experiences online were in a multiplayer gamebased on the novel Ender’s Game and in online chats with fellow fans ofMyst and Riven. Although he did not get his first game console until hewas eighteen, he considered himself an avid gamer, and when he startedcommunity college he fell in with “a group of local geeks, who like myself,enjoyed playing games, etc.” Gaming was a focus of activity for him andhis friends, as they engaged in forms of play and game-related productionthat often required high levels of gaming as well as technical expertise,including networked gaming parties and participation in a group that wasdeveloping a modification on a popular game. Throughout his late childhoodand adolescence, gaming was a focus for hanging out with his localfriends, for online relationships, and for developing technical expertise(Ito, Anime Fans).Although Earendil is a more committed gamer than most of the youthswe spoke to as part of our research, the diverse kinds of social experienceshe gained through gaming are becoming more and more commonplace.By 1999, more than 80 percent of U.S. homes with children had a gameconsole (Roberts, Foehr, and Rideout 2005). Between 1999 and 2004,average daily gaming time for children went from twenty-six minutes toforty-six (Roberts and Foehr 2008). Among those who responded to ourbackground questionnaire, 90 percent reported that they currently engaged

196 Mizuko Ito and Matteo Bittantiin some form of electronic gaming, and 24 percent reported that they playgames daily. Gaming represents the central form of early computer experiencefor kids. More than two thirds of the kids we interviewed had a gameconsole at home before the age of ten. Not only is game play time growingamong U.S. youth, but forms of game play and gaming demographics arediversifying. Drawing from a survey by the NPD Group, the EntertainmentSoftware Association (ESA) (2007) reports that 38 percent of game playersare women. Women age eighteen or older represent a significantly greatershare of the game playing population (30 percent) than boys age seventeenor younger (23 percent). Although the first-person shooter (FPS) game Halo3 was the best-selling title of 2007, only 15 percent of games sold that yearwere rated Mature, and sales of Family games grew 110 percent over theprevious year. Accessible online and casual social games have tipped thebalance toward adult women, or more accurately, toward a diversified ageand gender demographic.In the past two decades, as electronic gaming has gradually becomeestablished as one of the dominant forms of entertainment of our time,there has been widespread debate over the merits of the medium. Somehave accused games of promoting violence and sexism. Despite very littleempirical evidence that games lead to antisocial or violent behavior,popular perception persists in painting a picture of the aggressive, isolated,compulsive gamer. 1 Unlike the image of the violent gamer, sexism ingames does have some grounding in everyday practice; although in thepast five years the increase has been tremendous in the number of girlsand women who game, most of those gains have been made in the areaof “casual” games in online and handheld platforms, and more “hard-core”and technically sophisticated forms of gaming and game modding 2 are stilldominated by boys and men (Kafai et al. 2008). In contrast to these concerns,researchers have been arguing that games have important learningproperties that can be mobilized for education. Research in this vein wasa central part of the early games industry, and it resulted in the developmentof a genre of game software that came to be known as “edutainment”in the 1980s and 1990s (see Ito 2007, 2009). More recently, educationalresearchers have engaged with simulation and other state-of-the-art gamesto argue that games provide important opportunities for learning in practice(Gee 2003; Shaffer 2006; Squire 2006).

Gaming 197Our work speaks to these public debates by considering everyday gamingpractice and how it is embedded in a broader set of media ecologies andgenres of participation with new media. Rather than key our researchdirectly in the terms of these public debates, however, we stay close to theempirical material to provide a descriptive base and set of frameworks forunderstanding the role of gaming in kids’ lives and learning. Much of thepublic debate has ignored or overlooked contexts and practices of gameplay. The focus has been almost exclusively on what people hope or fearkids will get from their play, rather than on what they actually do on anongoing, everyday basis. It is only recently that researchers have beenmoving beyond a conceptual focus on gaming representation to look atgaming practice and the broader structural contexts of gaming activity.There is still little work looking at how different genres of games intersectwith different types of game play and broader structural conditions suchas gender, age, and class identity. This chapter is an effort to fill in someof these gaps in the research literature by positioning game play within abroader ecology of media practices and identities.Gaming practices are extremely diverse in nature and form; gameplay is a complex and multilayered phenomenon. We would like to suggesta possible framework for examining gaming as it is embedded in practicein relation to what we have learned about the other contexts of newmedia engagement that youth navigate. We heard about gaming practicesacross the different case studies in our project, though only MatteoBittanti’s study (Game Play), Arthur Law’s study (Team Play), and RachelCody’s study (Final Fantasy XI) were specifically focused on game communities.In this chapter, we draw from a wide range of different casestudies, including Bittanti’s, Law’s, and Cody’s; Judd Antin, Dan Perkel,and Christo Sims’s “Social Dynamics of Media Production”; danah boyd’s“Teen Sociality in Networked Publics”; Heather Horst’s “Silicon ValleyFamilies” study; Horst and Laura Robinson’s “Neopets” study; MizukoIto’s “Anime Fans” study, and Patricia Lange’s “YouTube and VideoBloggers” work. In this chapter we show a diversity in terms of the agesof the participants that we describe as we transition to a discussionof interest-based practices. Unlike the contexts of family and the friendship-basedpeer groups we describe in earlier chapters, interest-drivenpractices such as gaming are not age specific, and it becomes important

198 Mizuko Ito and Matteo Bittantito look at how youth engage with mixed-age gaming practices and discoursesand also to consider the trajectories of how gaming practicesextend into adulthood. Although our focus is still on gaming in the teenyears, we quote older gamers reflecting on their practices growing up withgames or describing the cultures of gaming more generally as reflectivepractitioners.We start our discussion with a framing of the debates around gamingand learning, suggesting how a practice- and youth-centered approachcan inform this conversation. The body of this chapter is organized interms of genres of gaming practice: killing time, hanging out, recreationalgaming, mobilizing and organizing, and augmented gaming. We concludeour discussion with an analysis of the broader structural and cultural conditionsof gaming that shape how the different genres of practice relate toone another, and the ways in which individuals gain access to or areexcluded from various game play experiences.Conceptual Framework: Gaming in ContextThe dominant approach to studies of gaming and learning focus on therelationship between the gamer and the text. This holds on both sides ofthe aisle. Just as detractors assume that the violent content of the gameencourages violent behaviors (Anderson, Gentile, and Buckley 2007), proponentsof games and learning generally assume that learning follows fromgood game design.Although there has been a considerable amount written on games and youngpeople’s use of them, there has been little work done to establish an overall “ecology”of gaming, game design, and play, in the sense of how all the various elements—from code to rhetoric to social practices and aesthetics—cohabit and populatethe game world. . . . The language of the media is replete with references to thedevil (and heavy metal) when it comes to the ill-found virtues of video games,while a growing movement in K–12 education casts them as the Holy Grail in theuphill battle to keep kids learning. While many credit game play with fosteringnew forms of social organization and alternative ways of thinking and interacting,more work needs to be done to situate these forms of learning within a dynamicmedia ecology that has the participatory and social nature of gaming at its core.(Salen 2007, 2–3)As Katie Salen, editor of The Ecology of Games: Connecting Youth, Games, andLearning (2007), notes in the introduction to her book, what is largely

Gaming 199absent in the literature is an account of the relations among players,texts, and contexts of play. Researchers who have studied the receptionof media such as books and television have argued for some time nowthat social context has a formative influence on reception (Buckingham1993; Jenkins 1992; Mankekar 1999; Radway 1984). With interactive,customizable, and user-modified media such as video games, this is evenmore the case. Our focus is not on the relation between individual kidsand game content and representation, but rather on how game playpractice and activity are situated within a broader set of cultural and socialengagements and contexts. The focus on activity in context means payingattention to the diversity in contexts that structure different forms of gameplay—the broader social and cultural ecology—rather than assuming thatpsychological and cognitive dispositions play the most important determiningrole.Gaming occupies a complicated position in relation to structures ofage, class, and gender because of its status as a technically-driven recreationalactivity usually associated with lowbrow, male-dominated identityand practice. 3 The moral panics over games rotting the hearts andminds of children share many of the familiar concerns voiced abouttelevision; games are frequently linked to the corrupting “bad screens”of television (and working-class culture) rather than the “good screens”of computers and middle-class culture (Seiter 1999a; 2005). Further,much like earlier forms of youth-centered popular culture, video gamesare a site of moral panics where intergenerational anxieties are projectedonto new media (Cohen 1972). The technical sophistication of games,both as texts and practices, however, throws a unique twist into theseexisting cultural conflicts. While those who see gaming as an avenueinto certain forms of technical expertise and learning have arguedthat educators and designers should work to make games attractive togirls (Cassell and Jenkins 1998; Kafai et al. 2008), others have arguedthat gaming reproduces sexist and consumerist logics that are oftenof dubious value for youth (Kline, Dyer-Witheford, and de Peuter 2003;Sheff 1993). Questions about what kids learn through games are a siteof conflict among the values inflected by class, gender, and generationalidentity.The controversial nature of this medium becomes explicit, for instance,in the process of establishing a set of norms about the “appropriate use”

200 Mizuko Ito and Matteo Bittantiof games. Parents and kids’ perspectives often collide. The nature of theclash, however, is varied. In chapter 4, we have seen these conflicts playingout in how parents from different class backgrounds regulate gaming inthe home. We also have noted how certain gaming practices can functionas an intergenerational wedge, where parents are shut out from certainforms of media engagement. Conflicts about how games are perceived wereevident when kids talked about gender and gaming and in the larger proportionof boys who engaged in the more geeked out forms of gamingpractice. In this chapter, we work to tease apart some of the specifics ofhow these general cultural valences play out in relation to specific gamegenres and genres of participation with gaming sociability and culture.Although certain core practices of recreational and geeked out gaming arestrongly associated with the young, white male geek cultures that werefoundational to early game practice, today we see a much more variegatedpalette of gaming practices. The overall statistics of an expanding gamerdemographic need to be contexualized within highly differentiated formsof gaming activities. Our effort here is to specify some of these distinctionsamong different forms of game engagement.When we examine gaming from the point of view of gamers and gamepractice, then a different set of learning issues comes into view. While wedo not underestimate the relevance of the text, it is just one among a seriesof players in the ecological dance that results in complex social, cultural,and technical outcomes. For example, one of the most important outcomesof the practices that we call “recreational gaming” is the fact that youngpeople develop social networks of technical expertise. The game has notdirectly and explicitly taught them technical skills, but game play hasembedded young people in a set of practices and a cultural ecology thatplaces a premium on technical acumen. This in turn is often tiedto an identity as a technical expert that can serve a gamer in domainswell beyond specific engagements with games. This is the kind of descriptionof learning and “transfer” that a more ecological approach to gamingsuggests.We follow this approach through the body of this chapter by analyzinghow gamers talk about their own investments in games in relation to thepractices that they describe. In line with an ethnographic approach, wesee culture and discourse as constitutive of everyday practice and viceversa. Taking gamer viewpoints and investments seriously on their own

Gaming 201terms challenges some of the arguments that both proponents and detractorsof games bring to the table. While educational proponents of gamingsuggest that games provide a motivational structure that will engage kidsin more academic learning tasks, gamers talk about games as killing timeand a waste of time and see value in precisely those properties of gamesthat enable a certain state of distractedness. Even in the case of games thatare difficult to learn and that require sustained investments of time, gamersoften enjoy the practice because it is cut off from their everyday identities.It is a space to compete in and achieve in where there will not be consequentialfailure in real life. The appeal lies precisely in the fact that thegame outcomes do not transfer to the real-life economies of academicachievement and playing the role of the good student, daughter, or son.The real-life social ecology of a kid’s life has a powerfully determining effecton what kids get out of gaming. What they learn from gaming is not necessarilywhat is embedded in game content, nor what parents and educatorshope and fear. In the description that follows, we outline genres ofgaming practice that have emerged from our research to discuss the waysin which gaming, learning, participation, and identity are intertwined inkids’ everyday play.Genres of Gaming PracticeGrounded in the previously described ecological approach to gaming, ourgenres of gaming are related to the genres of media participation (hangingout, messing around, and geeking out) that we outlined earlier. Rather thanassume that game genres, platforms, or specific texts determine game playpractice, we organize our description with different practices of play thatemerged from our ethnographic material. These genres of practice correspondloosely to different genres of games, but they are not determined bygame genre. For example, puzzle games are typical for the genre of gamepractice we describe as “killing time,” but other games such as first-personshooters or side-scrollers on a Nintendo DS could also perform that socialfunction. These different genres of gaming practice also are loosely correspondentwith different social networks and genres of participation. Wherekilling time is a largely solitary activity, hanging out corresponds to ourmodel of friendship-driven sociality. Recreational gaming is the mostcentral practice of interest-driven peer-based gaming networks and is often

202 Mizuko Ito and Matteo Bittantia site where we see messing around genres of participation. When we moveto the genres of organizing and mobilizing, and the practices of augmentedgame play such as modding and machinima 4 making, we are moving intothe domain of geeking out. While these groups also have a peer-basedstructure at the core of the practice, they are more differentiated than thepractices of recreational or social gaming, and there is a clear demarcationbetween the core production community and those who use and accesstheir work.Killing TimeCertain forms of gaming have long provided opportunities to fill smallgaps in the day or longer stretches of waiting time. Tucking a crosswordpuzzle or word-search book into a commute bag, or getting out a deck ofcards for solitaire, are all examples of the solitary, time-filling gaming thatwe are characterizing as “killing time.” These are the practices in whichpeople engage with play and gaming to procrastinate or fill gaps in theday. With video games, it happens mostly through nomadic devices suchas portable consoles (Nintendo DS, Sony PSP), mobile phones, and laptops.These practices also can happen in desktop situations, such as whensomeone takes a break from work to play a puzzle game on Miniclip.Games are often used while waiting for relevant things to happen, as fillersbetween more structured events. Although we found that a wide varietyof kids engaged in killing-time forms of gaming, these practices tended toskew toward either younger or less experienced gamers, or for times whenmore sustained gaming was not an option. For example, Christo Sims notesthat students at the video-production center where he, Judd Antin, andDan Perkel observed are keen to engage in gaming activities during theshort breaks between their lessons:The Center was largely run like a hands-on class, with an adult instructorsetting an agenda and directing the students in various video production exercisesand activities. The kids had unstructured time before and after class as well asduring a short break in the middle of each day’s session. During these free moments(maybe fifteen to twenty minutes long) many kids would get on one of the labcomputers. While MySpace was a popular activity during this time, so too werecasual games on sites like Miniclip as well as Flash games on websites for candycompanies and other youth-targeted advertisers. (The Social Dynamics of MediaProduction)

Gaming 203The dominant discourse of this form of gaming is about boredom andfilling time. Digital games are used to pass the time when traveling on abus, car, or plane, or in other situations when there is little else to do. Forinstance, Nick, a sixteen-year-old black and Native American boy from LosAngeles who danah boyd (Teen Sociality in Networked Publics) interviewed,said, “If I’m bored, I play that little . . . it’s a little rocket gamewhere you shoot rocks. I play that. If I’m real bored and I really havenothing to do, that’s what I do.” Similarly, Natalie, an eleven-year-oldwhite fifth grader Heather Horst interviewed as part of her study on SiliconValley families, said: “I play with my Nintendo probably like a few timesa week probably. . . . Mostly on the weekends, because sometimes my weekendsare really busy, sometimes they’re not, but when they’re not busy, Iget kinda bored, so I just play.”This genre of gaming also can be used as something to focus on in asocial situation that a subject might find awkward. For instance, Monica,a Latina fourteen-year-old from Santa Rosa, California, who is part ofMatteo Bittanti’s “Game Play” study, said,Often, when I am waiting for a friend [in a public space] to show up I start playingpuzzle games on my phone, not because I particularly enjoy them, but because Idon’t like people staring at me. . . . In a sense, I am pretending to be busy, but it’seasier to fake this than, let’s say, a conversation.Portable gaming can occupy gaps in the day when one is out and about.Another teen whom boyd spoke with, Luke, a sixteen-year-old fromSan Francisco, said: “I always carry a [Nintendo] DS with me. It’s smallenough so that it can fit in [one of the pockets of] my jacket, alongwith one or two games.” In tandem with the evolution of portablemedia, gaming is starting to infiltrate more and more of the little gapsin everyday life.These examples also illustrate another key feature of gaming as killingtime: its solitary nature. Even when pursued in a social context, such as atthe Center (The Social Dynamics of Media Production) or when inhabitingpublic space, killing time by gaming involves carving out a one-on-onespace with the game. We see this in an example that Rachel Cody encounteredin her study of Final Fantasy XI. When members of a group are“camping,” or waiting for a monster to appear in a particular place, thereare often long stretches of waiting time. At these times, players would often

204 Mizuko Ito and Matteo Bittantiopen a new window to play a small Flash game, even while still occupyingthe shared social space in the multiplayer game. Although public discoursehas tended to associate antisocial and solitary behavior with violent, graphicallysophisticated games, we find that these forms of killing time gamingthat are generally seen as “harmless” or “casual” were the ones that weremost likely to be pursued as solitary activities. While we do not see theseforms of gaming as sites of profound social activity or learning, they arepart of the play, of the messing around with new media that are seamlesslyintegrated into kids’ everyday life rhythms.Box 5.1 Neopets: Same Game, Different MeaningsLaura Robinson and Heather A. HorstNeopets 5 (see www.neopets.com) is a virtual pet website owned by Viacomthat enables members to select, feed, and care for virtual pets. Reminiscentof Tamagotchi and Pokémon, Neopets’s members use a virtual currency calledneopoints to buy food, pets, and toys for their pets; create shops and galleries;build and decorate houses; and acquire equipment to compete with othercharacters or play in the Battledome. The site is also host to more than 250casual games, varying among 3D player games, Flash and Shockwave games,PHP games, and in-world quests.Through a variety of activities, players and participants can explore thefacets of “Neopia,” the virtual world where the pets live. Viacom emphasizesthe creative play that can occur through these digital engagements, but inpopular and academic circles (see Seiter 2005) Neopets continues to be criticizedfor its encouragement of capitalism, as exemplified through the salienceof neopoints in facilitating participation in Neopia, the encouragement ofcommercial enterprises (e.g., creating shops), as well as gambling and playingthe Neopets stock market (see box 7.5). Other critics focus on the immersiveadvertising and dislike the increasing availability of merchandise, such as“plushies” (stuffed animals resembling specific species of Neopets), as well asNeopets magazine, mobile-phone video games, screen savers, and breakfastcereal. Neopets’s parent company, Viacom, also takes advantage of its ownershipof Nickelodeon, a popular kids’ television network in the United States,by marketing Neopets and its associated products to children during afternoonand Saturday-morning television shows. Although parents and otherscontinue to be concerned about kids’ lack of awareness of the immersiveadvertising and capitalist ethos, most kids do not differentiate between themarketing in online spaces and the marketing that occurs in everyday life ontelevision, billboards, and the array of electronic goods in contemporaryhomes.

Gaming 205While debates over the value of consumerism in gaming marketed to kidspersist, our qualitative study of Neopets players suggests that Neopets is ahighly flexible gaming site that allows kids (and adults) who play to adapttheir engagement to their own interests and needs. For some players, it is allabout the games. For others, interest and participation in Neopets is tied tothe creative possibilities inherent in sites such as Neopets. For yet others,sociality is the key draw. For example, Mike, a seven-year-old who lives in aneconomically well-off and highly wired household in northern California,Neopets is about the thrill of the game. Mike was passionate about playinggames online—any kind of game, from Neopets to Club Penguin. When askedwhy he liked Neopets, he made it clear that it was all about the games—nothis pet, not creating a house, not any activity except playing games. LauraRobinson asked Mike, “Are you ever worried about your pet getting hungryor having treats?” Mike quickly answered negatively, “I don’t care about mypet at all. I just want to play the games!” When Mike tried to show Laurawhich games he liked to play, he attempted to open his site, but somehowhe could not remember his password. He explained that he didn’t feel anyconnection with the Neopets he created. Rather, he only wanted to accessthe games. In fact Mike repeatedly created new accounts and even playedunder other people’s pets. His strategy was to earn points for all his friendsin return for logging in at their homes.By contrast, “newbie” Neopet player, Jackson, could not care less aboutplaying the games. As Jackson, a nine-year-old from suburban northernCalifornia, explained, “I really like to make the pets. I even make new usernames or let them die just so I can make more of them.” Jackson “loves”Neopets, but not for the reasons we might expect. For Jackson, Neopets isabout the creative possibilities inherent in the creative act. Creating neopets,petpets, neohomes, and any other of the virtual venues or creatures is whatdrew Jackson to the game. This creative orientation was not surprising whenone begins to understand that Jackson comes from a highly creative family.His parents and siblings all have artistic tendencies, although they take differentforms: playing the guitar, dancing, and drawing. For Jackson, Neopetsbecomes an extension of his home world in which creativity is honed andvalued.Yet other Neopets players value the site for social connection. Mindy, ateenage female player from California, explained why she was invested in thesite during high school:“I just loved playing it with my friends.” For Mindy,her Neopets experience was centered in sociality. Neopets was framed as areason to go to a friend’s house, a reason to call a friend, or a reason to chat.Mindy’s introduction to the site was through a friend with whom Neopetsbecame a conversation piece, a shared experience that further cemented theirfriendship. When Laura asked Mindy about her neopet, Mindy explained,

206 Mizuko Ito and Matteo Bittanti“Well, I didn’t really check on my pet all that much. You know, it was moreabout being with other people and playing Neopets with them.” As Mindysuggested, the social connection that Neopets allowed her to form with otherswas her key interest in the site. As with Max and Jackson, the breadth andflexibility of Neopets—be it playing games, being creative, or making andmaintaining friendships—enabled Mindy to shape and customize her ownengagements online.In contrast to the genre of gaming we characterize as killing time, muchof game practice centers on social activity of various forms. The genres thatfollow are all examples of different, more sociable forms of gaming. Thefirst is how the hanging out genre of participation intersects with gamepractice.Hanging OutThe hanging out genre of participation happens when people engage withgaming in the process of spending time together socially. It is largely aform of friendship-driven sociability; while gaming is certainly important,it is not the central focus. Video games are part of the common pool, orrepertoire, of games and activities that kids and adults can engage in whileenjoying time together socially. Although games are usually consideredoccasions to compete around clear outcomes, this orientation can often besuperseded by a more conversational or relaxed mode. Played this way,games are not inherently different from traditional board games. In a sense,they represent their electronic evolution. Like board games, hanging outforms of gaming were not as strongly gendered or age specific as the moregeeked out forms of gaming that we examined; though boys were morelikely to talk about gaming as a social focus, the hanging out genre ofgaming represents a relatively democratic and accessible form of play.As described in chapter 4, gaming can facilitate the interaction betweenpeers but also between youth and adults. In fact, the family is one of themost common contexts for gaming as hanging out. In their detailed studiesof game play in the home, Stevens, Satwicz, and McCarthy (2007) describethe settings in the home around the game console where siblings andplaymates move fluidly in and out of game engagement with one another.This family gaming increasingly includes parents as well. A study con-

Gaming 207ducted by the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) states that 35percent of American parents say they play computer and video games.Among “gamer parents,” the ESA (2007) says, 80 percent report thatthey play video games with their children, and two thirds (66 percent)say that playing games has brought their families closer together. Hangingout genres of gaming enable people to bridge different forms of gamingexpertise and to cross generational and gender divides. For instance, Steven,a twenty-one-year-old from Mountain View, California (Bittanti, GamePlay), said,At Christmas, I played this game called Scene It? for the Xbox 360 over [at] mygirlfriend’s house. We played with her parents as well. . . . It’s a trivia game aboutthe history of cinema and you use a big controller instead of a conventional joypad.It was fun. We got to sit down on the couch and play together, and we laughed atour mistakes and we had a really good time. I mean, I would not normally spendthat much time with my girlfriend’s parents, you know? [laughs]The more casual mode of this kind of gaming sociality facilitates gameplay by those outside the stereotypical gamer demographic. The NintendoWii is in many ways the emblematic platform for hanging out as a gamingpractice. This console was specifically designed to reach a broader range ofplayers. Another example is the increasing success of music titles such asRock Band and Guitar Hero. Games that tie into established forms of socialbonding, such as music, dance, and sports, seem to invite this orientation.A fourteen-year-old white boy in Dan Perkel’s study “MySpace ProfileProduction” described his involvement in fantasy football and basketballleagues. He plays for about five minutes a day, though many of his friendsare much more involved. He said that “it is hard to stay away from it.”When Dan asked for clarification, he explained: “If your friends are alltalking about fantasy sports, naturally you’re going to want to be in theirconversation so that’s basically why most people do it.” Even solitary puzzlegames can take on a social hanging out quality when there are othersaround. In his observations at a video-production center, Dan Perkel (TheSocial Dynamics of Media Production) frequently observed kids playinggames on sites such as Miniclip in the downtime between activities. Theyoften would invite others in the vicinity to observe their game play andmove in and out of social and solitary engagement with the games.Hanging out gaming also includes online practices such as participatingin social guilds in massively multiplayer online role-playing games

208 Mizuko Ito and Matteo Bittanti(MMORPGs), where players enjoy the social affordances constructed by thegames. MMORPG players spend many hours logged in to the shared spaceof the game, and much of that time is occupied with casual hanging out,conversation, and activities such as bartering or exploring. The time spentactively pursuing game goals is only one part of what they do online. Thetime and space around the more goal-directed activities of gaming becomesa site for social conversation and sharing. In Dan Perkel and Sarita Yardi’sstudy “Digital Photo-Elicitation with Kids,” they spoke to a young RuneScapeplayer, Iris, who was ten years old and of mixed race (white and black). Sheenjoyed hanging out on the site because of the social environment.I like that you can play with a lot of people at the same time. It’s like you have anormal life, and you get to talk to people. And it’s not only one player; it’s morethan one player. And it’s not that you’re talking to an actual robot, but you’re talkingto actual people playing.She said she will play with a friend of hers in the late afternoon when theyboth get home, but she will also talk to others she comes across in thegame. The space of the online game becomes a hangout to meet her friendsboth offline and online.In Rachel Cody’s study of Final Fantasy XI, the core players of the“linkshell” (player guild) she was participating in would use a voice-chatprogram, Ventrilo (Vent), to stay in touch with their team constantly whilethey were at the computer. She talks with Ryukossei, 6 a nineteen-year-oldAsian-American player.Rachel: How did you like it?Ryukossei: I loved it. That was a great linkshell, I thought. And, like, yeah,it was pretty fun. It was good times.Rachel: Did you make any friends?Ryukossei: Oh, yeah. Especially the people on Vent. If I didn’t have Vent,I wouldn’t be playing this game, like, seriously. . . .Rachel: Yeah, Vent made it a lot less lonely, I thought.As noted in Cody’s box 5.3, Ryukossei describes how the “24/7” connectionon Vent made his teammates feel like a family. While playersin an MMOG may be attracted to the game play initially, they often endup staying because of the social dimensions of the game. As described inbox 5.3, players will often cite the social hanging out dimensions as oneof the primary reasons to stay with the game.

Gaming 209In describing the more friendship-driven side of hanging out forms ofgame play, players often explicitly disputed public perception that gameswere antisocial. We found this with some of our older players, who wereoften reflective of their game play and more aware of the stigma (Bittanti,Game Play). Louise, a twenty-eight-year-old from Vacaville, California,said, “Playing games can be a solo act, but when you involve friends andfamily you become more engaged in the play. I believe this represents ourhuman need to be connected to others in a real-world environment.”Frederick, a twenty-two-year-old from San Francisco, had a similarviewpoint:Games are shown to be social tools that, in various ways, socially connect peopleof the current and previous generations. It’s like parents reading their children thesame bedtime stories that they themselves fell asleep to as a child. I don’t see howanyone could argue with that.The practices of hanging out around games have affinities with other socialgames such as golf, bowling, bridge, or mah-jongg, and this is in line withour general framework of friendship-driven participation. While there arehighly competitive modes of engagement with these games, the moreeveryday forms of engagement tend to be driven by the social activity. Justas with more long-standing forms of gaming and play, electronic gamesare a focus of social activity between friends and family. Although the playmechanics of the game may involve competition and representations ofviolence, just as in the case of sports and games more broadly, the playfulconflict becomes a source of social bonding. As genres of gaming such ascasual sports games, rhythm games, and social online games expand, wecan expect that more and more of young people’s unstructured timetogether will be occupied by these experiences. In their recent study ofviolence and video gaming, Kutner and Olson (2008) suggest that kids whodo not play video games at all are more likely to be socially marginalizedthan those who do play. The conversations we have had with gamers alsosupport this finding; hanging out forms of gaming have become part ofthe everyday and commonplace practices of social play for youth.Recreational GamingWhile many people engage with games as a lightweight activity that fillsdead time or is part of a social activity, for committed gamers competitivegame play is more central to their orientation to the medium. This genre

210 Mizuko Ito and Matteo Bittantiof gaming, what we call “recreational gaming,” represents the core of whatwe think of as gaming practice: people gaming to game and getting togetherspecifically to play games that require persistent engagement to master. Ifin the previous category gaming tends to be in the background, here it isin the foreground. Recreational gaming includes everyday in-home gaming,when kids are into a game, or play with friends or family. It can be bothsolitary and social. This form of engagement includes everyday offlinegaming and dedicated services such as Xbox Live, where people enjoyplaying online games such as first-person shooters and sports titles. Asdescribed in box 5.2 on first-person shooters, in recreational gaming,players can develop intense relationships to games. Unlike killing time andhanging out forms of gaming, with recreational gaming we see a strongeridentification with the historically dominant gamer demographic—youngmales. We discuss these dimensions of gamer identity later in this chapterin the section on boundary work.Box 5.2 First-Person Play: Subjectivity, Gamer Code, and DoomMatteo BittantiKenny is a twenty-one-year-old from San Francisco who used to play gameson a daily basis when he was younger, but who then reduced his game timewhen he started college. He is now saving money to buy an Xbox 360 because“the love of the game is just too strong.” He loves first-person shooters, agenre of game characterized by a subjective perspective that renders thevirtual world from the point-of-view of the player character. According toKenny, the “FPS embodies the quintessential traits of the medium.” I decidedto reproduce with minimal editing his comments on Doom, the most celebratedFPS, because they contain many interesting points. Kenny discussedthe game with a specific discursive style (note the emphasis on the pronoun“I” to describe his game play experience—“My first encounter with a pinkydemon scared me shitless”—that does not happen, for instance, when somebodyis retelling the plot of a movie or a novel); a clear understanding ofwhat lies beneath the formal structure of the game (to describe the experience,Kenny uses adjectives such as “exhilarating” and “dumb,” [Doom] isvery mechanistic and repetitious, and “simultaneously calls for civility, forrational thinking, and meticulous problem solving”); the morality code ofthe gamer (“I wouldn’t touch the strategy guide until I beat the game”); anassumed importance of expertise in discussing games (historical contextualization);and an intense emotional investment in game practices.

Gaming 211Doom is my favorite video game of all time. I own all of them and have played, to someextent, all of them with the exception of Resurrection of Evil and the Master Levels ofDoom. It was simultaneously a triumph of technology as well as game play, serving as,arguably, one of the most influential games of all time. The greater half of big-nametitles are all, in a sense, descendents of Doom: Bioshock, F.E.A.R., Stalker, Crysis. Prettygrotesque, but Doom III simultaneously calls for civility, for rational thinking, andmeticulous problem solving. The problem solving goes much deeper than switch flipping,key finding, and dashing for the exit. Every enemy you encounter is a problemthat needs to be solved. Doom III is easy, but you’d never guess that based on the imageryalone: shocking, intimidating, frightening. It plays on your irrational fears, expectingyou to panic, to slip, to shoot wildly at nothing, but there is a logic to the game, a code,like every game. Doom teaches one to hunt, to compose oneself as a gentleman beforeand after war. One must supplant, or supersede, many of the atavistic urges Doomencourages in order to truly master the game.In Gears of War, there is nothing more satisfying than dismembering your opponentwith a [chain saw]. Charging headlong into the fray, your Lancer, growling hungrily forLocust intestines, held high above your head, is exhilarating. It’s also dumb. There arerules of engagement. The shotty [shotgun] trumps the [chain saw], and the sniper trumpsthe shotty. And I love first-person shooters! My daily gaming diet consists solely of firstpersonshooters! I bought Doom III the day it was released, with the strategy guide andeverything. I swore, like I always do, that I wouldn’t touch the strategy guide until I beatthe game, for a very special reason. Doom III is huge on atmosphere, and I’d be hardpressedto find a game that does a better job of creating such frighteningly gorgeousenvironments. The use of sound is phenomenal, and the monsters are just oozing withgory details.My first encounter with a pinky demon scared me shitless. Hell, my first encounterwith an imp left me shaking. It’s scary! Well . . . at least it is until the imp is evisceratedby one shotgun blast and all that remains of that pinky demon after two well-placedshots is an incongruous pile of gore. It’s this knowledge that separates one from thegame. That’s why I didn’t touch the strategy guide. If I knew how to kill an imp beforeour encounter, I would have never experienced that fear.Recreational gaming is deeply social, but unlike in the hanging out genreof gaming, the game play itself is the impetus and focus for getting together.It is interest-driven rather than friendship-driven sociality that drives gatheringsin this genre of play. For example, one of our interviewees described“DS Fridays,” when kids meet weekly to play specific Nintendo DS games.Annie Manion (Anime Fans), in her interviews of anime fans who lived incollege dorms, found an active gaming-centered social life among some ofthe students. One of her interviewees, Cara, described how there was agroup who would get together to play Smash Bros., and group memberswould develop different techniques and specialties in playing differentgame characters. Another example is Halo parties, where gamers gather to“frag” 7 each other. MaxPower, a white fourteen-year-old in Christo Sims’s

212 Mizuko Ito and Matteo Bittantistudy in rural California (Rural and Urban Youth), described a Local AreaNetwork (LAN) party, involving networking computers with sixteen kids,that he was part of. The LAN was set up with four Xboxes and four TVs.“It was for five hours straight. After the second hour, I couldn’t take itanymore. I had to go out with me and my friend, Josh, just kind of wentout and skateboarded a little bit while everybody was playing ‘cause myeyes started to hurt.” A white seventeen-year-old in Sims’s study, a selfdescribedgeek, said he is part of regular LAN parties with computers, whereanywhere from six to fifteen kids will get together regularly to play.Through recreational gaming, kids build social relationships that centeron game-related interests and expertise. As part of her “Silicon ValleyFamilies” study Heather Horst interviewed an avid gamer, a white twelveyear-oldwho described his immersion in game play together with a goodfriend:John Harker: My friend and I, we just lived [in] each other’s housesalternating GameCube and PS2. Go over to a friend’s, like, Xbox. . . . Wehave all-nighter video-game parties and so it’s kind of pathetic but it’s alot of fun. . . . My friend just got, like, he’s even more obsessed than I am.So he always gets games and I just go over to his house for the day andwe’ll make stuff, eat it, bike, and play video games. . . . Watch movies.Heather: It’s usually groups, like, how many of you can play, actually?John Harker: I’ve had times when we have two TVs in the same roomand we’re playing joint, eight-player Halo. . . . Which is awesome. . . . Halo2 is just an incredible game.Heather: Okay. So you’ve had . . . you can do all of that.John Harker: Yeah, and a lot of the time I just go over, “hey Joey, youwant to come over to my house?” and it’s just two people or something.And, well, say he’s losing—he’ll invite someone who’s even worse thanhim and then he’ll have someone to beat. So it just evolves like that.As John Harker described, recreational gaming is a site of activity wheremore friendship-driven modes of gaming move fluidly into messing aroundand geeking out. As a genre of play, recreational gaming is compellingbecause kids can engage flexibly in these different modes of participationand learning. Like other more geeky, interest-driven pursuits, gamingdiffers from extracurricular activities that have higher status in mainstreamteen sociality, particularly sports. At the same time, gaming is becoming a

Gaming 213pervasive social activity among boys, so gaming virtuosity does providesome peer status as well as an important vehicle for social bonding. Gamingpractices provide a focus for the development of identities of expertise,performance, and virtuosity—an arena of practice that differs from thedemands placed on youth for academic performance. These are extracurricularspaces where kids can achieve in contexts that are detachedfrom the high-stakes performance required of them in school, and wherefailure is not as consequential. They can frag and respawn repeatedly orchange games and in-game identities if they do not like the path theyhave been on.Another important dimension of recreational gaming is that the socialrelationships and knowledge networks that kids develop often become apathway to other forms of technical and media-related learning. Thischapter’s opening discussion of Earendil is an example of how gamingbecame a focus of a certain trajectory of participation into differentforms of media practices and literacies. Earendil’s gaming interests becamea focus of sociability and play in his childhood and early teen years, andin college his gamer friends introduced him to anime and to variousother online activities. Gaming provided an initial focus for an interestdrivensocial group that became a friendship group supporting the developmentof technical and media-related expertise more generally. Similarly,in Katynka Martínez’s “High School Computer Club” study, she notedthat most of the boys associated with the club are avid gamers. Afterthe computers in the lab became networked (in a moment they called“The Renaissance”), the boys would show up during lunch and even theirfifteen-minute nutrition breaks to play Halo and Counter-Strike againstone another. Again, this is an example of gaming providing a social focusfor kids with broader technology- and media-related interests. As withother forms of interest-driven practice that we examine in this book, theseare contexts that exhibit peer-based learning and knowledge sharing thatare driven forward by the motivations of kids themselves. These dimensionsof peer-based learning and the honing of expertise become even morepronounced when we turn to some of the genres to follow, such as organizingand mobilizing and augmented game play. These learning outcomesof recreational gaming call attention to the social and technological contextsof gaming practice rather than focusing exclusively on the questionof the transfer of game content to behavior and cognition.

214 Mizuko Ito and Matteo BittantiOrganizing and MobilizingGamers who are highly invested in their play will often become involvedin more structured kinds of social arrangements, such as guilds, teams,clans, clubs, and organized social groups that revolve specifically aroundgaming. We refer to this as “organizing and mobilizing” practices in whichthe social dimensions of gaming become more formalized and structuredand more identified with geeking out than with messing around. This iswhere we see the politicians and warlords of the gaming universe andthe people they organize, collaborate with, and lead. Organized andmobilized forms of gaming are core to the practices of traditional sportsas well as to games such as Dungeons & Dragons that became popular inthe 1970s and 1980s. Electronic games as they became networked in thepast decade have become a new site for organized forms of gaming andhigh-stakes competition. Gamers in networked systems can keep track ofin-game skills, “gamerscores,” records, reputation, experience points, andso on in international game networks. Services such as Xbox Live and thePlayStation Network are specifically designed to facilitate agonistic formsof playing in a particularly competitive environment based on a specificform of meritocracy: gaming skills. Online role-playing games enableplayers to organize guilds with formalized leadership and specialized rolesand responsibilities. This genre of participation requires various degrees ofcommitment not only in terms of time and competency but also in termsof resources and economic capital, as gaming equipment (hardware, software,and services) are generally more expensive than other forms of mediatedentertainment.For the most dedicated players, competitive gaming might represent anevolution of recreational gaming, or they may engage in both genres ofgaming. In a few cases, the passion for gaming can evolve into a profession.Consider, for instance, the rise of gaming as e-sport—electronic sports, orthe play of video games as a professional sport—in countries such as SouthKorea as well as the United States and Scandinavia. “My hero is Lil Poison,”said Grant, a twenty-two-year-old avid gamer from Sunnyvale, California,referring to Victor M. De Leon III, the world’s youngest known professionalvideo game player (Bittanti, Game Play). “His skills are incredible for anine-year-old! I watch his videos online and I find them amazing.” Whilerecreational gaming is practiced by youth who have a variety of interestsand hobbies, these mobilized practices are specific to a group of teenagers

Gaming 215and young adults who often openly call themselves “gamers.” The socialidentity fostered in tight-knit gaming groups leads to a stronger identificationwith gamer identity.While gaming as hanging out or recreation takes place mostly in theprivate sphere (homes), mobilizing often requires dedicated spaces suchas an Internet café, which can provide fast Internet connections andpowerful computers. Mobilized gaming, like many other forms of geekingout, requires more specialized technical resources and social networksas well as the time and space to dedicate oneself to a serious hobby. Wecan see this in the difference in scale of various LAN parties, whichwe describe in this chapter’s section on recreational gaming. Parties canvary in size from a small group of friends to large, more formal gatherings.Small parties can form spontaneously, but large ones usually require a fairamount of planning and preparation on the part of the organizer. Becauseof the size of these events, most require renting a conference room in ahotel or in a convention center (for a study of LAN parties, see Jansz andMartens 2005).In his study (Team Play) of a group of middle-school boys (aged thirteento fourteen) who were regulars in an Internet café in the San Francisco BayArea, Arthur Law describes different social configurations among gamers.One group of boys went to the café to play the strategy game, Warcraft,on their own, and another group went to the café to play Counter-Strikeas a clan. Both of these modes of game play are networked and social. Lawdescribes how two of the Warcraft players go the café to play with a set ofgamer friends with whom they keep in touch online. Patrick, in particular,is a competitive gamer who keeps close track of his ranking on Battle.net,a system that keeps track of Warcraft player statistics across the country.Law writes:Both Patrick and Zachary organize their games outside of Warcraft. Patrick is an aviduser of AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) and usually connects with his friends overAIM to get them to play a game. His contact list has more than two hundred peopleand about half of them play Warcraft. Patrick’s family moved from SouthernCalifornia a year ago and he keeps in touch with his friends online through AIM.He never gets to see any of them anymore so Warcraft is one way of hanging outwith his friends online. There are a number of people from his school who wereinternational students who have moved back to their home countries and theirgroup routinely meets online to chat about what they’re doing or just to play a fewgames.

216 Mizuko Ito and Matteo BittantiThe Counter-Strike players in Law’s study are a group of friends whoregularly come to the café together and identify as a clan. They use theirclan name in their online handles. This group also has a lightweightsense of leadership in the group, where Shawn is recognized as the mostexperienced player. As is typical with team sports and game play, thisleadership is under constant renegotiation. Law describes an instance ofplay when Shawn won the first round and was advising the remainingplayers on strategy. “Both teams ignored the advice,” Law notes, and sufferedas a result.Box 5.3 Learning and Collaborating in Final Fantasy XIRachel CodyFinal Fantasy XI (FFXI) is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game(MMORPG) developed by Square Enix as a part of the Final Fantasy series.Although the game is not tied to the other Final Fantasy games, it shares thegraphical, character, and narrative style of many of the other games, providinga major draw for players who enjoyed those games.The game was released in Japan in 2002 and brought to North America inthe fall of 2003. It can be played on four platforms: PlayStation 2, PlayStation3, Xbox 360, and PC. In 2006, there were approximately 500,000 subscribersto FFXI (Woodard/Gamasutra 2006). FFXI offers many of the same activitiesof other MMORPGs. Players are able to advance themselves through levels bykilling monsters for points. Players can complete missions for their nation toadvance in a ranking system, and there are dozens of quests to complete inall cities and towns. Additionally, FFXI offers players a crafting system,through which they can create their own food, clothes, or weapons to use orsell. Monsters that are extremely difficult to defeat offer players a challenge,competition, and rare and valuable gear. And for those who want to try theirskills against other players, Ballista offers players the chance to form teamsand compete against one another in games.Most of all, FFXI is a social game. Players often join to be with their friendsand develop long-lasting relationships throughout their time in the game.For example, Kalipea, a twenty-year-old white player in Ontario, Canada,started playing the game after visiting her friend:Well, I was at my friend’s house, and she had just got it and I used to play video gamesall the time when I was younger. But then I never played like an online one at all. . . . Itlooked kind of cool and then she got the online one and said, “Oh here, go on here.”And I made a trial character and I tried it out—ended up playing for like twelve hoursstraight.

Gaming 217After Kalipea got into the game, she would go over to her friend’s house sothey could play together, a practice that is not uncommon for players whoare friends outside the game and live near each other. Kalipea describedplaying with her friend:Yep. I played with her. At first we hung out a lot because she was showing me howto work around stuff. Like we both lived in the same city at the time, and I wouldgo to her house and even like bring my computer over there and we’d have like allnightgaming sessions, just playing and hanging out. And we’d go to like the twentyfour-hourgrocery store and get all this food and sit in front of the computers and eatjunk food.Within the game, players form groups, chat with one another via privatemessages or in-game mail, and join linkshells. The game is built to be social;from leveling to questing to crafting, people need one another to progressthrough the game. Scott, a twenty-five-year-old white male in WashingtonState, describes the necessity of playing with other people:Because you have to rely on so many, you’re just . . . you’re so limited on what you cando solo that you have to rely on other people. And if you have to rely on other peopleyou might as well do it with people you like. And I think that’s . . . it’s just a very interconnectedplay, ’cause you have to have people you know.Players who prefer casual, individual play, and players who do not get alongwith others are weeded out of the game early since lengthy parties are necessaryfor play and reputations (and thus party invites) are dependent on aplayer’s ability to interact successfully with party members. Communities arealso a major determinant in what players do in the game, how they play, andwhat they desire in the game. Players learn from one another where to go inorder to level, what gear to wear, and their roles within parties during levelingor killing a monster. And players who fail to align their social interactions,play style, gear, and roles to the community norms risk being cast out of aparty, removed from a linkshell, or ostracized or mocked by the communityat large.Players need one another to succeed in the game, but they play with oneanother because that is what they enjoy. People often log in to the gamelooking forward to hanging out with their friends. Chat fills the lengthydowntime while players look for a party to play with, between monster fights,while waiting for monsters to spawn, and during lengthy fights. Even whenthe game’s activities are no longer fun, people often continue playing becauseof their friends. Wurlpin, a twenty-six-year-old white male in San Diego whohad played the game for two years, described the relationships:You will play with these guys eight, nine, ten hours in a day sometimes, all weekand in wee hours of the morning so they kind of become your family so to speak, oryour group of friends that you hang out with. It is your way of hanging out with them,

218 Mizuko Ito and Matteo Bittantiso, leaving that is kind of hard. And the only reason I pretty much stayed was for thepeople.Ryukossei, a nineteen-year-old Asian-American in Illinois who played thegame for more than two years, also commented on the strong bonds formedwithin the game:Yeah, especially because we had Vent on twenty-four/seven, every time we logged onand stuff. We kind of got attached, you might say. And when someone quit, it wouldbe really hard for them. I mean, you hung out with them. It’s like a family pretty much.I mean, you’re there with them the whole day and stuff like that.Scott pointed out that the people make all the frustrations of the game worthwhilewhen he described an early experience in the game:You have to go down there [to a dragon] and it takes a long time to get there, and wehad like—I mean, it was the most frustrating thing we ever did. But afterwards we justcouldn’t help but laugh, ’cause it was this stupid dragon that killed us all, and I mean,at least five times. . . . And we were running out of time because each of us had beenrisen once at least, and already died, and so our timers were running out. And oh, it wasjust the quintessential just, us-against-the-world type of thing.Sometimes, players spend more time with their friends within the gamethan they do with their friends (or even families!) outside the game. Theycheck the websites and forums during their breaks at school to keep updatedon their friends’ activities and eagerly log in to the game as soon as they gethome. Players often sacrifice sleep, staying up long into the night to haveanother adventure with their friends. The communities and relationshipsforged within the game extend beyond its boundaries into websites, forums,guides, instant messenger programs, emails, and even phone calls or textmessages. Linkshells, especially endgame linkshells, often have dedicatedwebsites where their members chat about in-game adventures, their homework,personal problems, or just joke around. Sites such as KillingIfrit.comand ffxi.allakhazam.com allow players to chat with one another beyond thebounds of the linkshell or their server. Forums on these sites are filled withplayers asking questions about crafts or quests, debating the best gear or roleof different jobs, proudly telling of their most recent accomplishments, ortalking about the latest drama between players or linkshells. The websites andforums become extensions of the game by providing a large community ofsupport, advice, and socializing that players often rely on and enjoy.Final Fantasy XI players are embedded in a rich social atmosphere whererelationships and communities are forged and fostered. It is the social componentsof the game that often motivate players to log in and support theirsuccess. The extended communities that reach beyond the game into websites,forums, instant messenger programs, and phone calls help strengthenthese relationships and influence players’ experiences and success within thegame. The players often play for the people.

Gaming 219The issue of leadership and team organization was a topic that was centralto Rachel Cody’s study of Final Fantasy XI (FFXI). Cody spent sevenmonths participant-observing in a high-level “linkshell,” or guild. Althoughmany purely social linkshells do populate FFXI, Cody’s linkshell was an“endgame” linkshell, meaning that the group aimed to defeat the highlevelmonsters in the game. The linkshell was organized in a hierarchicalsystem, with a leader and officers who had decision-making authority,and new members needed to be approved by the officers. Often the processof joining a linkshell involved a formal application and interview. Thelinkshell would organize “camps” where sometimes more than 150 peoplewould wait for a high-level monster to appear and then attack with a wellplannedbattle strategy. Cody writes:One of the important things about these camps was that linkshell members behavedprofessionally and in line with a linkshell’s expectation of conduct. Enki, 8 the headof the linkshell, was known for reprimanding or even kicking people from thelinkshell for unsportsmanlike behavior during camp, spamming the linkshell during“focus” time, or making a fairly big mistake during the actual killing of an HNM. 9Even without Enki’s reprimanding people, linkshell members placed a good deal ofpressure on themselves to be “perfect” at these camps and not make mistakes. Theyrealize that their behavior is a reflection on themselves and their linkshell mates.While they had a good deal of fun between focus windows, these were high-stresstimes demonstrated by the constant drama that occurred.Just as in the case of some of the practices described in chapters 6 and7, the activities of Cody’s linkshell move beyond the playful toward moreserious and worklike arrangements where participants are accountable tothe expectations of a team. Gaming becomes a site of organizing collectiveaction, which can vary from the more lightweight arrangements of kidsgetting together to play competitively to the more formal arrangementsthat we see in a group such as Cody’s linkshell.In all these cases, players are engaging in a complex social organizationthat operates under different sets of hierarchies and politics than thosethat occupy them in the offline world. At the same time, the dispositionsand social learning that kids pick up in gaming are not completely cut offfrom their real-life learning. Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown (2007)explore this dynamic in their discussion of “Why Virtual Worlds CanMatter.” They suggest the notion of “conceptual blending,” in whichplayers blend their understandings of online and offline. “The dispositionsbeing developed in World of Warcraft are not being created in the virtual

220 Mizuko Ito and Matteo Bittantiand then being moved to the physical, they are being created in bothequally” (15). They conclude: “These players are learning to create newdispositions within networked worlds and environments which are wellsuited to effective communication, problem solving, and social interaction”(17).Following from Thomas and Brown, we also believe that the importantlearning outcomes of mobilized gaming cannot be reduced to an issue oftransfer of knowledge or skills. Knowledge, competence, and dispositionsare developed in the contexts of intense collective social commitments.These commitments can be so strong that they compromise commitmentsto other social groups and activities, whether they are family, offlinefriends, or school. At the same time, it is important to recognize that theseforms of gaming represent opportunities to experience collective actionand to exercise agency and political will. This genre of game play involvesjockeying for power, status, and success within competitive game play withothers with whom one is deeply connected. As Thomas and Brown suggest,these forms of collective action in gaming worlds can function as traininggrounds for collaborative forms of work and social action.Augmented Game PlayAs games get more complex, and gaming culture gets broader and deeper,players increasingly engage with a wide range of practices that relate toknowledge seeking and cultural production through games. We call thisgenre of gaming “augmented game play”—engagement with the widerange of secondary productions that are part of the knowledge networkssurrounding game play. These include cheats, fan sites, modifications,hacks, walk-throughs, game guides, and various websites, blogs, and wikis.In her book on cheating in video games, Mia Consalvo (2007) suggests anotion of “gaming capital” to understand the broader cultural context inwhich gaming knowledge and expertise are negotiated. She positions thedevelopment of various cheats and cheat codes in games as part of a muchlonger history in the “paratexts” surrounding gaming—texts that helpgamers gain knowledge and interpret the culture of games. In our genresof game play, cheating and engaging with these paratexts is part of whatwe consider “augmented game play,” the engagement with the peripheraland secondary texts made about and with games. Paratexts, in the formof game magazines, have been part of gaming since the early years of

Gaming 221console gaming. As the gaming community has moved to the Internet, thevolume of secondary production and information related to gaming hasexpanded exponentially, as has the social organization of online gamingcommunities. The advent of accessible video-editing tools has also creatednew forms of player-generated content such as machinima and videobasedgame walk-throughs. While it is beyond the scope of this chapter todelve into details of the world of player-generated content (see for exampleHertz 2002; Lowood 2007), we would like to describe some of how youngpeople engage in these augmented game play practices, both as creatorsand consumers of player-created content and knowledge.Most players engage with augmented game play as consumers of thework of other players or of the cheats and modifications embedded ingames by the developers. In our work, we did not encounter any kids whocreated their own cheat codes or walk-throughs, but we do have indicationsthat access to cheats and other secondary gaming texts was commonamong kids. In Lisa Tripp and Becky Herr-Stephenson’s study of Los Angelesimmigrant families (Los Angeles Middle Schools), Herr-Stephenson had theopportunity to see how cheat codes operated in the everyday game playof Andres, a twelve-year-old Mexican American. In her field notes shewrites,Andrew picks up his controller and pulls a sheet of folded notebook paper from hispocket. On the paper are written about a half dozen cheat codes for the game. Heglances at it and decides that he first needs to “get the cops off [his] back.” Thiscode he knows by heart and he enters the series of keystrokes that make his characterinvisible to the police officers in the game. Then, he tries the new code and is excitedwhen his bank balance jumps up about $1,000. Then, he jumps in a car and takesoff. When he crashes that car, he jumps out and quickly enters a string of keystrokesfrom memory. The car is instantly restored to perfect condition. I ask him how helearned the codes he has memorized and where he got the list of new codes. Hetells me that there are some older kids who live in his apartment complex who givehim the codes. He also has two older cousins (high-school age) who play the gameand have given him some of the codes. When I ask if he thinks using the codes ischeating, he looks confused. I don’t think he’s ever thought about it as cheating(despite calling them “cheat codes”) and instead just thinks that such codes are anormal part of game play.What is interesting about this case is the degree to which cheat codes havebeen integrated as a commonsensical part of game play and have foundtheir way into the hands of a player who does not have access to the

222 Mizuko Ito and Matteo BittantiInternet as a way of easily accessing this kind of information. Cheat codesare a kind of gaming capital that circulates among game players in a peerto-peerfashion and that is now an established part of the social andcultural economy of gaming.Consalvo (2007) describes a wide range of attitudes that players haveregarding what constitutes a cheat, and what an appropriate way of usingcheats is. We saw similar diversity in our work. Players all realized thatthere were ways to work around the formal constraints of the game byusing augmented and external game resources. Opinions varied as towhether players liked to use cheat codes or to what extent they should relyon strategy guides and walk-throughs. For some players, simply usingstrategy and hint guides constitutes “cheating” in a game. Peter, a thirteenyear-oldfrom San Bruno, California, said,When I play games on my PlayStation 2 I usually look for strategy hints and guideson sites like GameFAQs, but I only use them when I cannot kill a particular monsteror I am stuck somewhere. I mean, I know that this is a kind of cheating, but whenthe game becomes too frustrating or long, I feel that I need to move on. (Bittanti,Game Play)While Peter thought that it is a kind of cheating to look at a strategy guidewhen he is trying to beat a game on his own, he also enjoyed engagingwith cheats as a playful activity in its own right. “Sometimes I look forcheats not to beat the game but to fool around and do funny things.”Cheats are the quintessential form of messing around that has accompaniedelectronic gaming since the early years in the 1980s. Today, theseforms of messing around are a well-established part of gaming culturefor kids, and processes of subverting the official rules of a game arecommonplace.Another dimension of augmented game play is the customization andmodding of games. In the early years of gaming, the ability to do playerlevelmodifications was minimal for most games, unless one were a gamerhacker and coder, or it was a simulation game that was specifically designedfor user authoring. Today, many games come with the ability to create acustom avatar and customize the game experience, and some playerssee these capabilities as one of the primary attractions of the game.Games such as Pokémon or Neopets are designed specifically to allowuser authoring and customization of the player experience in the form ofpersonal collections of unique pets (Ito 2008b). This kind of customization

Gaming 223activity is an entry point into messing around with game content andparameters.In Laura Robinson and Heather Horst’s study of Neopets, one of Horst’sinterviewees (Asian-American twelve-year-old) described the pleasures ofdesigning and arranging homes in Neopets and Millsberry Farms. She didnot want to have to bother with playing games to accrue Neopoints tomake her Neohome and instead preferred the Millsberry Farm site, whereit was easier to get money to build and customize a home. “Yeah, you getpoints easier and get money to buy the house easily. And I like to do interiordesign. And so I like to arrange my house and since they have, like,all of this natural stuff, you can make a garden. They have water and youcan add water in your house.” Similarly, Emily, a twenty-one-year-old fromSan Francisco, told Bittanti (Game Play): “I played The Sims and builtseveral Wii Miis. I like to personalize things, from my playlists to mygames. The only problem is that after I build my characters I have nointerest in playing them, and so I walk away from the game.” Kenny, atwenty-one-year-old from San Francisco, described messing around withthe editing tools in different strategy games:I remember, when I was younger, the editing tools that came with StarCraft and allthe hours I would spend crafting campaigns and single-player missions, or themultiplayer maps I would develop for Command and Conquer: Red Alert for myfriends and I to play on. Oftentimes I spent more time outside of the game, craftingmy own complex story lines and campaigns than playing the actual game itself.With players such as Kenny, who are messing around with moddingoutside the parameters predetermined by the designers, augmented gameplay can turn toward more geeked out activities. Rather than workingwithin the parameters of the game, as in the case of building a neohomeor a home in The Sims, more geeked out game customization means actuallyhacking and rewriting the rules or creating secondary productions thatare outside the sanctioned game space. These activities are tied to muchmore specialized forms of technical knowledge. For example, one of theparticipants in Patricia Lange’s YouTube and video bloggers study is a whiteeighteen-year-old who is involved in the MUD and MUSH 10 gaming communities.Although he learned Java in high school, he says he learned C++and C through his modding activities. Box 5.4 gives another example of aplayer highly committed to the creative side of augmented gaming. Asdescribed in chapter 6, these kinds of secondary productions can become

224 Mizuko Ito and Matteo Bittantiintensely consumed within some circuits that rely on specialized forms ofproduction knowledge that are outside the kind of gaming expertise centeredon game play itself. Even within the technical communities of videomaking, machinima makers are a highly specialized lot. Not only does themaking of the videos require intimate knowledge of game mechanics andvideo editing but also the content of the videos often references highlyesoteric details. One of Dan Perkel’s interviewees (MySpace Profile Production),Aaron, a fourteen-year-old white Armenian male, was involvedin the production of machinima for Battlefield. He is part of a communitythat specializes in filming stunts in the game. Each video generally involvesabout twenty people. Although it used to be easier to get into the group,he says that now new applicants have to have “a talent” such as videoediting or using Photoshop. Playing Battlefield and participating in hismachinima got him interested in digital production and other artistichobbies he is involved in.Box 5.4 Machinima: From Learners to ProducersMatteo BittantiTom is a twenty-year-old machinima maker who lives in the San FranciscoBay Area. His family is originally from Boston, and both his parents areeducators. “I have always been fascinated by visual media,” Tom said,“and machinima offered me the perfect opportunity to combine my twogreatest passions, cinema and video games.” He elaborated: “When I was akid, I was blown away by Star Wars. It was, for me, a true epiphany. Afterwatching it, I decided I would become a filmmaker. . . . Then I discoveredvideo games, which I consider cinema’s natural progression.” “Machinima”is a term used to describe animated films created using game engines andgame play footage. In 2006, Tom spent approximately eight months (“frombeginning to the end”) working on an ambitious film that re-created one ofJulius Caesar’s most famous battles. “It was much harder than I thought,”confessed Tom, “also because it was my freshman year in college and I wastaking many classes.”He worked an average of two hours per day, seven days a week. “I couldnot devote more time to ‘the cause’ because I was studying at the same timeand I did not want to compromise my grades.” School has never been aproblem for Tom. “I love studying but also doing side projects that are tangentiallyrelated to the things I like.” What he likes most about these “sideprojects” is that they allow him to be “in complete control”: “I also felt that

Gaming 225working on something so complex like a movie could have helped me tolearn not only new skills but also about myself.” Tom never talked aboutvideo games in terms of “gamer guilt”: “I never felt that playing a game wasnot culturally valid: I really don’t see any difference in watching a movie andplaying a game. They could be both very enriching experiences.” However,Tom is not a fan of television. “That does feel like a waste of time.” In hismedia hierarchy, television is at the bottom because “it is so dumb” and “neverreally asks the viewer to do any effort.” Machinima making, on the contrary,was intensely creative.To describe the process, Tom frequently used words such as “persistence,”“perseverance,” and “tenacity.” “I have never felt that I was going to quit,but I must admit that I underestimated the time and effort that it takes tomake something good.” Tom’s biggest fear was to be perceived as “the lazykid,” “the flaky one,” somebody “who cannot finish what he started.” Whenhe first announced to his friends that he was making an animated movieusing video games, he felt that “bailing out of the project would have beencatastrophic [laughs].” What drove him to complete his film was “a mixtureof ego, stubbornness, and excitement.” He added: “I kept telling myself: Don’tgive up on me, don’t give up on me.” Tom is fascinated by the Roman Empire(some of his favorite books are The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empireseries by Edward Gibbon) and he was surprised to see that very few gamesfocus on this particular historical period. “There are millions of titles set inthe future, like Halo, or during World War II, like the Call of Duty series, butalmost nothing on the ancient Rome.”To re-create historical battles, Tom resorted to Total War, a very popularstrategy game for the PC. It was an unusual choice for a machinima: infact, most authors use first-person shooters or simulations such as TheSims. Tom wrote the script in two days, but he faced a daunting task.He needed to obtain the necessary game footage to construct a long andcomplex story. While most machinima last a few minutes, his intention wasto create a one-hour film, quite an ambitious goal for a first-time effort. Producinga machinima requires technical and social skills: One, one has tocollect the appropriate footage from a game. Such content needs to be edited.Convincing dialogues and/or proper subtitles need to be added. The implicationsare twofold. First, creating a machinima is much more complex thanjust “playing a game”—the gamer becomes a director. The implication orprerequisite is that the creator needs to understand the language and conventionsof cinema as well as the inner workings of a video game. He also assumesthe role of a skilled technician able to master sophisticated applications suchas Final Cut Pro or Vegas. But personal expertise is not enough. Second, afterhe collects all the raw material, the production process becomes intensively

226 Mizuko Ito and Matteo Bittanticollaborative, since each character of the game speaks with the voice of adifferent human being. “Machinima is a bit like puppeteering: There is alwayssomebody pulling the strings of a doll. There is always a real person behindthe simulation.”Tom recruited his roommate and his friends to play the roles of thedifferent Roman soldiers. “Coordinating and managing ten, twelve peopleat the same time was not easy, but that helped me to grasp the complexityand nuances of teamwork.” The result of Tom’s efforts is a forty-minuteanimated film (“the director’s cut,” as he called it) that has been freely distributedonline. Some loved the movie; others accused it of being “TooHollywood-ish.”I received many letters of support, but others, inevitably, disagreed, and wrote harshcomments on my Internet Archive page. It felt I had to respond, to defend “my baby,”you know. Now I would not probably do it; I would just let the film speak for itself,but discussing my intentions with other readers helped me to understand moreabout my creative process even though I still oppose their ideas of what machinima isor should be.Tom thought that such creative production was “empowering” and “overall,fun.” “It’s the feeling of deep satisfaction that you get when you build somethingfrom scratch.”When suggested to Tom that machinima is comparable to a remix practice,a bricolage—since most of the content is already available—he disagreed:“The process required to transform game play into a coherent narrative is anact of creation in itself. It’s not just a matter of reassembling what’s out there.And that happens in games because game play has a potential for infiniteinnovation.” Tom is now working on a new machinima. “I’ve learned somuch from my previous experience,” he said, “and now the productionprocess has become smoother and faster. I started with a complete storyboardthis time and created parts for specific people that I had in mind. In a sense,the infrastructure is now already in place.” I asked him if he thought that theskills he had learned with machinima could be transferred to other contexts.“Absolutely! To create a machinima I had to learn editing, sculpting, but alsoI had to learn how to manage people and cooperate with them efficiently. Itwas both a personal project and a collective effort.”He quickly added: “The funny thing is that now I can’t watch movies likeI used to do before, you know, naively. . . . I am aware of the camera, theangles, the cuts. . . . I imagine myself reediting the films as I watch them.”Tom plans to move to Hollywood after graduating to fulfill his dream ofbecoming a film director. “I did an internship last summer in a Los Angelesstudio. It was exciting. This is the direction I intend to take after I’m donewith school.”

Gaming 227Tom’s case shows how video games can become tools of production forstudents eager to combine the literary (the Decline and Fall of the RomanEmpire series) and the visual (film). Rather than being alternative to traditionallearning practices, digital games can become complementary and enrichingeducational experiences: the pedagogic values of such practices lie not only inthe information apprehended but also (especially) in the technical, social, andpersonal domains that they entail. Above all, creating a machinima allowedTom to be apprentice and producer, learner and circulator of meanings.The activities of augmented gaming are highly varied, and in comparisonto the other genres of gaming practice we describe, are a less clearly definedcategory of practice. We have included practices varying from gamestrategyguides to secondary fan productions, cheats, and customization.What is common throughout all these practices is an orientation thatpoints outward from the competitive practices of game play toward engagingmore broadly with gaming culture. In her study of Yu-Gi-Oh! play,Mizuko Ito (2008b) suggests that these practices of personalizing gamesand engaging with the viral knowledge exchange surrounding games arekey sites of learning and “hypersocial” exchange. Through games, kidsengage in sophisticated forms of knowledge exchange in a context wherethey are personally invested and identified. This is not about a genericposition of spectatorship but rather an active subjectivity where gamerscan acquire unique, esoteric knowledge tailored to their interests, anddevelop their own custom content as part of this engagement. This kindof relationship to media content is a quality that has been present infandoms surrounding traditional media, but it is much more pervasive ininteractive media formats. This orientation toward remaking and customizingmedia is in many ways a hallmark of the digital era and a key trainingground for learning critical engagement with media; it is also a pathwayinto various forms of creative production, which we describe in chapter 6.Flows and Boundaries of GamingGaming has been at the center of ongoing cultural debate over what areappropriate forms of media for kids. A substantial part of this debate hasincluded discussions of age and gender appropriateness. In our discussions

228 Mizuko Ito and Matteo Bittantiwith parents and gamers, we have found a range of perspectives on boundariesof game play, how kids should move in and out of game engagement,and what kinds of identities kids formed with games. This is the culturalcontext in which the practices of game-related learning and developmentunfold. Before we conclude this chapter, this section reflects on the genresof gaming practice we have analyzed to consider the broader social andcultural contexts that frame game play and how kids move in and out ofparticipation with gaming and particular game genres.Boundary Work and Gamer IdentityThroughout our discussion of gaming genres, we touch on issues of gameridentity, particularly how gamer identities intersect with gender and geekidentities. This identity work differs depending on what forms of gamingpractices are at play. While killing time and hanging out forms of gamingtend to have more inclusive identity profiles, recreational gaming andmore mobilized forms of gaming tend to be more exclusionary and stronglyassociated with male geek identity. Within the genre of practice that wehave called augmented game play, the practices associated with aestheticsand design tend to be gendered female, while those relying more heavilyon technical expertise tend to be gendered male. These gender dynamicsare not surprising given our existing knowledge about gender and games(Cassell and Jenkins 1998; Kafai et al. 2008). To understand how thesebroader structural distinctions and divisions are produced, we need tounderstand how they emerge through different forms of play and talk.Producing particular forms of gamer identities is a form of “boundarywork.” Almost without exception, kids we spoke to engaged in some formsof gaming, but they have well-developed discourses for distinguishing differentkinds of game play identities. Players who engaged in the killingtime and hanging out genres of gaming often described their enjoymentof games, but they do not move beyond these more casual forms ofgaming. These forms of gaming are considered everyday, unremarkableactivities that are part of using computers and entertainment centers, andthey were the most pervasive forms of game play that we encountered.The boundary work of creating gamer identity involves constructingboundaries between gamers and nongamers, and kids who engage inkilling time practices are not generally considered “gamers.” Among boys,certain genres of gaming were ubiquitous and socially acceptable. Thesegenres included sports games and FPS games such as Counter-Strike and

Gaming 229Halo. Among girls, the dominant social norm was that it was not sociallyacceptable to be identified as a gamer. In danah boyd’s study (Teen Socialityin Networked Publics), she interviewed two kids who talked about someof the gender dynamics around gaming. Catalina, a white fifteen-year-oldfrom Texas, and Jordan, a Mexican American, also fifteen and from Texas,do not really play video games, but Jordan would love to get a PlayStation3 because she thinks that Dance Dance Revolution (DDR) looks fun.Catalina: Occasionally, I play with my brother just like one game once amonth but that’s it.danah: Does he play a lot more than you do?Catalina: Every day.Jordan: He’s a boy.danah: Why do you say he’s a boy?Jordan: I don’t know any girls that play video games.Catalina: I know a few that do.Jordan: Really? Not like a lot, though.Catalina: It’s stereotypical but . . .Jordan: Yeah, but it’s kind of true.Catalina: It’s really very stereotype but it is true for the most part.Jordan: They’re all like war games, a lot of them. Like I don’t care toplay . . .Catalina: Yeah, the girls I know that play video games don’t play wargames and stuff.Jordan: DDR, Mario Kart, and stuff like. Like Rachel will play video gamessometimes.Catalina spells out the cultural assumptions about gaming in theirfriendship group. Although girls might play some of the genres of gamingassociated with hanging out genres, the genres associated with recreationalgaming tend to be associated with boys. These distinctions are played outin the everyday kinds of boundary work that kids are engaged in. DanPerkel (The Social Dynamics of Media Production) spoke with Shantel, anAfrican-American high schooler, who told him a story of how she wasrelegated to the margins of boy game play:Shantel spent the weekend with her cousins, “all boys!” She said that all they do isplay video games. I asked her if she got a chance to play. She told me about a trickthey played on her. They gave her the controller and didn’t really tell her how toplay. And then when she scored they got all excited for her. But, it turns out, the

230 Mizuko Ito and Matteo Bittantiother boy was playing against the computer and Shantel wasn’t controlling anything.She looked mad when she told this story, or at least frustrated, because shereally did want to play. I asked her if she ever did get to play and she said that shedid. She said that it was hard to figure out the controls (well, she said somethingabout all of those buttons and that she didn’t know what to do). But when she saidthat she scored two touchdowns, she was smiling.Gamers of the recreational and mobilized variety are often militant andvocal about their passions and can put down other players they do not seeas gamers. Recreational gamers are serious hobbyists who are committedto learning and honing their game play expertise. They are engaged inboth messing around and geeking out on their gaming hobbies. This canappear as obsessiveness to nongamers, and their practices can be exclusionaryto “noobs” (beginners, short for “newbies”). This is not the more openand accessible mode of gaming that we see in the hanging out genre. Oneyoung woman Matteo Bittanti interviewed for his Game Play study, Lynn,a twenty-one-year-old from Santa Rosa, California, described her youngerbrother’s game play with a popular online first-person shooter, Counter-Strike, as a space that was highly social and that he was invested in in away that was inaccessible to her.My younger brother has been playing Counter-Strike on our home computer sincelate 2003. . . . There have been times where I have just sat in our computer roomand watched him, so I’ve seen these player interactions for myself. . . . For example,Luke’s screen name is NubMuffin, because, well, he likes muffins, and thinks itsounds good (whether there is another reason, he chose not to tell me). It really hasbecome a second name for him, because even when playing under a differentmoniker, his friends still refer to him as “muffin,” even on Xfire (where his nameis currently “Saddam got pwned!”). And then his Counter-Strike clan was called“teh_noobz.” Both are examples of insider language, and both are interesting asthey present a false identity to other players. “Nub” and “noobz” pokes fun at hownew players are targeted, and partially disguises the ability of the players. I believethis secondary identity is one of the primary reasons he returns to Counter-Strikeagain and again. I can see the attraction in improving your standings, taking advantageof environment glitches, or using the surfing or Warcraft mods. However, hisonline identity exists apart from the physical, and he has built [it] up outside ofhis local friends and family. When I watch my brother yell, laugh, and react to hisfriends through the game talk, teamspeak, and Xfire, it’s not the brother I deal withday-to-day. He’s a much gruffer person.The kind of game play that Lynn described here contrasts with hangingout modes of game play that are more accessible; here her brother is relying

Gaming 231on insider knowledge and expertise and a social network that is primarilyinterest-driven rather than being grounded in the local given relationsof family and local friends. NubMuffin is a gruffer, more masculineidentity than the one Lynn interacts with every day, and he goes onlineto find a peer group that supports this more specialized form of practiceand expertise. Just as a stadium or auditorium provides a space where akid might develop an alternative identity as an athlete or a performer,game spaces provide contexts bracketed from their primary, everyday contextsand identities. Lynn’s discussion also indicates the role of the spectatorin these performances as well as the gendered nature of the spectatorrole in gaming. Bittanti (Game Play) finds similar dynamics at work inanother interview with nineteen-year-old Mary, who also watches herbrother play.I never really understood what was so great about Counter-Strike. Watching mybrother play obsessively might have caused me to turn away from the game becauseit felt overrated and typical boy genre (and the graphics weren’t that appealing atthe time either). Typical as in aimlessly hunting down other people, shoot and kill,rake in the points, et cetera. When Counter-Strike’s popularity reached its peak, Iwatched my brother play this game a couple times and he explained to me the basicrules and goals and such. After a couple rounds, I noticed how the players werechatting to each other and I had no idea what some of the words meant, like “lag,”“owned,” “pawned,” et cetera. Eventually, I got pulled into the game as my brothergot popped by the same guy a couple times in a row and he was desperately tryingto get revenge, ha ha.In this example, Mary positioned herself as an outsider to her brother’spractice, not understanding “what was so great about Counter-Strike” anddescribing it as a “typical boy genre.” At the same time, she was interestedenough to play a spectator role, and she got drawn in as a support personto her brother’s play. This dynamic has much in common with the stereotypicalrole that girls have played in relation to more masculine forms ofsports, that of the spectator and cheerleader (Adams and Bettis 2003;Shakib 2003).For the boys who do engage in the more geeked out forms of gameplay, relationships that kids build through recreational gaming provide aspace for socializing that is an alternative to the mainstream status regimesthat boys navigate in their everyday lives. One white thirteen-year-old, anavid gamer in Heather Horst’s Silicon Valley families study, noted: “Well,as far as sports and music go, I’m not that big of a person on those. I am,

232 Mizuko Ito and Matteo BittantiI think, by definition, a geek. The main things I actually normally do areeither homework-related or video games or hanging out with friends.”Similarly, a fifteen-year-old of Egyptian descent in danah boyd’s study(Teen Sociality in Networked Publics) described sport-related identity andgaming identity as distinct from each other. “I’m not really much of asports person. So it’s pretty much the games and systems and that’s prettymuch it, although I don’t really own any systems right now.” As a genreof practice, engagement with recreational gaming parallels much of thesocial activity and identity play that young men have historically developedthrough sports, but there is an important difference in how theseactivities are culturally identified. Like gaming, sports are interest-basedactivities that are strongly gendered and focused on competition and performance;the difference is that the identities and reputation cultivated insports translate to status in the mainstream friendship-driven popularitynegotiations in a way that gaming identities do not (Edley and Wetherell1997). Although we found that it was socially acceptable for mainstreamboys who were popular within their local friendship-driven networks toengage in recreational gaming, kids who were more deeply involved inrecreational gaming tended to self-identify as “geeks” rather than boys whoare into sports.Among recreational gamers, those who identify with the first-personshooter genres, which have been demonized by the mass media, seetheir interests in oppositional terms with those of mainstream culture.Players tend to reject some forms of gaming considered “too mainstream,”such as the so-called casual games typical of killing time practices.Matteo Bittanti (Game Play) spoke to one player of these games, twentyone-year-oldSteven, who was particularly articulate about these oppositionalstances.Society as a whole looks down on video-game culture because they see it as a collectiveof geeks or geeky guys who live their lives through virtual reality. They judgevideo gamers on the basis that they could be doing something more productive oressentially more creative with their lives. Ninety percent of these people have neverpicked up a controller for themselves and [need to] just let go of stereotypes. Theyhaven’t allowed themselves to be submerged into a culture about pushing boundariesand storytelling and character development and scenery exploration. They don’tallow themselves to be a part of the creative genius or problem solving. They areonly a part of the judgmental side of society.

Gaming 233Young adult players such as Steven are part of the definition of the subculturesof forms of gaming, ones based in a certain kind of gamer prideand defined against mainstream norms. Players of first-person shooters aredemonized by the mainstream because of the violent content of the games.By contrast, MMORPG players are often stigmatized as being socially marginalized.Although FPS and sports games were fairly ubiquitous amongboys, it was rare for us to find MMORPG gamers in the mainstream teendemographic. This is partially due to the cost involved, but there are alsoimportant cultural distinctions between gamers. Here the discourse revolvesaround commitment of time and energy to the online world, and boththose on the inside and outside of these practices often describe them inthese terms. For example, in her YouTube and video bloggers study, PatriciaLange interviewed an eighteen-year-old who was an avid gamer but whosays he does not play World of Warcraft because role-playing games “suckup too much time.”In an interview with Katynka Martínez (High School Computer Club),Altimit (an eighteen-year-old Filipino American) and Mac Man (a seventeen-year-oldFilipino American) distanced themselves from the “real,dead, hard-core” MMORPG player in a discussion of the World of Warcraft(WoW) South Park episode.Altimit: Because there’s a couple of kinds of gamers. There’s me, I’m hardcoresemi.Katynka: Hard-core semi.Altimit: Then there’s the real, dead, hard-core ones, which I can’t evenkill. I know them, trust me.Mac Man: And then the casual one.Altimit: The casual ones, and medium ones. The hard, the ultra-hard-coreones are like those in WoW, the one that we saw in the South Park.Mac Man: Yeah, the . . .Altimit: The guy.Mac Man: Yeah, the guy.Altimit: No life. He has everything. He goes to buy, he has Dungeons andDragons. Stuff, food. He’s like all day . . .Mac Man: He has all this sodas and stuff around.Altimit: Yeah, he has in a single room.Mac Man: It’s like a beast in there.

234 Mizuko Ito and Matteo BittantiAltimit: Yeah, he doesn’t go anywhere. He just stays there. Everything’sjust there.Katynka: Do you guys know any of these people, like in real life or doyou just know that they exist?Mac Man: I know them in . . .Altimit: I don’t know that they exist . . .Mac Man: Yeah, they never get out of their house. Yes. They stay thereall day.Although the boys refered to ultra-hard-core gamers who have “no life”and are “like a beast,” Altimit admired “real dead hard-core” players whoare highly skilled at shooters. He suggested there is a difference betweengamers who let games control their lives and those who use their skills toacquire money and status. A player who is able to balance game play withother dimensions of life and still succeed is “normal” in his view, comparedto the guy who sees the online game as his whole life. The former is thekind of gamer with whom Altimit would like to identify. As described inbox 7.3, Altimit admires a professional first-person shooter player hedescribed as “the best gamer in the world.” Unlike MMORPGs, first-personshooters have subcultural capital as a form of gaming that relies on masculineperformance and virtuosity that provides high status among mostteenage boys.A final form of boundary work deserves mention—the issue of generationaldifferences in understanding of games. As described in chapter 4,we saw some instances of hanging out gaming that would involve parents,but for the most part, gaming was the province of kids. Even when gamerstalked about playing with their parents, it was almost always in the genreof hanging out, not the more geeked out forms of game play that rely onmutual respect and expertise. We can expect, as members of the currentgaming generation start raising their own children, that these dynamicswill start to change. For example, one participant in Mizuko Ito’s Animefans study was a serious gamer, even competing in major tournaments,and acted as a gaming mentor and hero for his son. Further, with thepopularity of platforms such as the Wii and the Nintendo DS, we canexpect more intergenerational sharing around gaming. At the same time,the rapid rate of technology change with regard to gaming is likely tocontinue to produce a generation gap in gaming experience, even forparents who are avid gamers. The processes of distinction that core gamers

Gaming 235engage in, defining their practices in opposition to mainstream culture,are likely to continue to produce an elite geeked out gaming culture thatwill be out of reach to most of the older generation.The different forms of boundary work, of making distinctions betweendifferent kinds of gaming identities and between the world of gaming andmainstream culture, demonstrate how varied kids’ game-play experiencesare. When considering how games contribute to learning (of both thecelebrated or demonized variety), we need to be specific about which formsof gaming and gaming identity we are referring to. Gaming practice isarticulated in relation to the broader cultural and social dynamics of youthculture. Some of the most important outcomes of geeking out on gamesare experiences of mastery that translate into identity and status withinpeer groups that care about gaming and technical expertise. When oneconsiders these dimensions, gender becomes important not only in termsof gender representation in video games but also in terms of participationin certain social, cultural, and technical worlds. As gaming becomesincreasingly central to young people’s socialization into networks oftechnology expertise and learning, the persistent gender gap in recreationalgaming is problematic. Although we are seeing a broadening baseof participation in the killing time and hanging out genres of gaming,recreational gaming is still a male-dominated sphere.TransitionsOur descriptions of genres of gaming practice and identity provide us witha vocabulary for discussing trajectories of learning and participation withgames. As we discuss in chapter 4, parents often make determinationsabout what is age appropriate when making decisions about game access.Recreational and mobilized forms of gaming generally peak in the earlyteen years, when parental prohibitions have been relaxed but before kidsare fully transitioned into a focus on dating and peer-status negotiationsthat characterize the later teen years. When a teenager starts to transitionto adulthood, or starts college, video games are often left behind (Bittanti,Game Play). Mary, a nineteen-year-old from Alameda, California, said: “Iguess when I went to college [I gave up gaming]. I did not have enoughtime to socialize and still play games and most of my friends were intoMySpace and Facebook and so I stopped playing altogether.” For others,such as Chris, a twenty-nine-year-old from San Francisco, quitting gaming

236 Mizuko Ito and Matteo Bittantiwas work related. “When I joined my business firm, I did not have to playanymore to ‘feel powerful,’ you know. I had ‘real’ responsibilities and goals.Also, my free time decreased dramatically and spending hours in front ofa screen just felt wrong.” Although many gamers persist in their hobbydespite the crush of real-world accountabilities, many gamers also reportmoving out of engagement when they thought that it was no longer productiveor that it was interfering with other responsibilities.In retrospective discourses of game play, the more geeked out forms ofgaming are associated with a period in one’s life when one has time towaste. Dave, a white seventeen-year-old from rural California Christo Simsinterviewed (Rural and Urban Youth), reflected on an earlier game “addiction”from when he was in seventh grade to distance himself from thatmoment in his life. He described how he was highly involved in The Sims,and that it was “bad” and “addicting.” He says of the game that “it’s kindof creepy now that I think about it.”Dave Cody: I played it for hours every day; that’s actually the only thingmy parents have ever taken away from me.Christo: Oh, really?Dave Cody: Yeah.Christo: And why?Dave Cody: I was just like a zombie. I was just logged on to it and I’d bethere for hours, hours on end and it was horrible. I couldn’t walk awayfrom it . . . .Christo: Uh-huh, and what was the, you said you sort of had a systemfor it or something?Dave Cody: Uh, yeah, that was weird, I just had a, like certain pointswhere people would sleep and stuff like that. I don’t know how to put it,like certain people would make breakfast for people in the morning andstuff like that. I got way into it. It was, no it was gross. I wish I’d never gotthat far into it, but I just had way too much time on my hands.Christo: Uh-huh. Why do you think it’s gross, though?Dave Cody: Just the fact that you get so far into someone else, like a personwho’s not even real, like you try to control their life, like playing Godalmost, you know? It’s like, I don’t know. . . . It’s not normal, I don’t think.When Christo interviewed him, Dave Cody was a starting football playerat his high school, and though he played sports games, he distanced

Gaming 237himself from the more feminine forms of recreational gaming he had beeninvolved in earlier. Playing with The Sims was not a genre of gaming thatwas a suitable transition to the more mainstream forms of male sociabilityand identity of his later teenage years.In the case of Dave Cody, his earlier forms of game play were out ofalignment with the social identity he wanted to maintain in high school.MMORPG players, particularly those who are involved in competitiveguilds, need to make hard decisions about whether their lives and identitiesoutside or inside the game take priority. Commitments to competitiveguilds are highly demanding of players’ time and attention. Ryukossei,the ninteen-year-old Asian-American in Rachel Cody’s study of FinalFantasy XI, described how he had to quit the game to deal with real-lifecommitments:I quit because, I get very emotional as I talk about this. Nah, I’m just playing,I’m just playing. I quit because of school, pretty much. It was right when I wasabout to take that break and I was, like, right when the semester was going toend, I was, like, I know my parents would never let me play any games ever becausethey would probably know that it would be the game’s fault that pretty much didit. And it was . . . And the majority was the game that got me to drop out. But I’mnot going to blame it all on that ‘cause it was my fault too. So that’s pretty muchwhy I quit.Another player Cody interviewed, twenty-year-old Kalipea, 11 reflected onthe time in her life when she was immersed in game play.Like when I played, I played. That’s all I did. I would go to school, I would comehome, I would eat while playing, and then I would go to sleep, I’d wake up, I’dcheck my fricken auction house, go to school, go home, eat while playing, play forall night, and that was it. I wouldn’t go out with friends, I wouldn’t have friendsover, and I wouldn’t hang out with my roommates, which they hated last year andthis year until I quit. I would once in a while, but in general if they were like, “Oh,do you wanna go out to the bar; go out drinking?” I’m like, “No, I wanna play.” Or,“I don’t feel good” and then stay home and play. I would always make up something.. . . I was really addicted.She went on to describe how she eventually left the game as well asmost of the relationships she had fostered online. This discourse ofaddiction and “recovery” is a theme that emerges among players whowere formerly immersed in gaming. Their earlier social context, in whichgaming was dominant, is framed as unnatural and compulsive; theyhave switched frames to a more mainstream notion of social health.

238 Mizuko Ito and Matteo BittantiPlayers who have left the game have difficulty reconciling whether thattime spent playing was time wasted or simply a moment in their lives thatthey were investing in a different set of relationships and commitments.Another one of Cody’s interviewees (twenty-six-year-old white male)reflected:Wurlpin: 12 Yeah, it is a lot of lost time. Well, let me rephrase that. It is alot of time dedicated. I could never say it is lost time because there was alot of memories and it took me to a lot of places and I am very happy withhow it all went, but it is also, it is a lot of time.Rachel: It is a lot of time when you think about what you devoted.Imagine if you spent that much time in school?Wurlpin: Exactly [laughs]. And that is exactly the case. It is kind of likeyou start to think to yourself, “Well, what else could I be doing? Yes, I ammaking memories, but how else can I be more productive or how else canI do something better for myself?” So like I said, it wasn’t lost, but it wasdefinitely, um, invested.It is clear that we are entering an era in which gaming is not an activityconfined to a particular life stage. At the same time, our interviews withgamers of different ages demonstrate that there are clear ebbs and flowsto gaming activity, and players may move in and out of more intensiveforms of gaming practice. As a focus of hanging out social activity,gaming becomes a way of moving into practices of messing around andgeeking out with new media. As youth move away from more homecenteredsociability of early childhood to a moment when the peer groupstarts to take over, and youth become interested in romantic relationships,there is an initial shift away from recreational gaming practices. In asimilar move, older players may move away from their intense interestdrivenforms of gaming practice when the demands of adult responsibilityset in. This is particularly true for gamers who are engaged in the moreorganized forms of gaming that entail a high degree of social and timecommitment. Although killing time forms of gaming are easy to maintainin the margins of other life responsibilities, the more geeked out forms ofrecreational gaming, organizing and mobilizing, are more difficult to maintain.Regardless of whether kids sustain a strong gaming interest or interestdrivenpeer groups around gaming, when kids pass through more geekedout gaming practices, they have picked up certain dispositions toward

Gaming 239technology and interest-driven learning that are not characteristic ofhanging out and killing time genres of gaming.At the same time, we have seen many interest-driven gamers who aresustaining their hobbies into adulthood and who are able to balance reallifeand gaming commitments. We have seen instances in which hardcoregamers will move to a different form of interest-driven activity,transferring their passionate engagements into other hobbies. They talkabout not having time to game during times in their lives when they haveother pressing responsibilities, or are engaged in a different hobby, butthey plan to return to gaming at some point. Gamers will bring theirinterest-driven and geeked out dispositions to other kinds of media engagements.Many of the anime fans Mizuko Ito interviewed were active gamersand described how they divide their interests between their hobbies ordecide at certain times in their lives that they will focus on one or another.Much like traditional hobbyists will decide to focus on a project intenselyfor certain periods, recreational gamers will move in and out of intenseengagement depending on game releases, their social gaming activity, orthe other rhythms of their lives.ConclusionThis chapter describes different genres of gaming practices and the discoursesthat create boundaries between various forms of game play, andwe analyze them in terms of issues of learning and development. Our goalin this discussion is to begin to tease apart the diversity of practices andidentities that often get lumped under the gaming label. This chapter ismore suggestive than conclusive with regard to the learning outcomesof engagement with a wide range of gaming practices. We can, however,venture some initial conclusions with regard to the general findings ofour work.Our work is not focused on issues of gaming representation and contentlearning, but we focus on the broader social and cultural ecology thatcontextualizes game practice. We emphasize the importance of culturalgenres of game play and how they intersect with identity formations suchas geek and gender identity. Where we find some potential issues of concernare not in issues of game addiction and alienation but rather in theinverse—the issue of exclusion from certain forms of gaming. In line with

240 Mizuko Ito and Matteo Bittantiresearch on gender and games, we found that there is a persistent gendergap with regard to participation in forms of gaming that are tied to technology-relatedlearning and certain forms of interest-driven participation.Although girls are participating at high levels in killing time, hanging out,and the less technical forms of modding and customizing, the core practicesof recreational and mobilized gaming are culturally coded as male.Similarly, although we found that the more accessible forms of gamingwere pervasive across different socioeconomic divides, access to mobilizedand augmented forms of gaming were limited to those with high-endgaming resources, both technical and social.Geeked out gaming activities of recreational, mobilized, and augmentedgame play are those activities that are most likely to be pathways intotechnical expertise and other forms of interest-driven learning. Gamingprovides an accessible entry point into geek identities and practices thatare tied to technical expertise and media literacy, but clearly this entrypoint is more accessible to some. In line with recent research in this area,we also believe that lack of access to game-centered sociability is of greaterconcern than the fears about game addiction (Beck and Wade 2004; Kutnerand Olson 2008). Gaming is quickly becoming a lingua franca for participationin the digital age.Finally, our ecological view of gaming suggests a different frame for thequestions surrounding learning and transfer of game-related knowledgeand skills. Rather than focus on the issue of content and knowledge transfer(of either the desirable or the undesirable variety), our focus on gamingpractice suggests that learning outcomes of gaming are neither direct norobvious. Few of us believe, for example, that the most valuable lessons thatkids learn from sports are the game rules or the competitive and oftenaggressive “content” of the sport. Rather, we might emphasize sportsmanshipand teamwork in addition to the more obvious physical benefits ofsports. We understand that sports are embedded in a broader social ecologythat is worthwhile for kids to participate in. Here we make a similar argumentfor games—that the most important benefits of gaming, if they areto be had, lie in a healthy social ecology of participation, an ecology thatincludes parents, siblings, and peers. Recasting the debate over games andlearning in this more ecological frame is an important corrective to manyof the dominant discourses of gaming that have focused on game contentand design.

Gaming 241Notes1. For a review of the literature on gaming, violence, and aggression, see Kutner andOlson (2008). Although there are some indications that high levels of play withMature-rated video games is correlated with aggression, there is no conclusive evidencethat there is a causative relation or that game play has any correlation withviolent crime. After completing an extensive study of video games and violence,Kutner and Olson (2008, 8) conclude: “The strong link between video game violenceand real world violence, and the conclusion that video games lead to social isolationand poor interpersonal skills, are drawn from bad or irrelevant research, muddleheadedthinking and unfounded, simplistic news reports.” In this chapter, we donot engage directly with the empirical material on video games, violence, andaggression, but rather we focus on actual social practices of gaming and what gameplayers describe as meaningful outcomes of their play.2. “Modding” involves players and users making modifications to technology. Thiscan involve modifying game chips or designing new elements of games such ascheats, interface elements, or game levels.3. Although there has been almost no work that takes a critical look at how classand racial identity intersects with gaming, survey work indicates that in contrast topersonal-computer adoption, game-console adoption is not biased toward white andhigher socioeconomic status families. In fact, through the 1990s black familiesadopted consoles at higher rates than white families, and even now families whoare high school–educated adopt consoles at higher rates than those with highereducational backgrounds (Roberts, Foehr, and Rideout 2005). Ellen Seiter (2005) hasnoted how in her fieldwork with youth from diverse backgrounds that working-classboys were generally more familiar with gaming consoles than computers, thoughthey would often search for gaming culture when they had access to the PCs at thecenter where she was observing.4. “Machinima” is a contraction of “machine” and “cinema,” and it refers to thepractice of making videos using a game engine.5. Originally created in November 1999, Neopets is widely recognized as one of the“stickiest” sites on the Internet. In July 2007, Viacom announced that by the endof 2008, “Neopets (www.neopets.com) will be transformed into Neostudios, whichwill focus on developing new virtual world gaming experiences online, while continuingto grow and evolve the existing ones.”6. “Ryukossei” is a real character name.7. In gaming jargon, “frag” is roughly equivalent to “kill,” with the main differencebeing the player can respawn and play again.8. “Enki” is a real character name.

242 Mizuko Ito and Matteo Bittanti9. High-level notorious monsters—these are the most difficult monsters in thegame.10. MUDs and MUSHs are text-based online games.11. “Kalipea” is a real character name.12. “Wurlpin” is a real character name.

6 CREATIVE PRODUCTIONLead Authors: Patricia G. Lange and Mizuko ItoTwo fourteen-year-old boys from the Washington, DC, area have anaccount on YouTube in which they post videos made by their own videoproductioncompany. Their videos often sport a personalized introductionin the form of their logo, written in LEGO building blocks, set ablaze bya lighter. One of the boys, Max, hopes to be a director or filmmaker andthought it was important to have a production company, since some ofhis favorite filmmakers, such as Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, haveproduction companies too. Max also has a number of friends who pitchin by acting in his videos, which are often put together quickly and spontaneouslyin the context of social activities. For instance, the boys becamebored at a slumber party and felt inspired to make a horror film that waswell received after they posted it on YouTube. In another instance, a simpleouting with Max’s mother at the beach turned into a YouTube sensationwhen he recorded her singing along to the Boyz II Men song playingthrough her headphones. She was unaware that people around her couldhear her and had started to laugh. Max posted the video on YouTube andit attracted the attention of ABC’s Good Morning America, on which thevideo eventually aired. In the two years since it was posted, the video hasreceived more than 2 million views and more than 5,000 text comments,many of them expressing support. Max’s work has also attracted attentionfrom another media company, which approached him about the possibilityof buying another of his videos for an online advertisement. He regularlyreceives fan mail and comments on his videos. This example illustrates thenew possibilities that the Internet offers for kids to receive feedback notonly from peers but also from media companies. The advent of this sociallybased, digital milieu means they can connect with large numbers of dispersedothers and test wider reaction to their work.

244 Patricia G. Lange and Mizuko ItoDigital and online media are opening new avenues for young people tocreate and share media. Surveys conducted by the Pew Internet & AmericanLife project indicate a rapid growth in what it describes as online “contentcreation,” particularly among youth (Lenhart et al. 2007). The growingavailability of digital media-production tools, combined with sites whereyoung people can post and discuss media works, has created a new mediaecology that supports everyday media creation and sharing for kids engagedin creative production. Social network sites such as MySpace and Facebook,blogs, online journals, and media-sharing sites such as YouTube, deviant-ART, and FanFiction.net are all examples of sites that enable youth to postor repost content in the context of ongoing personal communication.Media educators are beginning to consider this new media ecology’s potentialto reshape the conditions under which young people engage withmedia and culture, moving youth from positions as media consumers tomore active media producers. In what Henry Jenkins (2006) and his colleagueshave described as “participatory culture,” budding creators candevelop their voices and identities as media creators through ongoinginteraction with engaged peers and audiences (Jenkins 1992; Jenkins et al.2006). Conversely, researchers also are concerned that the blurring of theboundaries between social communication and media production coulddegrade the standards of the latter. For example, Naomi Baron (2008, 6)asks, “Could it be that the more we write online, the worse writers webecome?”Drawing from a range of case studies, this chapter describes differentmodes of new media production that young people engage in, analyzingthese practices in relation to learning and the development of skills andidentities as media producers. We draw primarily from our case studies onyouth media production by Dan Perkel (MySpace Profile Production),Dilan Mahendran (Hip-Hop Music Production), Patricia G. Lange (YouTubeand Video Bloggers), Sonja Baumer (Self-Production through YouTube),Mizuko Ito (Anime Fans), and Becky Herr-Stephenson (Harry PotterFandom). Discussion of game-related production is largely covered inchapter 5. The focus of this chapter is on the social processes of interestdrivengenres of participation, but we also describe how kids get involvedin messing around with new media through their more friendship-drivenpractices, and we draw from studies on the friendship-driven side todescribe some of these dynamics. The interest-driven groups that are the

Creative Production 245focus of this chapter tend not to be segregated by age, though all havestrong youth participation. As with chapter 5, we include accounts byyoung adults who participate in these groups, and we draw on retrospectiveaccounts of how they got involved in creative production. The chapteris organized as a progression from these messing around genres of participationtoward deepening immersion in geeked out participation centeredon creative production. We are not assuming that kids necessarily movein a linear fashion from hanging out, to messing around, to geeking out.In fact, kids will often move fluidly back and forth between these genres.Rather, we use this as an organizing heuristic to present the different genresof participation available to youth that involve digital media production.After introducing our conceptual framework for production, new media,and learning, we begin our description with practices of everyday, personalmedia production—the creation and sharing of personal photos, videos,and online profiles. After describing a range of practices of media creationand sharing, we turn to a consideration of how young people transitionto practices that they self-identify as “media production” and the creationof works that are circulated beyond personal networks. How do youngpeople get started on practices such as video production and editing, webcomics, or machinima? From there the chapter describes how young peopleimprove on their craft in the context of digital media production andonline exchange. What kind of creative communities and collaborationsdo youth engage in through the course of producing new media? Whatare the mechanisms they describe for how they improved their craft? Andfinally, how do they gain audiences and receive recognition and fame fortheir work? In the conclusion, we discuss the implications of our ethnographicfindings for media education.Creative Production in the Digital AgeWhat constitutes “creative work” is contested by scholars. The term traditionallyhas been used to describe “imaginative” or “expressive” work,where “expressive” refers to sharing aspects of the self (Sefton-Green 2000,8). Our understanding of what constitutes creative production includesimaginative and expressive forms that are also shaped by kids’ individualchoices and available media. The influx of digital media into everydaylife is reshaping these understandings, particularly our assumptions about

246 Patricia G. Lange and Mizuko Itothe relation between media production and consumption. Media theoristshave argued for decades that media “consumption” is not a passive actand that viewers and readers actively shape cultural meanings (Buckingham2000; Dyson 1997; Eco 1979; Jenkins 1992; Kinder 1999; Radway 1984;Seiter 1999b). Contemporary interactive and networked media make thisperspective difficult to ignore. Developments in the technology sector inthe past decade have pushed this understanding into common parlanceand consciousness. “Web 2.0,” “user-generated content,” “modding,” “prosumer,”1 “pro-am,” 2 “remix culture”—these buzz words are all indicatorsof how creative production at the “consumer” layer is increasingly seen asa generative site of culture and knowledge. A decade ago, creating a personalwebpage was considered an act of technical and creative virtuosity;today, the comparable practice of creating a MySpace profile is an unremarkableachievement for the majority of U.S. teens. As sites such asYouTube, Photobucket, and Flickr become established as fixtures of ourmedia-viewing landscape, it is becoming commonplace for people to bothpost and view personal and amateur videos and photos online as part oftheir everyday media practice. In turn, these practices are reshaping ourprocesses for self-expression, learning, and sociality.In the case of young people, new media production is framed by ongoingdebates about the appropriate role of media in young people’s lives. Ourdiscourse about media and creativity is framed by a set of cultural distinctionsbetween an active/creative or a passive/derivative mode of engagingwith imagination and fantasy. Generally, practices that involve local production—creativewriting, drawing, and performance—are consideredmore creative, agentive, and imaginative than practices that involve consumptionof professionally or mass-produced media—watching television,playing video games, or even reading a book. In addition, we commonlymake a distinction between active and passive media forms. One familiarargument is that visual media, in contrast to oral and print media, stiflecreativity, because they do not require imaginative and intellectual work.Popular media, particularly television, have been blamed for the stifling ofchildhood imagination and initiative; in contrast to media such as musicor drawing, television has often been demonized as a commercially driven,purely consumptive, and passive media form for children and youth.Media educators have argued for critical engagement with television andother forms of commercial media, developing programs that teach youth

Creative Production 247about the conditions under which media are created and revealing theideological dimensions of popular media. In his review of media-educationefforts, David Buckingham has described how media education has beenturning more and more to programs that emphasize media productionrather than relying exclusively on the “inoculation” approach to mediaeducation (Buckingham 2003). In the older inoculation approach, mediaeducation focused mostly on teaching kids to deconstruct texts so thatthey would not be adversely affected by violence or manipulated by deceptivecommercial content (Bazalgette 1997; Hobbs 1998). In contrast, emergingyouth media programs have been motivated by the belief that engagingin media production should be the cornerstone of media education andlead to youth empowerment through the development of self-expression(e.g., Chávez and Soep 2005; Goodman 2003; Hobbs 1998; Morrell andDuncan-Andrade 2004). These educators believe that shifting youth identityfrom that of a media consumer to a media producer is an importantvehicle for developing youth voice, creativity, agency, and new forms ofliteracy in a media-saturated era. Compared to programs that focus oncritical engagement, production-oriented programs are still relativelysparse in media education. In at least some contexts, however, there seemsto be a growing recognition of their importance (Buckingham, Fraser, andSefton-Green 2000).Today, these long-standing debates about media, kids, and creativity arebeing reframed by the proliferation of new forms of digital media productionand social media. What is unique about the current media ecology isthat photos, videos, and music are closer at hand and more amenable tomodification, remix, and circulation through online networks. In the pastfew years, it has become common for personal computers to ship with abasic kit of digital production tools that enable youth to manipulate music,photos, and video. In addition to the new genres of creative productionthat are being afforded by digital media-creation tools, we see networkedpublics as affording a fundamental shift in the context of how new mediaare created and shared; media works are now embedded in a public socialecology of ongoing communication (Russell et al. 2008). As is commonwhen new media capabilities are introduced, it takes some time for literacycapacity to build and for people to come together around new genres ofmedia and media participation that make use of these capabilities. Giventhat multimedia production tools have become mainstream as consumer

248 Patricia G. Lange and Mizuko Itotechnologies only in the past decade, we are now at a transitional momentof interpretive flexibility with regard to literacy and genres associated withthe creation of digital music, photos, and video. The practices that wedescribe in this chapter need to be situated as part of this transitionalmoment, when youth are experimenting with new digital cultural formsand, in interaction with adult mentors and parental guidance, are developingnew forms of media literacy.Judged by the standards of traditional media production, many newgenres of digitally remixed derivative works would be considered inferiorto original creations that did not rely on appropriation of content producedby others. Contrary to this view, Marsha Kinder points out thehistorical specificity of contemporary notions of creativity and originality.She suggests that children take up popular media in ways that were recognizedas creative in other historical eras. “A child’s reworking of materialfrom mass media can be seen as a form of parody (in the eighteenthcenturysense), or as a postmodernist form of pastiche, or as a form ofBakhtinian reenvoicement mediating between imitation and creativity”(1991, 60). In a similar vein, Anne Haas Dyson (1997) examines how elementary-schoolchildren mobilize mass-media characters within creativewritingexercises. Like Ellen Seiter (1999a), Dyson argues that commercialmedia provide the “common story material” for contemporary childhood,and that educators should acknowledge the mobilization of these materialsas a form of literacy. These theorists point to the more socially embeddedand relational dimensions of creative production that are in line withmuch of what we see proliferating on the Internet today.Renee Hobbs (1998) describes how one of the central debates in the fieldtoday is the question of how central popular cultural texts should be usedin media education. Although educational institutions have traditionallydevalued popular culture, Buckingham, Fraser, and Sefton-Green (2000,151) argue that students tend to learn a “great deal more from reworkingforms with which they have greater familiarity and a personal engagementalready.” They argue that the most successful school-based media-productionprograms enable students to manipulate genres with which they aremost familiar, to receive regular and frequent interaction with audiences(and knowledgeable peers), and to redraft and iterate their media productionmultiple times (Buckingham, Fraser, and Sefton-Green 2000, 151). Ina similar vein, the New Media Literacy project, headed by Henry Jenkins

Creative Production 249at MIT, is one example of a project that is building frameworks for incorporatingpopular culture practices and the aesthetics of remix into mediaproductionprograms.These approaches are in line with a New Literacy Studies approach asdescribed in the introduction to this book, seeing creativity as a process ofnot only creating original works but of recontexualizing and reinterpretingworks in ways that are personally meaningful or meaningful in differentsocial and cultural contexts. These approaches are efforts to bridge themore recreational practices and media literacy that kids are developingoutside school with more formal and reflective educational efforts thatcenter on media production. As with all efforts to bridge the boundariesbetween instructional programs and everyday peer-based youth culture,these translations are fraught with challenges. Even in educational programsthat recognize the importance of new media literacy, educatorsstruggle to develop frameworks for assessing and giving appropriate feedbackon student work. Teachers tend to assume the media are “doing thework” when kids engage in critical, remix, and parodic forms of productionthat use elements from other media (Sefton-Green 2000). Teachers are alsowary of media work that appears to be “too polished” or “suspiciouslyflashy,” particularly those genres with which kids are more familiar thanteachers (Buckingham, Fraser, and Sefton-Green 2000).These difficulties in translating recreational media engagement intoschool-based forms point to persistent tensions between peer-based learningdynamics and genres and those embedded in formal education.Educators have examined a wide range of topics relating to the tensionbetween in-school and out-of-school forms of literacy (Bekerman, Burbules,and Silberman-Keller 2006; Hull and Shultz 2002a; Mahiri 2004; Nunes,Schliemann, and Carraher 1993); media literacy is somewhat unusual inthat we are dealing with both an intergenerational tension (between adultauthority and youth autonomy) and a tension between educational andentertainment content (Ito 2007). This chapter, to inform educationalefforts in media education, is an effort to describe the kind of new medialiteracies and creative production practices that youth are developing intheir peer-based social and cultural ecologies. Any effort to translatepopular and recreational social and cultural forms into educational effortsneeds to be informed by these youth-centered frames of reference. Thepeer-based learning genres we see in youth online participation differ in

250 Patricia G. Lange and Mizuko Itosome fundamental, structural ways from the social arrangements that kidsfind in schools. Simply mimicking genre or sharing an assessment dynamicis not sufficient to promote the forms of learning that youth are developingwhen they are given authority over their own learning and literacy in thesedomains.In the sections to follow, we describe how young people are engaging inthe production of digital music, images, and videos, and how these activitiesare contextualized in their everyday life-worlds. Digital media productionis on its way to becoming a part of our everyday communication andonline socialization, as well as an integral part of a diverse range of moregeeked out forms of media engagement. Throughout our description, ourgoal is to describe the social, cultural, and technical contexts that motivateyouth engagement with creative production and the networks of learningresources that help them improve their craft. These networks can vary fromthe more mainstream friendship-driven networks that support learninghow to create a MySpace profile to the more specialized communities ofinterest centered on video production and remix. Although structurededucational efforts can help fill this gap, successful youth producersin highly technical areas are generally driven by an ethic of being “selftaught”(Lange 2007b). They structure their learning as an integral part oftheir own individual passions for creating media, and they draw from anetwork of offline and online human resources and artifacts on an asneededbasis. We have found that in less technically driven areas, kids learnfrom peers through observation and informal questions situated withinthe context of social activities (such as making videos while on an outingor making a profile page while hanging out). Even among youth who aremore technical and espouse an ethic of being self-taught, narratives of howthey get started contain many references to peers, family, and other adultmentors who provided advice and encouragement in their media-productionefforts.When we turn to the geeked out production processes that youth areinvolved in, we see networked publics supporting interest-driven socialrelationships that are centered on creative production. We describe someof the cases we have seen of young people’s engaging in production collaborations,where, similar to what Becker (1982) observed in his study ofart worlds, different participants develop specializations to contribute tothe shared enterprise. Networked media add to the creative production

Creative Production 251process by providing opportunities to circulate work to different publicsand audiences and to receive feedback and recognition from these audiences.As we discuss in chapter 7, youth have been largely shut outfrom the skilled labor market, and this includes domains of creative production.Further, access to different kinds of public spaces and venues isalso restricted for youth. These structural conditions are one reason whyyouth access to networked publics is potentially so transformative butalso deeply challenging to our established modes of regulating and protectingyouth. The current concern over how youth are circulating personalvideos and photos in social network sites is inextricably tied to themore celebrated examples of how youth creative talent is flourishingonline. By describing youth creative production in terms of the underlyingdynamics of online participation in networked publics, we hope to providea broader framework for these debates over youth expression and mediaengagement.Everyday Media ProductionWe begin our description of different practices of creative production witha discussion of some of the most pervasive and everyday forms of mediaproduction that we have observed in our studies. Certain forms of digitalmediacreation, such as digital photography and online profile creation,are now commonplace among young people. Although youth who engagewith these forms of media creation do not necessarily see themselves as“media producers,” they are often engaged in sophisticated forms ofmedia creation. As described in chapter 2, the period from 2004 to 2007saw widespread adoption of social media by teens, particularly socialnetwork sites such as MySpace and Facebook. Although the focus of participationon these sites has been the practices of friendship and intimacydescribed earlier in this book, one side effect of these friendship-drivenpractices is that many youth become involved in the production and socialsharing of digital media. This involves the creation and customization ofonline profiles as well as the production and circulation of personal mediasuch as photos and videos. Although home movies and personal photoshave been part of youth culture for some time, possibilities for onlinesharing mean that these media have a new kind of social life within networkedpublics.

252 Patricia G. Lange and Mizuko ItoPersonal Photos and VideosThe vast majority of photographs and videos are produced not from acreative impulse but to capture personally meaningful events and relationships.While the increasing availability of digital recording devices is aprecondition for these forms of everyday media production, they are notthemselves the driver of these practices. Digital photography and videotapinggrow out of existing practices of self-archiving (such as journaling,scrapbooking, and keeping photograph albums) and are propelled by thegrowth in avenues to share these media with friends and family. Althoughour study did not focus on these forms of media production and sharing,we have seen indicators of the growth of digital photography and videotapingand its circulation online. In this sense our work supports theconclusions of other research in this area, which describes how the spreadof digital cameras and camera phones has led to more ubiquitous forms ofimage capture and sharing (Koskinen, Kurvinen, and Lohtonen 2002; Lingand Julsrud 2005; Okabe and Ito 2006; Van House et al. 2005).Interviews with youth who are active online are often peppered withreferences to digital photos they have taken and shared. In box 2.1, KatynkaMartínez describes two sixteen-year-old girls and their practices of takingphotos together and sharing photos through Photobucket. Many teens alsoview new media as “something to do” while they are hanging out withtheir friends. Flutestr, a white sixteen-year-old participant in HeatherHorst’s study (Silicon Valley Families), described how she likes to kill timelooking at pictures on her camera phone when she is hanging out withfriends:So I took pictures . . . I went to Vegas and I didn’t bring my camera because it runsout of batteries really quickly and it has no memory. We have to buy a memorycard for it, but I kind of forgot it. So I had my cell phone so I took pictures of, like,the resorts and the casinos and stuff. And then that was really cool so I had themon there. And I have pictures of all my friends. Like, if I’m bored I’ll take out mycamera and, like, try and play with it. So I use a camera phone a lot.In another example, Alison, an eighteen-year-old video creator from Florida(who is of white and Asian descent) in Sonja Baumer’s study (Self-Productionthrough YouTube), aspires to be a moviemaker. At the same time, she seesher videos as personal media.I like watching my own videos after I’ve made them. I am the kind of person thatlikes to look back on memories and these videos are memories for me. They show

Creative Production 253me the fun times I’ve had with my friends or the certain emotions I was feeling atthat time. Watching my videos makes me feel happy because I like looking back onthe past.These forms of casual, personal media creation can lead to more sophisticatedand engaged forms of media production. For example, Inertia, 3 atwenty-four-year-old white male from England and an accomplished animemusic video (AMV) 4 creator, described in an IM interview how he first gotinvolved in editing:Inertia: Straight after finishing university I made a dozen little projectsand music videos to camcorder footage, sometimes with anime music, buthadn’t really tried with actual AMV footage still. . . . I used to just filmeverything . . . like a real first year photography student or something . . .anything funny or memorable I’d try to film it.Rachel: So how did you learn to edit then?Inertia: It was bad, sooo bad most of it should never see the light ofday . . . but i still edited it into music videos to remind us of the fun we’dhad over the years. i learnt by trying really . . . first time I picked up aneditor was just before I got into anime, but I couldn’t do much. I literallywould just take home movie stuff, put it together, cut out bad bits, andsave. (Ito, Anime Fans)These cases demonstrate how the increasing availability of digital mediacreationtools opens avenues for young people to pick up media productionas part of their everyday creative activity. Although the practices ofeveryday photo and video making are familiar, the ties to digital distributionand more sophisticated forms of editing and modification open up anew set of possibilities for youth creative production. Digital media helpscaffold a transition from hanging out genres to messing around with morecreative dimensions of photo and video creation (and vice versa).Sharing Personal MediaOne of the primary drivers of personal media creation is sharing this mediawith others. Chapters 2 and 3 describe the ways in which the traffic inmedia and practices such as profile creation is embedded within a socialecology, where the creation and sharing of media is a friendship-driven setof practices. Online sites for storing and circulating personal media arefacilitating a growing set of options for sharing. Youth do not need to carry

254 Patricia G. Lange and Mizuko Itoaround photo albums to share photos with their friends and family; aMySpace profile or a camera phone will do the trick. Consider the followingtwo observations by Dan Perkel (The Social Dynamics of MediaProduction) in an after-school computer center:Many of the kids had started to arrive early every day and would use the computersand hang out with each other. While some kids were playing games or doing otherthings, Shantel and Tiffany (two apparently African-American female teenagersroughly fifteen to sixteen years old from a low-income district in San Francisco)were sitting at two computers, separated by a third one between them that no onewas using. They were both on MySpace. I heard Shantel talking out loud aboutlooking at pictures of her baby nephew on MySpace. I am fairly sure she was showingthese pictures to Tiffany. Then, she pulled out her phone and called her sister andstarted talking about the pictures.This scene Perkel describes is an example of the role that photos archivedon sites such as MySpace play in the everyday lives of youth. Shantel canpull up her photos from any Internet-connected computer to share casuallywith her friends, much as researchers have documented that youth dowith camera phones (Okabe and Ito 2006). The fact that photos about one’slife are readily available in social contexts means that visual media becomemore deeply embedded in the everyday communication of young people.In this next example from Perkel’s study (MySpace Profile Production), weget a glimpse into how young people take and modify photos with thissocial sharing in mind.I sat down next to Janice (a teenager roughly fourteen to fifteen years old whoappeared to be African-American), who was on one of the computers at [the center].I saw her on Yahoo! Mail dragging photos from her email to the desktop of one ofthe [center’s] computers. She told me that she had been to [the] Stonestown mallin San Francisco with her cousin and had taken pictures. One of them was over hermock kissing a mirror and later I would see this picture as her profile picture onMySpace. Another picture had some special effects. She told me that she had donethis at the Apple Store. Then, she proceeded to upload them to her MySpace account,though I noticed that it took her several attempts. The story here is that she tookthe photographs in one location, used Yahoo! as a way to move her pictures aroundfrom different locations, took advantage of the Apple Store to do some creativeediting to at least one of the pictures, and then finally used [the center] as a placeto upload them to her MySpace profile.The case that Perkel describes is particularly notable in how Janice mobilizesmultiple infrastructures to create photos to share on MySpace: taking

Creative Production 255digital photos at an outing with a cousin, modding photos at an AppleStore, and finally use of the community center to upload photos to theInternet using Yahoo! and MySpace. In her one of her studies (Pico UnionCommunity Center), Katynka Martínez also documents how youth seeonline photo-sharing sites as a way to share photographic records of theireveryday lives, and how they often develop highly sophisticated strategiesfor authoring and sharing. Martínez conducted diary studies in which kidsdocumented their everyday media use. Stephanie, a sixteen-year-old Latinaof Colombian and Irish descent, said that one of her best friends takes hercamera to school every day. “Sometimes we’ll be like . . . she will tell meor I’ll tell her, ‘Straighten your hair,’ or I’ll tell her, ‘Straighten your hair.’So we’ll straighten our hair and then we’ll be like, ‘Okay. We’re gonna takepictures tomorrow for MySpace.’ ” Stephanie shared her Photobucketaccount with Martínez, showed her hundreds of photos that she has saved,and explained that she will do searches on media and topics that interesther and save the photos she likes. Her close friends share their Photobucketpasswords, and they go on to each other’s accounts to view photos they’vefound online as well as photos they’ve taken. This case is described in moredetail in box 2.1.These stories from our case studies provide a window onto how digitalmedia are reshaping long-standing practices of personal photography.Young people take photographs with opportunities for near-term socialsharing in mind. Then they mobilize a suite of different technologies tomodify and circulate those photos, creating new opportunities for thisvisual media to enter the stream of everyday conversation and sharing.ProfilesJust as the sharing of photos and videos online is blurring the boundarybetween personal communication and creative production, online profilecreation also lies in the boundary between hanging out and messingaround genres of participation. Profile modification is most pervasive onMySpace; other sites such as Facebook, Blogger, LiveJournal, deviantART,or YouTube also enable members to create custom profile pages. As teenscreate their profiles, and post and link on their own profiles and theirfriends’ profiles, they are engaged in acts of social communication andeveryday media sharing and “consumption” that also entail creatingtheir own digital media. In several of our studies, we have had a chance

256 Patricia G. Lange and Mizuko Itoto both watch the process of profile creation, sometimes through thecourse of several weeks or months, and also discuss the profile-creationprocess with teenagers, many of whom created profiles on MySpace. Theseobservations provide a window onto how youth engage with profilecreation as a form of creative production embedded in their everydaysocial relations.Perkel (2008) describes the importance of copying and pasting code inthe process of MySpace profile creation, a practice in which youth willappropriate media and code from other sites to create their individualprofiles. He characterizes MySpace profile creation as a process of “copyand paste” literacy, in which youth appropriate media and code fromother sites to create their individual profiles. Although this form of creativeproduction may appear purely derivative, young people see their profilesas expressions of their personal identities. Some youth described howone of the main draws of MySpace was not just that this was the site thattheir friends were already using, but that the site seemed to allow a greatdeal more customization than other sites. Carlos, a seventeen-year-oldLatino high-school senior from a low-income neighborhood in northernCalifornia, for example, described how his cousins sold him on thesite because it was a site where he could put up “all your pictures, changethe background, and customize it and do all that.” This chance to notjust go online and be social but also to make something excited Jacob,a seventeen-year-old African-American high-school senior, who noted,“It was tight. I was like—this is real. It’s the only website where youcan actually come up with your own stuff” (Perkel, MySpace ProfileProduction).This ability to customize gives youth freedom in defining layout, media,colors, music, and the like, but this also involves a certain amount oftechnical complexity. For most of the cases that we documented, at leastone other person was almost always directly involved in creating kids’profiles. When asked about this, common responses were that a sibling, acousin, or a friend showed them how to do it. In their research, JuddAntin, Christo Sims, and Dan Perkel (The Social Dynamics of MediaProduction) watched in one after-school program as people would call outasking for help and others would come around doing it for them (literallytaking the mouse and pushing the buttons) or guiding them through theprocess. In an interview at a different site, Carlos told Perkel that he had

Creative Production 257initially found the whole profile-making process “confusing” and that hehad used some free time in a Saturday program at school to ask differentpeople to help him. Then later, when he knew what he was doing, he hadshown his cousin how to add backgrounds. He said he had explained toher that “you can just look around here and pick whichever you want andjust tell me when you’re finished and I’ll get it for you.” The story aboutJacob in box 6.1 provides an example of how he “got one of his girls todo it.”Box 6.1 “MySpace Is Universal”: Creative Production in aTrajectory of ParticipationDan PerkelI interviewed Jacob, a seventeen-year-old African-American, on a Saturdaymorning at a technology program run out of a school in the East Bay city ofRichmond, California. A community leader at the site said that the schoolwas in an area of town where all of the “drive-bys” and the “shootings” happened.As the community leader surveyed the room of twenty to thirty highschoolerssitting at rows of computers, some typing, some browsing the web,others talking loudly, he compared the program to that of a flower strugglingto grow out of a concrete wall. While there were a lot of “brown versus black”problems in the community, he said, everyone in the program was workingtogether.Jacob, unlike most of the other kids in the Saturday program, did not attendthat high school. A woman from another community center, whom he calledhis “job-finder lady,” had suggested that he come to the program to see ifthere was a job for him or some way to get paid to be there. That had notyet panned out. But at the time of the interview, it was his fourth week atthe program, which he said “just looks like a club or something.” While hestill felt a bit of an outsider, he was having fun and had even stayed thereuntil late in the evening the week before. Among other things, being theregave him another opportunity to work with computers, something that wasbecoming more and more important to his life and career aspirations.Like many kids we talked to for this project, Jacob had a MySpace profilethat served as a communications hub. He used it to keep in touch with thefriends he left in Atlanta when he moved to the East Bay the summer before.He also used it to talk to other friends he did not see every day and to followup with girls he met at parties. But unlike many of the kids who were observedelsewhere or interviewed at that site, Jacob was trying to design MySpacelayouts, using the HTML and CSS (cascading style sheets) code that translates

258 Patricia G. Lange and Mizuko Itointo the background colors, borders, fonts, and other design elements of aMySpace profile.Jacob traced his own interest in web design to when he had been introducedto digital media creation for a fifth-grade class assignment. He learnedhow to use the software in ways that the others students did not. By the timehe was in high school he surprised another teacher who, after giving a PowerPoint assignment, had assumed that he would not do very well (he admitsto having frequently fallen asleep in class because he was often bored). Jacobdescribed this initial experience of mastery, and the recognition of it by histeacher and others, as an important part of his background in engaging withweb design and MySpace.Besides attending the Saturday program, Jacob also had been participatingin a program at his own high school. Because that program was “too cramped,”he was part of a group that stayed after school, but this did not seem to botherhim as he had access to computers and software that he did not have anywhereelse. The list of “nice programs” he mentioned included Photoshop,Flash, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, and others. He had access to all the things“you need to [build] any kind of website, or any kind of project or picture.”The current session of the technology program had moved on from doingweb design, but the teachers still let him hang out after school and work onhis projects: “By my own will, not because somebody is telling me.”By the time he had started web design at his after-school program, he hadbeen introduced to MySpace. He was excited about the site, especially becauseit gave him an opportunity to customize it: “It was tight. I was like—this isreal. It’s the only website where you can actually come up with your ownstuff.” At first, he “didn’t know nothing about HTML” and had to get helpmaking his profile. Jacob said that at first, like other kids described in thischapter, he did not know how to copy and paste the code to change thebackground or how to add videos and music. He would call up the girl whointroduced him to MySpace. She would call friends of hers, and they wouldguide him through the process or sometimes log in to his account and changethings for him. But once he moved to California and realized that they couldstill get into his account, he changed the password. He did not change hislayout because he still did not know how to do it. In some ways, Jacob’s depictionof himself at this point is of someone more dependent on the help ofothers than were other people we talked to about their use of MySpace. ButJacob eventually realized that even others who have learned how to changea profile do not know how to modify the code or the layouts they get fromother people, a point expressed in other discussions with teenagers: “Andthat’s what they do, just take it. All these websites . . . even the girls, they don’tunderstand HTML. But they know how to get it from somebody else.”

Creative Production 259It was his after-school program in high school that led him to make theconnections between web design and the bits of code that people use tochange MySpace layouts. During his interview, Jacob said that he was in themiddle of working on his first one. The layout on his site, though, came fromanother source of inspiration, a girl he had found on MySpace who madelayouts for others to use. He said he does not talk to her, but he uses her layoutsand now knows how to change them and modify them if there is somethinghe does not like:I’m just taking her designs and editing it my own self, putting my own little two centsin. The design itself is good, but I might want it a different color. And once I get it thatdifferent color that I want then I’m going to post it on there.While acknowledging that other people know how to get pieces of code, healso set himself apart by noting that he knew something else that may leadto other opportunities. For example, the girl whose MySpace layouts he hadbeen using and modifying is advertising her layouts on her profile. He speculatedthat she was probably making money on her activity.It seemed that Jacob was considering if and how he could get paid to do thesame thing. In fact, he had a job interview for UPS back in Atlanta doing webdesign and was considering it, but he felt conflicted about the location:It’s the UPS headquarters and the man said you have a job here if you do this designand finish school. And I was like, “I can do that. But . . . but how long . . . I’m young.”“Don’t matter; I’m the boss, I can do whatever I want. If I want to employ you, it don’tmatter how young you are as long as you pass high school. It don’t matter.” So I waslike, “Cool, cool; I might just do that.”In his view, MySpace provided him another option, especially if he couldfollow the model of the girl who designed his layouts. He saw MySpace as asite where he could do the kind of creative work he wanted to do and reachanyone he might want to:It’s connected to almost everybody. . . . I mean, anybody around California you canprobably get connected through MySpace. It’s like not one person in the United Statesyou can’t get connected to, unless they don’t have one. But now? Everybody has one.From the oldest people to the youngest people have a MySpace now. They might notuse it, but they got one. So that’s the point. MySpace is universal.MySpace, to Jacob, is a universal connector to friends in the area and acrossthe country. But it is also a universal space to display his emerging creativedesign skills, which he sees as an opportunity for the future.

260 Patricia G. Lange and Mizuko ItoAlthough most youth did rely on others for help in creating their profiles,we did find some youth who were able to figure things out withoutthe help of a more knowledgeable peer. For example, Federico, a seventeenyear-oldMexican American high-school senior from the East Bay area ofnorthern California (Perkel, MySpace Profile Production), stated:I was like going through websites trying to look for backgrounds and stuff. Oh, howdo I put this, and where do I put it? And how do I copy it and stuff? Because I prettymuch didn’t know nothing about computers. But then after that I was like . . . Istarted clicking buttons and looking at stuff. I’m like—okay, remember this placeand site. And then I keep messing up and it looks all weird. Then after that dayswent by and then I started learning little by little how to do it. But it was hard.What people ended up putting on their profiles was usually not the resultof planning and careful consideration, but of whatever they happened tosee while making or revisiting their profiles. In many cases, teens mayinitially work on a profile and largely leave it as is except for some minormodifications later. For instance, danah boyd (Teen Sociality in NetworkedPublics) spoke with Shean, a seventeen-year-old black male from LosAngeles, who said, “I’m not a big fan of changing my background and allthat. I would change mine probably every four months or three months.As long as I keep in touch with my friends or whatever, I don’t really careabout how it looks as long as it’s, like, there.” In some cases, boyd alsoobserved, teens created a MySpace profile as a way to relieve boredom.This approach toward tinkering and messing around is typical of theprocess through which profiles are made and modified. Some of the peoplewe interviewed talked about just putting up on their profiles material thatwas humorous. Carlos described his profile almost in terms of a collectionof images and things he had found. Pointing at the various images on thescreen, he noted: “I got Six Flags and the fat little kid. Got this dude andthat girl. Got Itchy and Scratch [from The Simpsons].” When Dan Perkel(MySpace Profile Production) asked him to describe his process of findingthings and deciding to put them on his profile, Carlos corrected him:I pretty much don’t . . . I just go to a certain website and if it looks like it has alot of funny stuff I just go through that whole page and if I find something I likeI just copy, paste it, and put it there. And I won’t save it or nothing; I’ll just keepon going through the website and copy and paste until I got anything I want. Andfrom there I just save it. And if it looks good, it looks good. If it doesn’t, I still keepit the same.

Creative Production 261For youth who saw online profiles primarily as personal social spaces,this casual approach to their profiles was typical, and they tended not toupdate them with much frequency, or only when they grew tired of one.Nick, a sixteen-year-old male from Los Angeles who is of black and NativeAmerican descent, told danah boyd (Teen Sociality in Networked Publics),That’s the main time I have fun—when I’m just putting new pictures and newbackgrounds on my page. I do that once every couple of months because sometimesit gets real boring. I’ll be on one page. I’ll log on to my profile and see the samepicture every time. I’m, man, I’m gonna do something new.For most youth, profile creation is a casual activity in defining a personalwebpage and graphic identity, pieced together with found materials on theInternet. This is a form of messing around that can provide some initialintroductions to how to manipulate online digital media.We found that personal media creation was often a starting point forbroadening media production into other forms, a transition betweenhanging out, friendship-driven genres of participation and messing aroundand geeking out. As kids shared personal media such as posting videos orsharing fanfic they often connected with others in ways that encouragedthem to increase production and broaden participation in communities ofinterest, both online and off. By creating profiles and creating, modifying,and sharing visual media, youth are developing visual and media literacyin ways that are driven by their desire to participate in friendship-drivenpractices. We now turn to a discussion of how kids transition from messingaround with new media production to more geeked out modes, describingcases that illustrate the broad range of engagement kids have with makingmedia, developing skills, and making social connections.Getting StartedPersonal media creation and sharing can be understood as a jumping-offpoint for entry into more challenging forms of creative production. Justas casual tinkering with videos or photos can lead to a more abiding interestin digital media production, social network sites can be a vehicle foryouth to experiment with having public profiles as creative producers. Inour interviews with young media creators, we have collected many accountsof how they got started in media production. These narratives often beginwith a story of how they were “playing around” with media devices that

262 Patricia G. Lange and Mizuko Itowere available to them, and then they move on to a story about how theypicked up more advanced skills in media production. Often they referencebeing inspired by a particular media work or creator in deciding to pursuetheir own productions. One eighteen-year-old Brazilian editor, Gepetto, 5describes this trajectory, beginning with the first time he saw an AMV. Hisfriend had given him a CD with some anime episodes, and there was anAMV on it as filler. “I was amazed at the idea that such a pretty little videoclip was made by a fan just like me. . . . I was really affected by the video.I put it on loop and watched it several times in a row.” He went on tomake his own video soon after seeing this first AMV. “My first video tookabout two and a half hours to make and it turned out extremely horrible.But I loved it.” The key here is that beginning editors see AMVs as inspiringand impressive but also something that they can aspire to, somethingmade by “a fan just like me” (Ito, Anime Fans). Amateur media provide amore accessible model than professional media do, and a community ofavailable peers to start kids off in creative production.Unlike those in many other forms of specialized practice, experts ininformation technology often emphasize that they picked up their skillsoutside of formal training and instruction. Members of technical hierarchiespride themselves on being self-taught—learning how to manipulatecode, technical devices, and networked forms of distribution on their own(Lange 2003, 2007b). The media creators we interviewed often reflectedthese values by describing how they were largely self-taught, even thoughthey might also describe the help they received from online and offlineresources, peers, parents, and even teachers. Portelli (1991) notes thatexploring these tensions is particularly useful because they represent therealm of desire and what interviewees wish to convey in terms of identitiesof expertise and appropriate participation in technical, social groups. Forexample, one successful web comics writer, SnafuDave 6 , whom MizukoIto (Anime Fans) interviewed said: “Basically, I had to self-teach myself,even though I was going to school for digital media . . . school’s morevaluable for me to have . . . a time frame where I could learn on my own”(see box 7.1). Despite his adoption of “self-taught” discourse, SnafuDavenonetheless described learning to use Photoshop, Flash, and Illustratorby making use of online tutorials and a network of graphic artists hemet online. When makers describe themselves as self-taught, they aregenerally referring to the fact that they did not receive formal instruction,

Creative Production 263and they will acknowledge various sources of help they turned to toget started.Adults are not simply bystanders to their children’s expert technicalcreative endeavors; we found a number of cases in which parents andeducators played an important role in influencing their children’s involvementwith media, either by providing resources; introducing kids to genres,software, or sites; or by working in collaboration with kids. One group ofsuccessful young YouTube video makers talked about how their uncle hada cable television show, which they eventually inherited. The boys describedthemselves as able to figure out technical aspects of video making on theirown, but they acknowledge that they helped each other out and originallylearned from their dad. A sixteen-year-old white girl from New York namedAshley, who wishes to be a filmmaker, noted, “I learned to use the camerajust by playing around with it, and I used an editing program on my mom’siMac computer.” As described in box 6.2, Ashley also revealed a numberof ways in which her mother helped her learn how to make good videos.Many youth also described how school projects in video making providedthe impetus for them to get started in video production. After-school programsand community centers also provide spaces where kids could messaround and learn about creative production with knowledgeable adultsand peers. Despite the centrality of self-directed learning in young people’sstories of how they got started in video production, successful entry intoproduction is enabled by a wide range of social and technical resourcesthat support as-needed help and learning. What self-motivated youthrequire to pursue these interests is not so much a formal instructionalsetting as access to wide-ranging sources of expertise.Box 6.2 All in the FamilyPatricia G. LangeA mother and daughter named Lola and Ashley have a series of shows onYouTube. Ashley is a sixteen-year-old white girl who characterizes herself asa “future filmmaker” on her YouTube page. From New York, the motherdaughterteam summarizes and provides commentary about current reality-TV shows. They first learned about YouTube through a television show thatreviews and comments on television. Contrary to the idea that YouTubereplaces television, the mother-daughter team’s discussions and critiques

264 Patricia G. Lange and Mizuko Itoheavily draw on material from shows such as Survivor, Big Brother, Beauty andthe Geek, and Top Chef, to name just a few of their preferred topics. Their bodyof work is impressive; they’ve made more than two hundred videos togethersince they first established their account in the fall of 2006. To achieve a kindof recognizable branding, their videos share certain consistent features. Forinstance, they always sit in front of a graphic with the name of the show theyare discussing in their video. Lola sits on the viewer’s left-hand side andAshley on the right (see figures 6.1, 6.2, and 6.3). Their banter is unique tothem yet comfortably familiar to many people who may recognize the senseof fun and friendship their videos convey.The following transcript is excerpted from their recap of the season premiereof Top Chef Chicago, which is a television show in which there is aweekly challenge or contest to make a certain dish. The challenge for thatweek’s episode required each chef-contestant to make a deep-dish pizza. Lolaand Ashley provided some personal observations on the episode:Lola: They need to each re-create a signature deep-dish pizza.Ashley: And they have ninety minutes to do it.Lola: Poor Stephanie; she cut her finger in the first thirty seconds.Ashley: [rolls her eyes] The girl is a bundle of nerves!Lola: I know.Ashley: She was like [grabs her finger and shudders], “Aaah!”Lola: Well, they were all workin’ pretty damn hard on their pizzas.Ashley: [nods]Lola: At the end, there was a lot of pizzas getting stuck in those pans.Ashley: Some broke-down pizzas!Lola: Yeah, and I think Richard actually used two; was it Richard who usedtwo pans?Ashley: I think so.Lola: Andrew had to use a cast-iron skillet to make his.Ashley: They only had enough pans so that each person could have one.Lola: Well, there was a lot of doughy, bready pizzas because if you’re notused to working with deep-dish pizzas you don’t really realize how much thatshizz is going to rise.Ashley: It was like that pizza-bread stuff that you get from . . .Lola: Focaccia.Ashley: Yeah. That stuff is good! That’s not what they were asking for!Lola got started making videos on YouTube because her daughter expressedan interest in going to film school and pursuing a career in film or communications.Ashley persuaded Lola to help her and be a part of her videomakingexperiences. Reluctant at first, Lola agreed to help her daughterpursue her goals. Lola is now a key part of a video-making production team

Creative Production 265Figure 6.1Lola and Ashley recap Top Chef. Screen capture by Patricia G. Lange, 2008.Figure 6.2Lola and Ashley review Beauty and the Geek. Screen capture by Patricia G. Lange, 2008.

266 Patricia G. Lange and Mizuko ItoFigure 6.3Lola and Ashley discuss Big Brother. Screen capture by Patricia G. Lange, 2008.that is gaining popularity on YouTube. Between the time of their interviewin May 2007 and August 2008, they gained more than 1,900 subscribers andmore than 140,000 views of their YouTube channel page (which is YouTube’sequivalent of the MySpace profile page). One of their fans has even donecompilations of their reviews and commentary. For Lola, the purpose of theirYouTube presence is to help her daughter build a portfolio that will help herpursue her career goals and enhance her already impressive scholastic record.They hope Ashley will obtain a scholarship to a prestigious college that theycould otherwise not afford. Notably, Lola sees their joint video making notonly as a means to an end but also as a way to stay close to her daughter andbe involved in her life. Setting very few limits on her computer time, Lolastays regularly involved in Ashley’s online activities. Ashley is comfortablesharing the account with her mother. As she put it, “I would never put anythingup that my mom doesn’t approve of and I have nothing to hideanyway.” Lola emphasizes her interest in having a close relationship with herdaughter through video making. Lola said:I wanted to be involved with my kids but I think it’s more important that the kidswant the parents to be involved. [Because] I’ve seen other parents . . . my mom doesn’tunderstand the type of relationship I have with my kids and she’s like, “I’m gonna getyou some software so that you can spy on your kids when they’re on the Internet.” AndI’m like, “I don’t have to do that. I know exactly where they are because I’m with them.”

Creative Production 267[So] I feel sorry for the people who have to have a relationship like that with theirkids where the kids feel like they have to sneak around behind the parents’ back andthey don’t know what’s going on. So I thought that was important. So that’s probablyanother reason why I wanted to do the videos with [my daughter] because, you know,I wanted to stay involved.Ashley characterizes both of her parents as very technical, with formaleducational training in computers and related technical subjects. She also hasclose relatives who have degrees in film. Ashley’s home environment is filledwith computers; each child has his or her own and there are some to spare.Ashley reports that their living room alone has four computers. The house isalso well networked. Ashley has learned a lot about computers and video byplaying around with cameras and editing software. She also describes howher mom teaches her good video-making techniques, such as keeping thingsshort and avoiding too many transitions. They characterize themselves as“best friends,” and Ashley trusts her mother’s advice and is grateful to havea second opinion. They often watch their videos and those of other videomakers on YouTube to improve their technique.Lola and Ashley like watching television. Their process involves watchingshows they like and taking notes about what they would like to say. AfterAshley finishes her homework they set up the camera, even if it is after 11:00p.m. because they think consistency is important. Lola can do the editingquickly, but she often encourages Ashley to practice so she can gain more experience.Lola now characterizes Ashley as more proficient, having picked upcomputer-related skills quickly. Their goal is generally to put up a video onceper week, although quality is more important than meeting a weekly deadline.Ashley said, “I would like to post at least once a week but I’d rather have fewergood-quality videos than a lot of bad ones which were hastily made.”After the video is posted, Ashley works to promote the videos by networkingwith other people on YouTube, posting bulletins on MySpace, and alertingfriends via instant messaging. She often subscribes to popular YouTubers sothat other people will see her channel icon and potentially check out herwork. Ashley is on YouTube every few hours during the day, although shedoes not watch videos at school. When she logs on to YouTube, she checksthe number of views on her videos and then checks for comments and newsubscribers or Friend requests. As a rule, she agrees to automatically acceptFriend requests because her major purpose on YouTube is to network topromote her work. After checking for new Friend requests, she then looks tosee if the people she has subscribed to have new videos, and then she examinesfavorite categories, such as “animation” and “pets and animals.” Lolaalso finds herself frequently checking their account. She spends hours a dayon the site. She characterized herself as “hooked” and she joked that herdaughter tells her she has a “sickness.”

268 Patricia G. Lange and Mizuko ItoUnlike many other YouTubers, Ashley has very little interest in meetingother YouTubers in person. For her the site is more of a way to achieve futuregoals. Yet, like many YouTubers, she also enjoys watching videos. Her mostmemorable moments involve encountering enjoyable videos from some ofher favorite video makers. For Ashley, “The best thing about YouTube is thatthere is always something to watch no matter what you like. The worst thingis that you will never be able to see everything you want to see because it’sjust too immense.” Some of Lola’s most memorable moments also revolvearound favorite videos—and she appreciates that YouTube is widely accessible.For Lola, one of YouTube’s biggest weaknesses and strengths is that it is freeand therefore available to anyone. The site contains a lot of “any old garbage”as well as fun videos. More important, it gives a range of video makers suchas themselves—or as they say, “average people” with “real opinions”—anopportunity to express themselves and promote their work.Specialization and CollaborationAs young people begin to develop their expertise in creative production,they often also work to develop a unique voice and specialty. Unlikeschools, which might ask young people to perform to more standardizedforms of achievement, recreational settings provide opportunities foryouth to develop more targeted expertise and delve into esoteric andniche domains of knowledge. For example, Gepetto, introduced earlier,turned to the online community of AMV editors for more specializedknowledge of editing. Although he managed to interest a few of hislocal friends in AMV making, none of them took to it to the extentthat he did. He relies heavily on the networked community of editorsas sources of knowledge and expertise and for models to aspire to. Infact, in his local community he is now known as a video expert byboth his peers and adults. After seeing his AMV work, one of his highschoolteachers asked him to teach a video workshop to younger students.He joked that “even though I know nothing, [to my local community]I am the Greater God of video editing.” The development of his identityand competence as a video editor would not have been fully supportedwithin his local community; it was the networked relations mediatedby the Internet that led to ongoing peer-based learning and specialization.

Creative Production 269Attention to specialized and esoteric knowledge is characteristic of allfandoms, but it is even more accentuated in highly technical fan practicessuch as machinima, video editing, music making, and fansubbing.Certain forms of media creation often involve collaboration betweendifferent specialties. In describing youth hip-hop creation, DilanMahendran (Hip-Hop Music Production) notes how youth developtargeted specialty crafts, such as beat making (Mahendran 2007). Beatsare instrumental works created on Reason or other software. For manystudents at his DJ project, “making beats” was a primary practice. Beatmaking is a specialty craft that requires an enormous dedication of timeif one is to become proficient, and only a couple of the studentsMahendran observed mastered this craft at this amateur level. The beatis elemental to a rap song and aspiring rappers want original authenticbeats to set themselves off from other rappers. The practice for beginningrappers is to use commercial beats that they sample from CDs of wellknownrappers such as Jay-Z or Kanye West, but after they begin to honetheir craft they often demand custom beats that they may help produce.Beats are highly valued works that accomplished rappers will seek originalversions of.Mahendran’s work, as detailed in box 6.3, highlights the dynamic interplaybetween specialization and collaboration and the ways in whichconsumption, fandom, media connoisseurship, and remix are steppingstonesto developing voice and an identity as a member of a creative elite.Hip-hop is a particularly important case, in that it was a genre of musicthat was ahead of the curve in terms of developing styles of sampling andremix, as well as being grounded within very active amateur productioncommunities where youth develop creative identities and competencies.Within different media and genres of creative production, becoming acreator entails developing either a specialized role in collaborative formsof production, or a signature style that marks an individualized voice. Forexample, within the fandom surrounding anime, there is a wide range offan productions, varying from the more individualized mode of fan fictionwriting or AMV creation to more collaborative modes such as fansubbing,in which subtitles are added to anime and which require working togetheras a tight-knit team.

270 Patricia G. Lange and Mizuko ItoBox 6.3 Making Music TogetherDilan MahendranMistreat was almost nineteen in the summer of 2005 when she joined theRap Project in the Mission District of San Francisco (see figure 6.4) . Mistreathad moved from El Salvador to the Mission District with her mother, father,and brother when she was ten years old. Years later, she came to participatein a ten-week introduction to hip-hop class being offered that summer inthe Mission. Mistreat had never rapped or made music before but she hadbecome a deep listener of hip-hop and rap music. She had not always listenedFigure 6.4Mistreat rapping in the San Francisco MC Competition. Photo courtesy of www.Uthtv.com, 2006.

Creative Production 271to hip-hop, though. In grade school she listened to salsa romantica and Latinartists such as Marc Anthony, music that was popular with girls in her homecountry of El Salvador. In middle school she listened to mainstream hip-hopand R&B such as *NSYNC and 98 Degrees. When she hit high school mostother students were into hip-hop, particularly artists such as Messy Marv andSan Quinn from the local Bay Area Hyphy 7 music scene. Hip-hop was themusic she related to because of its rough edge and its rejection of warm andfuzzy love music. Mistreat wrote often about her life and experience comingto San Francisco and figuring out how she could fit into the teenage scene injunior high and high school.There was plenty to write about: home life, school life, and friends. So whenshe came to the Rap Project she had a quite a bit of content about everydaymatters, which she prodigiously transformed into rap lyrics. Mistreat’s firstattempt at recording was masterful. It was hard to believe that she had neverrapped before nor had previous experience in a recording booth. It was clearthat she was a virtuoso and a rare talent. She had a rapid-fire style of rappingthat would twist the tongues of most mortals. More important, she had aunique voice that was readily distinguishable from the luminary rappers thatshe most tried to emulate. She sounded like no one else; she was authenticallyherself when she rapped. This was rare for most of the rappers who came outof the Rap Project, because as they began rapping they tried to emulate theirfavorite rappers in tone and style, although some did eventually develop theirown voices. Most others who began emulating Jay-Z or Lil Wayne, forexample, often continued this mimicry and never got to the next level.A major pedagogical component of the Rap Project introductory classes wasthe pairing up of students to work on songs together. Though collaborationwas a part of the structure of the class, the pairing up of students was a moreorganic process and not directly organized by the instructors. Mistreat quicklylinked up with Young Mic, another very eager rapper who wrote lyrics prolifically.Young Mic, a nineteen-year-old Puerto Rican, grew up in the African-American San Francisco neighborhood of Lakeside. Young Mic would comeeach day two hours early with notebooks full of writing. Like Mistreat, hewrote extensively before finding rap as a mode of expression. Young Micbegan his personal narrative writing while in the county jail for burglary. Oneof the other inmates had suggested that he should rap to those stories hewrote. Young Mic said he was kind of surprised when the inmate told himthat, because he too had never rapped before, even though he had listenedto hip-hop since middle school.Both Mistreat and Young Mic were inseparable in open-studio time andduring classes. They were the most avid of all the students in the areas ofrapping and recording. Unlike other students in the class, both Mistreat andYoung Mic were determined to become rappers. During the ten-week class,

272 Patricia G. Lange and Mizuko ItoYoung Mic recorded twenty-four of his own songs, several of which endedup on the class’s final album, much to the chagrin of some of the other students.Young Mic gave frequent advice to Mistreat, who seemed to see herselfas a novice compared to him. They shared ideas on lyric writing and how toimprove lyrical flow and cadence. Young Mic often used beats from establishedrappers such as Jay-Z or Kanye West. Mistreat was willing to work withother students and rap to the beats that they were working on in the studio.Mistreat asked another student named Johnny Quest, a sixteen-year-oldAfrican-American who lived in Pittsburgh, California (an hour drive from theMission), to make a beat for a song that she had been working on. JohnnyQuest was an avid sampler and he sampled tracks from the sound track ofthe movie Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005) to compose a deep meditativebeat for her.Mistreat’s collaboration with Johnny Quest was as much about his uniquebeats as about including Johnny Quest in the making of the class final album.Because Johnny Quest did not show any interest in rapping, he felt a bitmarginalized by the others. Some of the other students who focused onrapping and song making were a bit reluctant to use the beginner beats ofother students because the commercially available beats that they sampledwere more highly produced. This did not deter Mistreat from using JohnnyQuest’s beats for a production track on the final class album.Though the digital technological environment in the studio affords incrediblepower to individuals to control their own production from beginning toend, it seemed an impossibility to produce a song without the concerted helpof others. Each of the students developed special skills, whether in rapping,beat making, or producing final songs. The songs that students loved the mostwere often songs in which either two or more students rapped on the trackor one rapped and another sang the chorus. Though some students enjoyedthe camaraderie of coming to the after-school program, most were passionateabout making music. Music as the goal of these students’ attention was significantlydifferent from the notion of hanging out. Music brought thesestudents together and in some cases, such as the ones described here, closefriendships bloomed.In the case of fansubbing, established groups generally have formal testsand trial periods before admitting a new member, and there is a highdegree of specialization within each production team as well as in thecommunity overall. Each fansub group has a “raw provider,” who collectsthe original episode in Japanese; a translator; an editor; a timer, who timesthe length of time the subtitles should be on screen; a typesetter; an

Creative Production 273encoder; and usually several quality checkers, who review the final episodes.Although many fansubbers experiment with different roles in agroup, they usually have a specialty around which they build their reputations.For example, one encoder described how initially he was attractedto the specialty because of the depth of knowledge that he could pursuewithin an expert community. “It just got interesting because other encoderswere like, ‘Here are some tips and tricks.’ . . . There were so many tricksin how to handle that stuff that it got pretty interesting.” Mastering esotericknowledge becomes a source of status and reputation. After gainingthis status as an expert, a subber will find that his or her services are ingreat demand in the tight-knit community.In her study of YouTube video makers and video bloggers (YouTubeand Video Bloggers), Patricia Lange found that video production, especiallythose that spring from video as a form of social activity among offlinefriends, often relies on the coordination of several individuals whogravitate toward specialized roles within a group. Lange found that insuch groups of friends, roles such as director or editor were not particularlyfluid. Interviews indicated that friends recruited to be actors did notalways express the desire nor did they achieve the mentoring to shiftinto other aspects of informal video production. Rather, one or at mosttwo people in a small video-making group usually stood out as recognizedexperts among their local peers in school or in social activities, and itwas these individuals, Lange found, who often contributed more intenselyto the final product. A production group in many of the genres Langestudied, such as informal comedy sketch and video blogging, emergedfrom peer groups of friends who get together to make videos. Whileeveryone might contribute by acting and perhaps providing improviseddialogue, not everyone directs and edits. Other members may or may notbe encouraged to experiment with taking on new roles. A select few oftenhave the interests and abilities to guide the efforts of a loosely collaborativelocal group of friends who make movies together as an expression andextension of friendship rather than because all indivi duals have an equalinterest in future video making at the professional level.Another form of collaboration that online video makers engage in is the“collab” video, in which a maker will collect video from other video creators.In these cases, sometimes well-known or even famous YouTubersmay lend footage or become actors or participants in someone else’s

274 Patricia G. Lange and Mizuko Itomontage or video compilation. In addition, youth video makers may alsoattend meet-ups and interview their favorite YouTube personalities. Theyouth then edit together the videos in ways that show their perspectiveand interpretation of attending events. In these scenarios, the youth havecontrol over the videos. YouTube celebrities or participants that a kid mayrespect because of their popularity or technical video-making ability arenot in positions of authority or mentorship, but rather they are contributorsto the kid’s vision. These dynamics show that online spaces such asYouTube and blogs, and real-life gatherings such as meet-ups, provideopportunities for youth to interact with adults as peers, moving out of theage-segregated contexts of the school.In the case of media production that requires multiple forms of expertise,collaboration is an integral part of the production process. Digital mediaand networks enable kids to decompose bits of the production process andcoordinate their work through a variety of online tools. The current mediaecology represents a convergence of a range of social and technical capabilities—theability to share rich media online, greater processing powerin personal computers, accessible video- and image-editing tools, andsocial media sites—that enable these forms of collaborative creation. Wesaw the growth of amateur, collaborative digital media production first inmusic (Russell et al. 2008); now these arrangements are being produced invideo making. Through these collaborative arrangements, kids developclose partnerships and friendships and gain opportunities to learn fromothers with different forms of knowledge and expertise.Improving the CraftCreative communities that are organized online provide sources of help,expertise, and collaborative partners as well as a context where creatorscan get feedback from audiences and fellow creators. We found that trajectoriesof improvement varied across individual producers and differentcommunities of interest, but in all cases, there were mechanisms inplace for creators to learn from one another. Some groups had hierarchicalstructures, recognized standards, and specific mechanisms for distributingfeedback. Others had a more unstructured organization, varying or minimalstandards, and more informal mechanisms for providing peer-to-peeradvice and assistance.

Creative Production 275Certain online sites become a focal point for peer-based learning, sharing,feedback, reviews, and competitions that push young people to improvetheir craft. Sites such as YouTube, deviantART, and after-school mediaprograms give kids access to peers and experts in the areas of interest tothem. It enables access to people who are uniquely placed to evaluatetheir particular media creation or contribution in ways that peopleoutside a narrow area of specialization could not appreciate. Online sitesprovide both hard-coded and social mechanisms that enable participantsto share their work as well as engage in related commentary and discourse.For example, animemusicvideos.org has numerous mechanisms forfeedback and reviews, including discussion forums, simple ratings, competitions,top video lists, and templates for doing full reviews of videos.AbsoluteDestiny 8 (a white twenty-seven-year-old), one of the most wellknowneditors in the community, describes to Mizuko Ito (Anime Fans)how he initially created AMVs in relative isolation, until he discoveredwhat AMV editors fondly call “the org.”AbsoluteDestiny: I wasn’t really being influenced by other communitiesuntil I went online for AMVs and found this whole other communityalready going on. A lot of the work really pushed the boundaries in termsof effort and editing and the kind of level you would go to in order tocreate effects. It was much more than I had done, and it became a bit ofa challenge to see if I could extend my own work to bring it up to thatstandard.Mizuko: How did you get famous?AbsoluteDestiny: It was slow at first. At first I joined the community,asked for feedback, didn’t really get any, and discovered that the way tobecome noticed and to get feedback on your own works was to givefeedback to other people. There’s a lot of mutual back rubbing going on,and we would do feedback swaps. I would say OK, I’ll give you my thoughtson your video if you’d give me your thoughts on mine. By doing that, andby being very active, just having your name out and about, really reallyhelps. . . . So I would leave feedback on quite well known creators and lesserknown creators, and just getting into chat conversations on forums withthese people, getting to know them. . . . When it finally came about that Imade a video that actually did something that people might notice, whichwas the Shameless Rock video, was quite a departure for me. . . . So then

276 Patricia G. Lange and Mizuko Itobecause people knew me, but didn’t really know my work, they wouldwatch my video and then they would say, “Oh my god, there is this reallygreat video out there that AbsoluteDestiny has done. Go and see it.” AndI was essentially an overnight success.In addition to the org, AMV creators also meet up at anime conventions,which participants call “cons,” and these meet-ups often define the elitecore of the AMV world. For example, the Anime Weekend Atlanta (AWA)convention is widely known to be the central con for the AMV scene, andthere will be a dinner meet-up of more than a hundred creators to kickthings off. At most cons, the AMV editors will be hanging out in the screeningroom or the hotel-lobby bar, exchanging opinions about work, or asDarius, 9 a twenty-four-year-old African-American editor, described, “Andthey’d talk about some other works or—or whatever. Not even their works,but just ‘Hey, what’s up. How you doing? This is damn good Jack Daniel’s.’ ”Both AMVs and fansubbing are specialized practices relying on deep knowledgeof cult media. Creators appreciate feedback from other creators orwell-informed members of their public, and they think that there arecertain creative standards that have been established by their tight-knitcommunity. The reciprocity between different creators is an importantdimension of how learning works in these communities; the core participantsoccupy the roles of creator, viewer, and critic. For example, fansubbershave ongoing debates about what constitutes quality work, and fansubcomparison sites will conduct detailed comparisons of the quality of translation,encoding, editing, and typesetting between competing groups.These peer evaluation mechanisms are in play in online writing communitiesas well. In C. J. Pascoe’s “Living Digital” study, the case ofClarissa, a seventeen-year-old white female from California, is an exampleof how this dynamic operates with online creative writing. The roleplayingboard 10 she participates in is a tight-knit creative communityintent on maintaining quality standards. To participate in the board,writers must craft extensive character descriptions and formally apply foradmission. Clarissa described how she receives ongoing and substantivefeedback from other participants on the site, and she does the same forher peers (Pascoe 2007b). For her story, see box 1.3. In the case of fanfiction, writers and readers have a range of sites that they can go to. As isthe case with orangefizzy, a thirteen-year-old Asian-American female from

Creative Production 277California, recommendations and social networking play a large partin decisions related to where they read and publish fan fiction (Herr-Stephenson, Harry Potter Fandom).Becky: Where do you read fanfic?orangefizzy: at harrypotterfanfiction.com [HPFF] and fictionalley.org[FA].Becky: and have you published your writing there too?orangefizzy: not on FA, but on HPFF.Becky: why did you choose those sites?orangefizzy: i don’t remember why i chose them to begin with lookingon FA because it’s bigger. I like HPFF, though, because it’s small and is notfull of people who like to write Snape/Hermione doing extremely x ratedthings.Becky: why did you choose to publish on HPFF and not FA?orangefizzy: because HPFF’s forums has more of a “community we allknow each other” feeling to it than FA, which is huge. and since i talkedto the HPFF people, i preferred to put my work in their archives.The social aspects of fan fiction communities can be important influenceson how readers and writers interact with texts. For example, many communitieshave norms defining what is and is not appropriate feedback. Attimes, however, and particularly in larger communities, readers do notalways provide what writers perceive as valuable feedback, as ChoMalfoy,a seventeen-year-old female originally from China and now living inCanada, mentioned in her interview (Herr-Stephenson, Harry PotterFandom):Becky: you mentioned that you used to write a little bit . . . did you sharethe stuff you wrote?ChoMalfoy: Yes. On FanFiction.net and FictionAlley and my LJ [LiveJournal].Becky: did you get a lot of feedback on your pieces?ChoMalfoy: Yeah, a reasonable amount.Becky: did it impact your writing at all?ChoMalfoy: No, the thing with reviews on fanfiction . . . people don’tusually do constructive criticism. Mostly, it’s encouragement/expressingdesire for the author to hurry up with the next chapter.

278 Patricia G. Lange and Mizuko ItoIn other communities, critical feedback is provided by “beta readers,”who read fics before they are published and give suggestions on style, plot,and grammar. The relationships between writers and beta readers varygreatly depending on the situation and the people involved, and theexpectations for beta readers differ between different sites. Describing her(quite different) relationships with her beta reader and the writer for whomshe reads, orangefizzy said: “. . . yeah. i have a beta, and beta for anotherperson. my beta is my best online friend, but i haven’t heard from the girli beta for in MONTHS. i need to poke her soon, see that she hasn’t died.”Not all creative groups have a tight-knit community with establishedstandards. YouTube, for example, functions more as an open aggregator ofa wide range of video-production genres and communities, and the standardsfor participation and commentary differ according to the goals ofparticular video makers and social groups. Although some creative worksare targeted for small niche groups, other youth creators we have spokento wish to take advantage of opportunities to connect with a wide set ofdispersed, similarly interested people in order to maximize the potentialfor receiving feedback, recognition, and critique for their work. Critiqueand feedback can take many forms, including posted comments on asite that displays works, private message exchanges, offers to collaborate,invitations to join other creators’ social groups, and promotion fromother members of an interest-oriented group. On YouTube a famous videomaker might give a “shout-out” or mention another creator’s work he orshe admires. Even in the most competitive environments, the collaborationof other participants as promoters is often crucial to determining thecritical and popular success of certain works. Viewers and fans who areoften producers themselves rate, comment, and promote certain worksover others.In both the more tight-knit niche communities and more open sites suchas YouTube, creators distinguished between productive and unproductivefeedback. Simple five-star rating schemes, while useful in boosting rankingand visibility, were not valued as mechanisms for actually improving one’scraft. Fansubbers generally thought that their audience had little understandingof what constituted a quality fansub and would take seriouslyonly the evaluation of fellow producers. Similarly, AMV creators play downrankings and competition results based on “viewers choice.” The perceptionamong creators is that many videos win if they use popular anime as

Creative Production 279source material, regardless of the merits of the editing. In the YouTubeworld, many participants are concerned about “haters,” or people wholeave mean-spirited, discriminatory, or hurtful comments containingimages of violence or death. While creators disliked these comments, theydid not necessarily think that they should be restricted or excluded fromthe site. A number of youth creators also mentioned that they deliberatelyrefuse to remove even hurtful comments posted on their pages as a wayof showing their support for free speech online (Lange 2007a).In contrast to these attitudes toward audience feedback, a comment froma respected fellow creator carries a great deal of weight. Darius, the twentyfour-year-oldAfrican-American mentioned earlier (Ito, Anime Fans),described some of the challenges he had in getting people to view andcomment on his videos, but he was deeply appreciative when one felloweditor did give him feedback on his work.And so somebody finally watched it at AWA, and was, like, oh, different concept,but it was a pretty cool video. Not necessarily award winning, but it was cool. I canwatch it. I was, like, oh, okay. Thank you. I finally got somebody to tell me that,that much. But, like, you know, sometimes trying to get feedback on some of thesethings is like pulling teeth.These moments, when young people get validation for their work from apeer, are important stepping-stones to developing an identity as a mediacreator. While some youth eschew the critiques as less useful because theyare telling them what they already know, others highly value finding recognitionand acceptance from peers for their work, even when they mustendure hurtful commentary or harsh criticism from others. As Frank, awhite fifteen-year-old male from Ohio on YouTube, stated, “But then evenwhen you get one good comment, that makes up for fifty mean comments,‘cause it’s just the fact of knowing that someone else out there liked yourvideos and stuff, and it doesn’t really matter about everyone else that’scriticized you” (Lange, YouTube and Video Bloggers). Edric, a rapper inDilan Mahendran’s study (Hip-Hop Music Production), is a nineteen-yearoldPuerto Rican male who was born and grew up in San Francisco. Hedescribed the moment when he first stepped into the recording booth andreceived some recognition from fellow artists.So I went into the booth. And I was nervous. It took me two times to finally getmy words right. And finally I got my words right and did this song. And everyonewas like, “Man, that was nice. I liked that.” And I was like, for real? I was like, I

280 Patricia G. Lange and Mizuko Itoappreciate that. And ever since then I’ve just been stuck to writing, developing mystyle . . .Almost all creators bounce their ideas off fellow creators and ask specificallyfor feedback on their work. For example, in his work studying after-schoolvideo programs, Dan Perkel (The Social Dynamics of Media Production)observed how Nina (a twelve-year-old girl from a low-income neighborhoodin northern California who appeared to be African-American) usedLiveType to make a title for a video. After she made a title for her group’sshow, a few of her other team members came around, happened to see it,and showed their appreciation. One of the boys got very excited uponseeing it and the girl beamed proudly.This type of ongoing feedback and communication among fellow creatorsand informed critics is one of the primary mechanisms throughwhich creators improve their craft after their entry into a creative practice.Youth media programs, such as those described by Mahendran and Perkel,can provide the contexts for this kind of peer-based evaluation to happen.Other youth turn to online forums and interest-based communities, withtheir corresponding infrastructures of meet-ups and screenings. Throughthese ongoing exchanges, creators develop a sense of shared creative standards,genre conventions, and new forms of literacy. These social practicesof evaluation, standard setting, and reputation building, well establishedin professional art worlds, are now being taken up by a larger swath ofamateurs engaged in digital media production and online sharing.Gaining AudienceAlthough audiences are not always seen as the best sources of critical feedback,most creators do seek visibility for their works, even if it is with relativelysmall groups of friends, families, or peers. The desire for sharing,visibility, and reputation is a powerful driver for creative production in theonline world. While fellow creators provide the feedback that improvesthe craft, audiences provide the recognition and validation of the workthat is highly motivational.Although sharing is a motivator for most kinds of media creation wehave observed, the boundaries that kids put on the sharing vary by kidsand media type. For personal media, though youth may post publicly to

Creative Production 281sites such as MySpace or YouTube, the work generally is not intended tobe circulated beyond friends and family. Many budding media creatorsalso decide to share with only a small group. For example, several fanfiction writers in Mizuko Ito’s Anime fans study wrote extensively butshared their writing with only their close friends. In some cases, peopleproduce works for themselves and use their online creative-productionspaces as personal sketchbooks in which they can experiment with things.Finally, our study has also identified a number of kids and youth who arereluctant to publicly share their materials. Keke, a sixteen-year-old blackfemale from Los Angeles in danah boyd’s study (Teen Sociality in NetworkedPublics), described conflicting desires to become a music producer and herreluctance and shyness at sharing her work:danah: So what about writing? What do you write about?Keke: I write about global warming and the war on Iraq, and I also writesongs. I want to be a music producer when I grow up. I do a lot of music.Me and my best friend, London, we do a lot of music. We got a lot of songsthat we’ve written together. So, yeah.danah: So what do you do when you’ve written these things? Do youshare them with anyone?Keke: No. They’re just . . . ‘cause I’m real shy. For my music, I’m real shy.I don’t know. I’ve just been shy. But every time I . . . ‘cause I rap, so whenI’ve rapped and stuff, people tell me I’m real good. I’m still shy, but I don’tshare none of the stuff I write about with other people ‘cause some of it isreal personal, ‘cause I write a lot of stuff about my brother, who died, yeah.danah: Do you think you’ll ever share what you write?Keke: Nope, never [laughs]. Never will I share it, ‘cause everybody I hangout with . . . they don’t really pay attention to stuff like I do. Like, I watchthe news like it’s a channel . . . if I am on the Internet, I’m looking uphomeland security, stuff like that.Young people struggle over their sense of confidence and safety aboutsharing their work to wider audiences. As creators get more confident andinvolved in their work, however, they generally will seek out audiences,and the online environment provides a vehicle for publishing and circulationof their work. In Dilan Mahendran’s study (Hip-Hop Music Production),the more ambitious musicians would use a MySpace Music template asa way to develop profiles that situate them as musicians rather than a stan-

282 Patricia G. Lange and Mizuko ItoFigure 6.5An example of a MySpace Music profile. Reprinted with permission from YoungMIC. Screen capture by Dilan Mahendran, 2006.dard teen personal profile (see figure 6.5). Similarly, video makers who seekbroader audiences gravitate toward YouTube as a site to gain visibility.More specialized video communities, such as those who do AMVs orlive-action vidding, 11 will often avoid general-purpose video-sharing sitessuch as YouTube because they are not targeted to audiences who are wellinformed about their genres of media. In fact, on the forums on the org,any instance of the term “YouTube” is automatically censored. Even withinthese specialized groups, however, creators do seek visibility. One AMVcreator in Mizuko Ito’s “Anime Fans” study, Xstylus 12 (a white twenty-

Creative Production 283eight-year-old), described the moment when his video was shown at AnimeExpo (AX), the largest anime convention in the United States:It was replayed again to an even-more-packed house during Masquerade, AX’s mostpopular event. Never had I ever seen so many people laugh so hard in my entirelife. The only people who could ever come close to experiencing such a feeling areHollywood directors having won an Academy Award for Best Picture. It was thefinest, greatest, most moving moment of my entire existence. Nothing will ever topit. Ever.XStylus received recognition for his work in the context of a formal competitionorganized by the convention. Most major anime conventions nowwill include an AMV competition in which the winning works are showcased,in addition to providing venues for fan artists to display and selltheir work. The young hip-hop artists Dilan Mahendran spoke to alsoparticipated in musical competitions that gave them visibility, particularlyif they went home with awards. Even fansubbers who insist that qualityand respect among peers are more important than download numbers willadmit that they do track the numbers. As one subber in Ito’s study described,“Deep down inside, every fansubber wants to have their work watched,and a high amount of viewers causes them some kind of joy whether theyexpress it or not.” Fansub groups generally make their “trackers,” whichrecord the number of downloads, public on their sites.Similarly, on YouTube, people have access to “view counts” of particularvideos, although these are generally regarded as unreliable (YouTube wassometimes slow and inconsistent in updating them) and easily manipulated(by makers who can create automated refresh programs to reload thevideo and make it appear as though it is being viewed widely). For youthproducers who wish to professionalize or maintain an advanced-amateurstatus in which they can partner with YouTube, numbers of views andcomments are used as a rough metric for granting partnership and promotingtheir work. Another metric involves the number of “subscribers” thata person on YouTube has. Being a subscriber of someone on YouTubemeans that you will be alerted (usually via email) when he or she postsnew videos. Some YouTubers participate in a kind of “sub-for-sub” reciprocityin which a video maker subscribes to someone else with the expectationor hope that the subscription will be reciprocated. However, manypeople actively resist this assumption and prefer to subscribe only whencontent interests them.

284 Patricia G. Lange and Mizuko ItoReciprocity agreements and friendships can greatly assist one’s visibility.One interviewee in Mizuko Ito’s anime study (Anime Fans), SnafuDave (seebox 7.1), is a successful web comics creator who hosts a site for his owncomics and the comics of several other artists. He described that as he wasgetting started, the friendships he made with other established artists wereinstrumental in his gaining audience. Some of these artists ended up usinghis site to publish their work, which “was a really big pull.” Others wouldmention his site in their own postings, which would also drive audienceto his site. He also places advertisements for his site on other establishedweb comics sites. In this case, he generally pays for the advertising, eventhough there is often a spirit of reciprocity within the web comics world.“I try to pay for all of my advertising, just because I know, say, if they dogive me that spot, then they’re losing money by not selling it to someoneelse.” In addition to these forms of ad placements, he visits conventionsaround the country to promote his work and sell related merchandise.Youth such as SnafuDave who are able to reach wide audiences canparlay their creative work into future careers. Even in the case of youthwho stay within recreational and amateur domains of creative production,the ability to connect with audiences is a key part of what drives theirparticipation and learning in creative production. The ability of digitalnetworked media to create new publics and audiences for amateur work isone of the most transformative dimensions of contemporary new media.The ability to define new collectivities and niche publics for culture andknowledge has been the subject of much writing on contemporary digitalculture (Anderson 2006; Benkler 2006; Jenkins 2006; Shirky 2008; Varnelis2008). Examining media production provides a window onto how thesedynamics are operating in the everyday lives of youth.Aspirational TrajectoriesIn most cases, young people who create digital media are not aspiring tobe professionals or to get famous through their creative work. They engagein digital media production as a social activity, a fun extracurricular hobby,or maybe even a serious lifelong one. Most of the dominant forms of fanproduction—fan fiction, video remix, amateur comics—are not commerciallyviable. Even older fans who do professional-quality work and whohave a substantial following in the fandom generally have no professionalor commercial aspirations in the area and have day jobs that are not related

Creative Production 285to their creative hobbies. For example, doki 13 (a white thirty-two-year-old),one of the leaders of the AMV world, describes himself as “a game designerby day, AMV creator by night.” Another anime fan, Scottanime 14 (a whitethirty-one-year-old), spends almost all his time off from being a mailcarrier organizing anime conventions (Ito, Anime Fans). Even though theseactivities may not result in economic or vocational outcomes, participantsin amateur media creation work hard to improve their craft, and theyget tremendous validation from their creative communities and audiencesfor a job well done. Some researchers refer to a category of creators as“proteurs,” or “people who have gained recognition as professionals fortheir hobbies even if they don’t have relevant professional certificates ordegrees” (Faulkner and Melican 2007, 53). As discussed in box 6.4, severalgroups of youth podcasters have achieved recognition for their achievementsfrom fans and from major corporations such as Scholastic (the U.S.publisher of the Harry Potter book series) and Warner Brothers (the studiothat produces the films).Box 6.4 **Spoiler Alert**: Harry Potter Podcasting as CollaborativeProductionBecky Herr-StephensonSitting on the floor of a crowded annex of a Los Angeles bookstore, I amjust one of nearly two hundred people waiting for an event to start. To myright, a mother and son talk about a theory on time travel. Behind me, ateenage girl scribbles furiously in a well-worn notebook. All around, excitedconversation ebbs and flows, at times becoming uncomfortably loud. Onecan only imagine what the other bookstore patrons are thinking. This placehas often served as a quiet space for a cup of tea and a new book; that iscertainly not the experience available today. When the event starts, the audiencecheers for a group of people making their way to the small stage. It isnot a prolific author, nor a band, nor a popular public speaker that we arethere to see—it is a group of regular (if geeky) people who have become BNFs(big-name fans) for recording podcasts about Harry Potter. But one wouldnever know that if she were just wandering by the annex on the way to thetravel guides section.Since the publication of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone nearly ten yearsago, Harry Potter fans have adopted a variety of technologies for sharingwriting, facilitating discussion, creating artwork and computer graphics, andproducing audio and video. Podcasting, the production of audio files for

286 Patricia G. Lange and Mizuko Itodownload via RSS (really simple syndication), emerged as a popular genre offan production in August 2005. At the height of the “Summer of Potter,” July2007, more than thirty podcasts were in active production. Podcasting seemsa natural fit for this technology-savvy fandom, which has expertly migratedmany longtime elements of fandom (including sharing information, mediaproduction, and social networking) to online spaces, opening the fandom togeographically diffuse and generationally diverse groups of fans. Podcastingallows for ongoing analysis of canon materials and in-depth, sustained commentaryon fans’ consumption and production practices, discussions that donot necessarily have a home within other forms of fan production.Harry Potter podcasts take on a variety of formats, but most contain thesame basic elements: news updates, literary analysis and theory building, andcommentary on other media within the franchise, such as the films, soundtracks, merchandising, and video games. Some shows focus on a specificinterest—such as fan fiction or “Wizard Rock” music, while others focus ona particular character or relationship within the books.Podcast production can vary from an individual who hosts, records, edits,and publishes the show by herself to a group with a hierarchical organizationsimilar to small video-production collectives or independent bands. Inmost cases, podcasts are run by a small team of hosts. The hosts prepare arundown or outline for each episode, usually working with collaboration andcommunication tools such as instant messaging, Skype conference calls, andGoogle Docs, which allow simultaneous collaborative editing of texts. Emailand phone contact (voice and texting) also frequently play a role in some ofthe necessary microcoordination around a podcast recording. In addition tothe discussion among the hosts, podcasts frequently feature segments recordedby correspondents or specialists in a particular aspect of fandom that are“rolled in” between host discussions. One podcaster, a white nineteen-year-oldfrom Illinois, emphasized the importance of opening the production to contributorsaside from the hosts. He said, “The main focus of [our show] is togive other people a chance to be podcasters . . . we want to give them anopportunity to be a podcaster. The first thing we decided was that anyonewho wants to be a guest host can be on the show.” Since the technologicaldemands for recording a podcast are relatively low, and because there is noneed for the hosts to be colocated for recording, it is possible to open up theproduction process in this way.Equally important as segment contributors and guest hosts, a third elementto Harry Potter podcasts (and podcasting in general) is general audience participation.Shows frequently have voice-mail services where listeners can callin and record questions and comments that are played during the show.Alternatively, some podcasts solicit audience feedback via email, and the hostsread and respond to those comments. The audience participation in podcast-

Creative Production 287ing is similar to that of talk-radio programs, but it also reflects the value placedon accessibility, dialogue, and blurring boundaries between producer andconsumer that are characteristic of online creative production.Production does not end with recording. In addition to editing the audio,podcasters must navigate distribution and publicity channels. Unlike mainstreammedia, in which a separate entity generally would handle the distributionand marketing of a program, podcasters (and most other amateurproducers) need to make decisions about the venues in which they willpublish and promote their shows. For many podcasts, the first step is creatinga show webpage. The show page acts as home base for the show and providesinformation about the podcast and links to download episodes. Other venuesfor publication of the show feeds include online music retailers such asiTunes, podcast aggregators such as podcastalley.com, or social network sitessuch as MySpace. Within the fandom, cross-promotion and linking are aregular practice, as fans tend to exist within small “neighborhoods” of sitesthat cater to their particular interests and favorite practices. It is not unusualto find out about new episodes of a podcast through one’s Friend list onLiveJournal, a MySpace bulletin, or a Friend’s Facebook status update beforethe episode is available on iTunes.In some cases, promotion extends beyond the fan community. Two podcastsmade of geographically dispersed, teenage and mixed-age adults areparticularly noteworthy. They are associated with large fan sites that haveachieved notoriety within the fandom as well as recognition by corporationssuch as Scholastic (the U.S. publisher of the series) and Warner Brothers (thestudio that produces the films). These two podcasts have produced weeklyepisodes (with few exceptions) for more than two years, and they continueto put out new episodes even after the final book was released on July 21,2007. One unique element of these shows is that they regularly record livepodcasts at events such as fan conferences, book releases, movie premieres,and occasionally, just because they happen to be traveling together foranother event. To support the costs of production (bandwidth, software,on-site production, travel, etc.), both shows feature advertisements in theepisodes and on their websites. In a manner very similar to early radio andtelevision, episodes start with advertisements for the shows’ sponsors, whichvary from website hosting services to major chain booksellers.Several popular Harry Potter podcasts are winding down production sincethe release of the last book, releasing sporadic special episodes rather thanweekly or monthly episodes. At the same time, some podcasters are beginningto experiment with video podcasts and live streaming technologies. It is amoment of transition for this type of production, just as it is for the fandomas a whole. Harry has grown up and defeated the Dark Lord, and fans, who stillhave much to say, are looking to new forms of production for expression.

288 Patricia G. Lange and Mizuko ItoAlthough aspirations for creative production are quite varied, we haveobserved a category of children and youth who have plans to becomemedia professionals. These individuals see their creative production as ameans to train themselves, improve technical skills, gain visibility andreputation, and develop relevant contacts in appropriate arenas. In somecases, parents lend support to their children’s endeavors by helping toprovide material and emotional infrastructures that enable them to developtheir skills and visibility. In other cases, parents are involved much moredirectly in children’s career paths by participating and coproducing themedia productions. For example, as box 6.2 describes, a sixteen-year-oldgirl, who calls herself a “future filmmaker” on YouTube, and her mothermake and post videos to build the daughter’s résumé and help her gainthe skills that will enable her to become accepted in appropriate mediaorientededucational programs.In most cases, children who express interest in becoming professionalsare not necessarily sure which role in media, such as being a director oreditor, they wish to take up. Some of them plan to major in artistic orrelated disciplines in college. A few kids and youth we have spoken to didnot necessarily start out with particular plans to pursue media careers, butthey found broad success in their communities of interest and changedtheir majors or started to consider media as a potential career. In hisresearch in after-school video programs (The Social Dynamics of MediaProduction), for example, Dan Perkel found that several participantsplanned to pursue media-related careers. However, he stated that it wasdifficult to tell to what extent participation in the after-school programstimulated this interest or if it was part of a deep prior interest. We havefound that hierarchies of recognition and technical specialization oftendevelop among youth in local peer groups and in schools. For example,we observed some experienced youth video makers being asked to contributeto school activities by holding workshops or creating videos to advertiseor document school events. Regardless of how many of these kidsactually will be able to go on to pursue careers as video makers, we haveseen many instances of kids who begin in the amateur space but eventuallyaspire to a professional track.In addition to providing new avenues for professionalization, new-mediadistribution affords different aspirational trajectories. By linking “long tail”(Anderson 2006) niche audiences, online media-sharing sites make amateur-

Creative Production 289and youth-created content visible to other creators. Aspiring creators donot need to look exclusively to professional and commercial works formodels of how to pursue their craft. Young people can begin by modelingmore accessible and amateur forms of creative production. Even if theyend there, with practices that never turn toward professionalism, theystill can gain status, validation, and reputation within specific creativecommunities and smaller audiences. The ability to specialize, tailor one’smessage and voice, and communicate with small publics is facilitated bythe growing availability of diverse and niche networked publics. Gainingreputation as a rapper within the exclusive community of Bay Area Hyphyhip-hop, being recognized as a great character writer on a particular roleplayingboard, or being known as the best comedic AMV editor for aparticular anime series are all examples of fame and reputation withinspecialized communities of interest. These aspirational trajectories do notnecessarily resolve into a vision of making it big or becoming famous withinthe mode of established commercial media production. Yet they still enableyoung people to gain validation, recognition, and audience for their creativeworks and to hone their craft within groups of like-minded and expertpeers. Gaining recognition in these niche and amateur groups means validationof creative work in the here and now without having to wait forrewards in a far-flung and uncertain future in creative production.In terms of discourses of fame, some producers straightforwardly claimedthey sought fame and widespread recognition for their work. However,others eschewed connections to fame, which is a construct that often isladen with ideological baggage and negative connotations. For example, agroup of older male teen producers from California on YouTube (who hadwon a festival prize for their work) expressed frustration that some of themost famous youth contributors to the site created work that they saw assubpar, uncreative, and not particularly technical (Lange, YouTube andVideo Bloggers). Fame is often discussed as a relational construct in whicha person who may be considered famous by certain measures denies beingas famous as another producer or media maker. For some participants,being famous was not as important as improving their skills and receivinglegitimation from a select few peers they deemed capable of understandingtheir contribution in a meaningful way.What is significant about contemporary networked publics is that theyopen up multiple aspirational trajectories for young people. While some

290 Patricia G. Lange and Mizuko Itomay aspire to professionalization and large audiences, others see theircreative work as a serious but amateur hobby, pursued for the love of itand not for financial gain. Online distribution may be opening new avenuesto fame and professional careers for a small number of creators, but themore radical and broad-based changes are happening at the amateur layer.Unlike professional media production, amateur media can support a proliferatingnumber of creators buoyed by long-tail, small audiences. Theseniche audiences represent an opportunity for a growing number of youthto engage in media production in the context of public participation.ConclusionIn this chapter, we describe some of the specificities of how kids engage increative production and a wide range of practices that might fall under theumbrella of “online content creation.” Most of the content creation thatyouth engage in is a form of personal media creation that is focused ondocumenting their everyday lives and sharing with friends and family. Insome cases, this everyday personal media production serves as a jumpingoffpoint for developing other kinds of creative interests. In other cases,youth express interest in developing highly technical media skills from anearly age. Yet both commonplace and exceptional cases in media productionshare certain commonalities, and the boundary between “casual” andsocial media production and “serious” media production is difficult todefine. Although friendship-driven and hanging out genres of participationare generally associated with more casual forms of media creation,they can transition quickly to messing around and geeking out. Conversely,the relationships that youth foster in interest-driven creative productioncan become a source of new friendship and collegiality that is an alternativeto the kinds of friendships and status regimes that youth must inhabitat school. We can see this in the social energies that young people bringto online discussions with their interest-based friends as well as in conventionsand meet-ups where youth are sharing their lives as well as theircreative work.All these cases demonstrate the growing centrality of media creation inthe everyday social communication of youth. Whether it is everyday photographyor machinima, youth are using media they create as a way ofdocumenting their lives and as a means of self-expression. These cases also

Creative Production 291demonstrate the centrality of peer-based exchange in motivating creativework and providing a learning context. Peers are fellow creators youth seeas knowledgeable audiences who have shared investments in the work,and with whom they have a relation of reciprocity. Peers view and commenton their work and vice versa. This may be the given peer group of localfriends or family, or it may be a specialized creative community. Teensconsider what their friends will think of their MySpace profiles, and videocreators hope fellow makers will appreciate the craft that went in to theirwork. In both these cases, networked publics enable kids to connect withothers in ways that facilitate sharing and peer-based learning. Even whenthe initial impetus for media production comes from family, school, orafter-school programs, a prime motivator for improving the craft lies inthe network of peers who serve as audiences, critics, collaborators, andcoproducers in the creation of media.School programs can provide an introduction to creative productionpractices that kids may not otherwise have exposure to. In most programs,however, the audience for production is limited to the teacher and possiblythe class. In addition, most classroom projects are not driven by the interestsof the participants themselves. By contrast, the examples we havefound in youth recreational and hobby productions indicate a differentdynamic. When youth have the opportunity to pursue projects based ontheir own interests, and to share them within a network of peers withsimilar investments, the result is highly active forms of learning. In afterschoolprograms where youth have the opportunity to showcase their workto a broader audience of creators and aficionados, they can gain validationfor their work in ways similar to what we have observed online. Forexample, Dilan Mahendran’s study (Hip-Hop Music Production) found thatyouth hip-hop creators in the program he studied distributed their worksto larger audiences and participated in a range of public performances andcompetitions. The case of hip-hop demonstrates the power of amateur andsmall-scale communities of media production to support aspirational trajectoriesthat rely on reputation in more niche or local contexts. Onlinenetworks enable young people to find these niche audiences in ways thatwere not historically available to youth. Although it is rare for youth to beable to reach a scale of audience that rivals professional media production,many are able to reach beyond the boundaries of home, local activitygroups, and families in finding appreciative audiences for their work.

292 Patricia G. Lange and Mizuko ItoWithin all these contexts, whether supported by online groups or localprograms, youth are experimenting with new genres of media and newforms of literacy that take advantage of a moment of interpretive flexibilityin the contemporary media ecology. This chapter focuses on the socialprocesses of media production. By concentrating on these processes, wehave investigated how young people are actively negotiating with oneanother about standards of quality and craftsmanship. Part of the excitementfor young creators is that they can be part of defining new genresand cultural forms, not simply reproducing existing ones. This is anexample of some of the specificity of how generational identity, medialiteracy, and technical change coconstruct one another.Notes1. “Prosumer” is a contraction of “producer” and “consumer,” or “professional” and“consumer.” The term was coined by Alvin Toffler (1980) to describe the blurringof the boundaries between producers and consumers.2. “Pro-am” refers to “professional amateurs” and was popularized by CharlesLeadbeater and Paul Miller (2004). The term refers to the trend toward amateurscreating work to professional standards.3. “Inertia” is a screen name.4. Anime music videos (AMVs) are remix fan videos, in which editors will combinefootage from anime with other sound tracks. Most commonly, editors will usepopular Euro-American music, but some also will edit to movie trailer or TV adsound tracks or to pieces of dialogue from movies and TV.5. “Gepetto” is a screen name.6. “SnafuDave” is a screen name.7. “Hyphy” is a rap genre that originated in the San Francisco Bay Area and is closelyassociated with the late rapper Mac Dre and with Fabby Davis Jr. Hyphy music isoften categorized as rhythmically up-tempo with a focus on eclectic instrumentalbeat arrangements, and is tightly coupled with particular dance styles.8. “AbsoluteDestiny” is a screen name.9. “Darius” is a real name.10. Role-playing boards, also know as play-by-post games, are a hybrid between fanfiction and role-playing games. Writers generally take on the role of a character ina fantasy world and post narrative about their character to a web forum to collaborativelycreate stories or engage in a role-playing game.

Creative Production 29311. “Vidding,” like AMVs, is a process of remixing footage from TV shows andmovies to sound tracks of an editor’s choosing. Unlike AMVs, however, the liveactionvidding community has been dominated by women.12. “Xstylus” is a screen name.13. “Doki” is a screen name.14. “Scottanime” is a screen name.

7 WORKLead Author: Mizuko ItoIn her research on Silicon Valley families, Heather Horst writes about theSmith family, who “view digital media as a tool for their children’s personaland professional life.” One of the two daughters is a budding musician whowrites her own music and performs at local venues. Her older sister is anaccomplished dancer and writer who uses the skills learned while attendingthe Girls Technology Academy to help her father digitally record, edit,burn, and distribute CDs of her sister’s performances. For the Smith family,digital media production is a creative hobby that they engage in togetheras well as an activity that is intimately tied to future career aspirations forthe children (Horst 2007). Another Silicon Valley teen, a nineteen-year-oldFilipino and Japanese American, has been a leader of a fansubbing groupsince high school. At the time of our interview, he was taking time off fromcollege to help out in his family technology-related business. “If I didn’tstop school and help out, we’d be in serious trouble now,” he explained.At the same time, he was still continuing his unpaid work in fansubbing,managing a team of more than a dozen staff who churn out subtitled animeevery week for eager fans. His technical expertise serves him across multipledomains of work, some paid, some unpaid (Ito, Anime Fans).These examples of engagement with new media point to certain domainsof practice that are not covered by the other chapters in this volume. Thefocus of our project has been on learning in relation to youth practices ofplay, socializing, and creative experimentation. As we have pursued thisresearch, however, we have found that new media also have importantimplications for how young people engage in activities that they seeas serious or productive work, or that have a role in preparing themfor jobs in the future. The promotion of new media use among youth isoften justified in terms of skills training for “competitiveness” in the

296 Mizuko Itotwenty-first-century workplace (Drucker 1994; Florida 2003); parents, educators,and kids often describe their relationship to learning and newmedia in these terms. In addition to this educative, future-oriented role oftechnology engagement, new media have an important influence on thehere-and-now of at least some of the more digitally mobilized youth wehave met through our research. One of the important roles that new mediaplay in the lives of youth is in providing access to experiences of volunteerismand work that give them a greater sense of autonomy and efficacy thanthose avenues of work that previously have been available to U.S. teens.This chapter describes these different dimensions of new media andwork—how new media engagement operates as a site of training andpreparatory work as well as how it becomes a vehicle for new forms ofvolunteerism, nonmarket labor, and new media ventures. The effort is tocapture those new media activities characterized by a productive or seriousnessof purpose, where play, socializing, and messing around begin toshade into what youth consider “work,” “real responsibility,” and economicgain. We draw primarily from studies that look at the everyday livesof youth in families (Martínez, High School Computer Club and Animationaround the Block; Sims, Rural and Urban Youth; Tripp and Herr-Stephenson,Los Angeles Middle Schools), studies of gaming and fan production (Cody,Final Fantasy XI; Herr-Stephenson, Harry Potter Fandom; Horst andRobinson, Neopets; Ito, Anime Fans; Lange, YouTube and Video Bloggers),and studies of youth media production (Antin, Perkel, and Sims, The SocialDynamics of Media Production; Mahendran, Hip-Hop Music Production).After providing a conceptual framework for our understanding of the relationshipbetween new media, youth, and work, the chapter describes threecategories of work-related practice: training, entrepreneurship, and nonmarketwork.Work, Youth, and New MediaOur understandings of what work or labor means in relation to childrenand youth are diverse and contested within different scholarly communities.Although it is not our intention here to fully review this body of workor to formulate our own definitions, we would like to take a moment tocontextualize our descriptions and outline the boundaries of what weaddress in this chapter. In the United States, youth are largely shut out

Work 297from the primary labor market, but they still engage in a wide range ofactivities that could be recognized as work, varying from schoolwork tochores to part-time jobs in the service sector. Researchers have argued thatwe run the risk of erasing youth contributions to our economy and productivelabor if we insist on categorically excluding certain forms of youthactivity from our definitions of work (Orellana 2001; Qvortrup 2001).Activities such as “helping” at home or in class often are not counted aswork, although they are clearly productive labor (Orellana 2001). Our definitionsof work are further complicated by the fact that even play is oftendefined as “the work of childhood” (Seiter 1993), and “serious” extracurricularactivities such as volunteer activities, music lessons, and sports alsocan be considered “work” by children and parents. Narrow definitions ofwork would limit the discussion to activity that has clear economic outcomes,while broader definitions could include activity that is more generalto any productive or compulsory activity, such as the work of education(Qvortrup 2001). Educational, preparatory work is what Jens Qvortrup(2001) has argued is the most important kind of economically productiveactivity that children engage in—preparing themselves as future workers.While we might hesitate to call schooling and extracurricular activities“work” in the traditional sense, it is important to acknowledge the waysin which this “prep work” is part of the cultivation of skills and dispositionsthat will serve youth as they move into jobs and careers. These diverseaccounts of what constitutes work are all important reference points inunderstanding the discourses and practices of work that we encounteredin our case studies.Children and youth represent a special case in discussions of labor andwork. As with other industrialized countries, the United States has a wellestablishedset of laws and social norms that limit children’s and youth’saccess to certain categories of work. The shift toward education as definingthe primary work of teens was a constitutive element of the definition ofadolescence as a unique life stage (Hine 2000). Although teens may havethe right to take jobs, they do not always have access to the jobs that theyimagine for themselves in their future as adults. Jim McKechnie and SandyHobbs have argued that compulsory education did not force adolescentsout of employment; rather “it has moved the main forms of employmentfrom full-time to part-time and changed the nature of that employment”(2001, 10). They point out that the majority of youth in industrialized

298 Mizuko Itocountries works in a part-time capacity, often negotiating tensions withtheir “primary” occupation as students. Phillip Mizen, Christopher Pole,and Angela Bolton (2001, 19) describe the work available to adolescentstoday as “unskilled work around the edges of the formal labour market,”typically retail, distribution, catering, and fast food. The United States ischaracterized by a dual track in terms of youth relationships with schooland work. While more privileged youth typically engage in “low intensity”work and give priority to an academic pathway, lower-income youth moretypically take a pathway that “leads directly from high intensity highschool employment to full-time adult employment” (Hansen, Mortimer,and Krüger 2001, 133). These structural conditions of youth and labor arean important backdrop to kids’ engagements with new media work.New media add some unique wrinkles to our understandings of youthand work. For starters, in public debates surrounding education and newmedia, the issue of job preparation is often central to the discourse. Theseapproaches are framed by the expectation that education should be theprimary work of childhood, and new media learning is validated by theexpectation that it will translate to job-relevant skills in the future. Allthe structured educational efforts around new media that we observed arejustified, at least in part, by the argument that they are helping to developjob-relevant skills. Programs that have an equity agenda are often fundedas efforts to provide disadvantaged children and youth with remedialaccess to high-tech skills. At the same time, there is a growing recognitionthat digital media skills are largely cultivated in the home and other moreinformal and social settings (Seiter 2007). Schools are not the dominantsites of access to these forms of preparatory training with new media andinformation technology. Privileged homes take new technology for granted,integrating computer use seamlessly into their everyday routines anddomestic spaces. They see new media engagement as part of a more generalstance of participation in public life, not necessarily those that are focusedon job skills. By contrast, low-income families struggle to keep up with therising bar for participation in an increasingly high-tech ecology of cultureand knowledge. These ways in which new media play into practices thatparticipants see as preparatory for jobs and careers is the first descriptivecategory for this chapter. This is a set of practices we call “training.” Thisincludes learning activities that are pursued in both formal and informaleducational settings, though our focus is on the latter.

Work 299The second set of work practices we have encountered in our case studiesare those that are directly tied to economic activity. This would includejobs that rely on digital media and small economic ventures that werestarted by youth. Because of our focus on informal learning, most of ourcases are on the latter—youth-driven forms of economic activity that wecall new media “entrepreneurism.” Digital and networked media haveopened up opportunities for economic activity for young people that arenot part of the existing ghettoes of youth labor, but rather involve youngpeople’s mobilizing and hustling to market their new media skills in a moreentrepreneurial vein. These new forms of accessibility to entrepreneurialopportunity are the second wrinkle that new media add to the landscapeof youth and work. While some of these activities are tied to existing genresof youth labor—such as the marketing of youth talent or getting paid forhelping in local and community settings, other enterprising youth aredisrupting expectations about the categories of economic activity thatyouth should engage in. In all these cases, though, the substantial technologyexpertise of some young people challenges the assumption that youthlabor is necessarily unskilled or preparatory, demonstrating that they canmake contributions that exceed the capacity of many local adults.Much of the productive labor of childhood is in the domain of what wecall “nonmarket work”—volunteerism, helping in the home, noncommercialproduction, labor in virtual economies, and hobbies. Although nottied to economic gain, these activities involve commitments that participantsconsider in the vein of “jobs” and “serious responsibilities” toproduce work and contribute labor. For kids in lower-income and immigranthouseholds, nonmarket work is often dominated by domestic labor,and girls shoulder a disproportionate amount of these forms of work(Orellana 2001). For more privileged youth, it tends to have a more preparatorydimension. Many of the in-school and organized extracurricularactivities that young people engage in are not directly tied to job and careeraspirations but are part of what Annette Lareau (2003) has described as“concerted cultivation,” as described in chapter 4. These are activities thatimmerse children and youth in cultures of competition, achievement, andpublic participation that are key to certain modes of social success. Althoughthis chapter does not deal substantively with school-based work or practicesof concerted cultivation, these preparatory activities are a backdropfor and often a trajectory into nonmarket work.

300 Mizuko ItoThis last set of practices introduces what is perhaps the most intriguingand significant wrinkle that new media bring to young people’s experienceof work. In digital-culture studies, theorists have been describing the growthof various types of unpaid digital work, including open-source softwaredevelopment (Weber 2003), “nonmarket peer production” (Benkler 2006),“crowdsourcing” 1 (Howe 2006), virtual economies (Castronova 2001;Dibbell 2006), and other forms of noncommercial free culture (Lessig 2004).In many of these kinds of new media work practices, the unpaid labor ofyouth is a significant factor. Our case studies describe how these practicesare being driven forward by the interests and social practices of youth fromwired households. The opportunities that youth have to participate in newforms of creative work is discussed in chapter 6.Here we look more broadly at the range of ways young people work invirtual worlds and with new media, motivated by reputation, learninggoals, a sharing ethic, and their own satisfaction rather than economicgain. Although the free time and online activities of youth are certainlynot the only factors driving free culture and peer production online,it is one integral component of what theorists have identified as a trendtoward exploiting free labor in digital economies (Terranova 2000). AndrewRoss notes how networked media have initiated a process “by whichthe burden of productive labour is increasingly transferred on to the useror consumer” (Ross 2007, 19). Our ethnographic material describes someof the specificities of these trends by describing the unique alchemybetween the marginalized role of youth in the labor market and the developmentof nonmarket forms of collective work. The story cannot bereduced either to a simple equation of empowerment or exploitation asyouth gain nonquantifiable social benefits, though they may not be reapingeconomic ones.In many ways, the current practices of youth engaged in new media–related work complicate our existing assumptions about youth, labor,work, and the role of educational institutions to prepare youth for theworkplace. First, the cases we describe challenge the assumptions that theappropriate role of youth work is in preparatory educational contexts orin unskilled labor. Youth media production and ventures, when combinedwith the distribution capacity of the Internet, means that the nonmarketwork of childhood is channeled in broader networks that can challengethe authority of existing industry models. New media practices are becom-

Work 301ing a vehicle for some youth to exercise more agency in defining the termsof their own work practices. The new media skills and talents that thesekids are exhibiting make the productive labor (as opposed to preparatorywork) of childhood more visible (at least in the new media domain), andthey challenge the status of educational institutions in defining the trainingof youth for high-tech work. This in turn is tied to structural changesin certain forms of economic exchange activities, in which the businessmodels of creative industries are being undermined by user-generatedcontent and peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing. Domains of creative work thatwere considered almost exclusively the province of commercial efforts arebeing partially displaced by the work of creative hobbyists who are notnecessarily seeking monetary rewards. While we do not see evidence thatnew media practices are leading to any fundamental reordering of theconditions of economic inequity, we are seeing some indicators that theinterfaces between the productive and preparatory work of childhood arebeing renegotiated through these practices.TrainingAlthough our work has focused on learning in informal settings, a numberof our case studies did examine media-education programs in schools andafter-school centers, and we had many opportunities to speak to kids andparents about how they thought computers contributed to their schoolworkand their future careers. Computers and media-related expertise intersectin complicated and sometimes contradictory ways with how parents,educators, and kids believe young people should be prepared for schoolingand jobs. In her analysis of how computer-based pedagogy relates to youngpeople’s school performance and future careers, Ellen Seiter argues thateducators and technology boosters often fail to take into account the contextsof structural inequity that usually overwhelm the benefits of technologyaccess that educational programs might provide. She points out “thebarriers that make the dream of winning something like a ‘cool job’ in newmedia a very distant one for working class students” (Seiter 2007, 28). Atthe same time, she describes how technology-based educational programsare justified by exactly this promise of social mobility. In Seiter’s view, theresources that middle-class and elite children have at home, in contexts ofconcerted cultivation, are what determine cultural and social capital in

302 Mizuko Itorelation to digital media and the ability to parlay fun engagement withdigital media into careers in the “new economy.” 1 Educators who are fightingfor social-equity agendas have always faced an uphill battle against theentrenched structures of social and cultural distinction that extend wellbeyond the classroom walls; we have no reason to believe that simplyintroducing technology to this equation is going to transform these structuralconditions. In fact, since some of the most cutting-edge technologypractices are learned outside schools, in the private contexts of peer interactionand family life, the equity agenda is made even more challengingfrom a public-policy perspective.As we describe in chapter 1, it is difficult to clearly map differences insocioeconomic status to new media fluency. At the same time, we see somepatterns in the degree to which computer use is framed in terms of aneducation-oriented or vocational tool for social mobility, versus one thatis an unremarkable and taken-for-granted component of everyday social,recreational, and academic pursuits. “Training” as a genre of computer usetends to be associated with aspirations of upward mobility by less financiallyprivileged families rather than by families who see computers asalready deeply embedded in the fabric of the children’s everyday lives. Inthe earlier chapters of this book, we describe some of the informal settingsof peer groups, interest groups, and family where much of the basic learningand literacy about new media is supported. In these contexts, parentsand youth generally are not mobilizing a discourse of vocational trainingbut rather a discourse of enrichment and creativity.The day-to-day struggles of educators, parents, and kids to chart trajectoriesthrough educational institutions and on to jobs and careers need tobe contextualized by these structural conditions and by our cultural imaginingsand values around technology, achievement, and work. Even beforea consideration of whether kids might get a creative-class job, parents andeducators hope that computers will give kids a leg up in their educationalperformance. This often translates to a parental concern that computersshould be used for serious educational purposes and not for socializing orplay. We observed this tendency most strongly in less privileged familiesthat saw schooling as their primary hope for upward mobility. One parentin Lisa Tripp and Becky Herr-Stephenson’s study (Teaching and Learningwith Multimedia) explained how she tries to encourage certain forms ofcomputer use in the home for her thirteen-year-old daughter, Nina, the

Work 303third of four children. Anita emigrated from Mexico eighteen years ago,and her husband is from El Salvador.Anita: [Mi hija] se pone en la computadora y le digo que la computadora espara hacer tarea, no es para estar buscando cosas en la computadora. Y a veces[mis hijas] se me enojan por eso. Y les digo: “No, la computadora yo se las tengopara que hagan tarea.” A veces les pregunto: “¿tienen tarea?” O: “estás haciendotarea.” Pero a veces tengo que estar lista a ver qué es lo que están haciendo.Se meten a la Internet y tantas cosas que sale ahí. Y se ponen a mirar susamigas y eso. . . . Entonces, es lo que no le gusta a ella que yo le diga: “¿sabesqué? La computadora no es para que andes buscando; es para lo de la escuela.”([My daughter] sits in front of the computer and I tell her that the computeris for doing homework, not for looking around. And sometimes [mydaughters] get mad at me because of that. And then I say, “I got thiscomputer so you could do your homework.” Sometimes I ask, “Do youhave homework?” Or, “Are you actually doing your homework.” I have tokeep a close eye on them to see what is going on. They get on the Internet,and with so many things there. They look for their girlfriends andall. . . . They don’t like me saying, “You know what? The computer is notfor you to be looking around. It is for schoolwork.”)Lisa: ¿Qué es lo que más le preocupa a usted acerca de la Internet y sus hijas?(What is your main concern with the Internet and your daughters?)Anita: Lo que me preocupa . . . ya ve . . . es que salen muchas cosas ahí que semeten con niños, y a veces platican con ellos, y a veces no saben ni qué gentees. Es lo que me preocupa, porque digo “no.” Y a ver qué es lo que están mirandoellos y uno tiene que estar siempre listo con ellos. A veces estoy que les quieroquitar la Internet, pero a veces me dice él: “por su tarea está bien. Porque despuésvan a andar que ‘me voy a hacer tarea,’ ‘que no tengo computadora,’ ‘que notengo esto.’” Pero es por lo que más peleo ahorita con ellos.(My main concern is . . . you see . . . you hear all the time that people tryto reach kids and talk to them. Sometimes [kids] don’t even know whothey are talking to. . . . That is my concern. That is why I say, “No.” I needto keep an eye on what they are looking at. I always need to be attentive.Sometimes I feel like canceling the Internet, but my husband says, “It isgood to keep it because of their homework. You don’t want them saying‘I need to go somewhere else to do my homework,’ or ‘I don’t have acomputer,’ or ‘I don’t have this.’ But this is mostly what I fight about withthem these days.”) (Translation by Lisa Tripp)

304 Mizuko ItoA father who is raising his two daughters on his own also voices a commitmentto educational goals, though he does support his daughters’ useof the Internet for personal communication. Juan has been in the UnitedStates for almost thirty years, and he is raising his two younger daughters(eleven and twelve years old) on his own while working in a restaurant.They have an older computer at home that they acquired secondhand, butit is not connected to the Internet (though it once was) because of the cost.Lisa: ¿Usted que cree que la Internet es una buena manera para los niñoscomunicarse entre ellos, o le preocupa esto?(Do you think that the Internet is a good way for your kids to communicatewith their friends or are you worried about that?)Juan: No, es mejor que se comuniquen de esa forma porque les ayuda más asalir adelante. Y también cómo lo tomen ellos. Si lo van a tomar como un juego,esto y lo otro, no. La cosa es que vayan a la cosa seria, que vayan aprendiendo.Con ánimos de seguir adelante en sus estudios, de salir adelante. Sabes queahorita sin estudios uno no es nada. No es nada. A trabajar, andar limpiando yhaciendo acá, sufriendo más si un día no te necesitan. Salir adelante.(No, it is better for them to communicate that way because it is going tohelp them get ahead. And it also depends how they treat it. If they aregoing to treat it like a game, then no. But if they take it seriously, they willbe learning from it, and it will help them with their studies, and help themget ahead. You know that now without an education you are nothing,nothing. You have to work, clean places, do odd jobs, suffering if one daythey don’t need you anymore. [It’s important to try] to get ahead.)(Translation by Lisa Tripp)In their work in Los Angeles, Tripp, Herr-Stephenson, and Martínezinteracted with parents, teachers, and kids in both the classroom and athome, affording a rare opportunity to look across multiple contexts ofmedia use for particular kids. In the multimedia course that the kids wereengaged in, teachers occasionally spoke of the possibility of careers inmedia, but their goals were generally more immediate and less ambitious.They saw new media production as a way of keeping kids engaged inthe classroom, which could in turn keep them from dropping out. Theyalso thought that one side effect of this engagement was that kids wouldpick up basic reading and writing skills. One teacher describes his first yearwith the multimedia curriculum: “I think this year, in terms of behavior

Work 305and classroom management, was one of my best years because I didn’thave to force the kids to be in the classroom.” While at a local classroomlevel, these educators are doing their best to make the most of the opportunitiesput forward to their students; the risk, as Renee Hobbs (1998)points out, is that media production can be constructed as a curriculumgeared for low-achieving students, who “are allowed to ‘play’ with videobasedand computer technologies, while high-ability students get moretraditional print-based education.” While higher-achieving students areengaged with computers and media production as part of a more generalmedia ecology they inhabit, the classroom becomes a place for a moreremedial form of media education for students who do not have thiscultural capital.In contrast to the orientation of classroom teachers, educators in youthmedia programs had a different view of the potential of media education.Educators in the hip-hop program that Mahendran (Hip-Hop MusicProduction) observed and the video-production program at the Centerwhere Dan Perkel, Christo Sims, and Judd Antin (The Social Dynamics ofMedia Production) observed saw their roles more in terms of vocationaltraining than in general or remedial education. Media production is tiedexplicitly to the hope of employment in creative-class jobs, though educatorsat the Center struggle daily to instill this ethic of professionalism inthe media-production process. At times, the goal of producing work in avocational vein conflicts with the goal of empowerment and the developmentof youth voice. Hobbs (1998) describes this as a tension betweenmore expressive and vocational forms of media education. Although youthwere encouraged to take charge of their own projects, adults would interveneto focus them and orient them toward the goal of creating a polishedwork. In contrast to the hip-hop program, where youth were motivated bytheir existing engagements and knowledge of popular culture, youth inthe Center’s program had to rely more on the adult educators to set theagenda and provide the cultural capital for their work.Among youth engaged in youth media programs, we also found somewho were deeply pessimistic about what opportunities formal educationafforded them, and who saw a more vocational orientation toward digitalmedia as an alternative to a middle-class school-to-work trajectory. One ofthe participants in Dilan Mahendran’s hip-hop music production study,Louis, an eighteen-year-old African-American, describes a moment during

306 Mizuko Itohis first day of high school, referencing a famous scene in the book andthe movie The Paper Chase, in which a Harvard Law School dean warnsfirst-year students that most of them will not make it through the program.Louis: Yeah. When you’re a senior, 80 percent of the people you see rightnow are going to drop out . . . look to the left and look to the right, becausethey’re not going to be here.Dilan: That’s what the teacher said to you?Louis: Yeah. They set you up for failure. You know what I’m saying? Welook to the left and we look to the right, and we laugh about it at thattime. We’re like . . . ha, ha, ha. I had my best friend Jerell and my bestfriend Rob. Sure enough . . .Dilan: You were fourteen?Louis: We were fourteen, fifteen at the time. Sure enough, Jerell drops outin eleventh grade and Rob drops out somewhere I think in eleventh grade.I dropped out somewhere in the twelfth grade. And it’s kind of like theywas fucking right. We all dropped out. It was kind of like [inaudible] . . . fuck,they were right. How the fuck did you know? It’s a psych trip. First day ofschool, of course you’re going to sit with your friends. Of course you’regoing to sit with somebody that you identify with. All right, look to yourleft and look to your right; they ain’t going to be here. Then you go toschool every day and it’s like this—fuck up, fuck up, fuck up. . . . That’show school is.This same teen is deeply involved in the production of hip-hop in ayouth media program. His awareness of certain social structural conditionsreflect what Hansen, Mortimer, and Krüger (2001, 133) have describedas the differential pathways between school and work that are characteristicof the United States. Rather than focusing on an academic pathway,Louis sees the apprenticeship and mentorship of the media-productionprogram as a compelling alternative. Hansen, Mortiner, and Krüger alsonote that the United States is distinctive, in comparison to many Europeancountries, in having very few vocational and apprenticeship programsfor teens, so they often turn directly toward employment to receivecareer training. Mahendran notes that the after-school setting is openingthe horizon for explicit vocational training in the digital economy, contrastedwith high school, which is oriented toward preparation for college.In this way, digital-media training and youth efforts can be compared to

Work 307traditional vocational training such as auto mechanics or HVAC schooling.The programs are a kind of introduction to vocations associated withcreative labor.All these examples that we encountered in our fieldwork illustrate theways in which different forms of media and technology engagement aretied to different trajectories of school-to-work for youth. Youth mediaprograms navigate a complicated balance, using media production as aform of remedial classroom work as well as at times framing the programsas vocational training. In both of these stances, it can be a challenge todevelop programs that support the development of expressive capacity andvoice rather than skills development. In the most promising cases of youthmedia programs we have observed, these programs can fill a vacuum inapprenticeship and vocational training that is largely absent in the UnitedStates. We need to keep in mind, however, that these conditions of engagingwith new media differ quite markedly from the opportunities affordedto youth from more highly educated families, who grow up in contextswhere high-end technology is within easy reach, and where the adults withwhom they regularly interact at home provide expertise and role modelsfor careers in the high-tech workforce. Heather Horst’s study of middleclassfamilies in Silicon Valley describes settings where parents are intimatelyinvolved in structuring high-tech environments for informallearning in the home; they are not focused on specific vocational outcomesas we see with youth media programs.EntrepreneurismContemporary childhood in the United States is characterized by a primaryfocus on play and education rather than on economic activity. At the sametime, even after child-labor laws were in full effect in the early twentiethcentury, there has been a role for working children, particularly as theyenter their teenage years (Zelizer 1994). In the latter half of the 1900s, itbecame common for youth to combine part-time work with their schooling,and studies through the 1990s indicate that approximately 70 percentof teens ages sixteen to eighteen have part-time jobs (Hansen, Mortimer,and Krüger 2001). As described earlier, the jobs available to teens areusually part of the unskilled service sector. Historically, paper routes andfast-food jobs are stereotypical forms of teen labor. The high-tech and

308 Mizuko Itocreative jobs that young people are being prepared for in digital-productionprograms and through middle-class high-tech cultivation in the home arelargely reserved for credentialed adults. This is in line with broader indicatorsthat show that employment in skilled labor is generally unavailablefor children and youth (Mizen, Pole, and Bolton 2001). Although our studyincluded many youth with high degrees of technology expertise, we sawonly three cases in which they were actually employed in jobs that madeuse of their technology skills during their teenage years. Technology wasmore commonly where they spent money; many teens in our study didengage in part-time work, often with the goal of funding their new mediahabits. The adults in our study who did have new media jobs did not havethese jobs in their teenage years; as teens new media was a domain ofhobbies and not salaried work.Our focus for this section follows from this observed reality. We do notdelve into the jobs that teens have or the domestic labor that they performin the home, since this work has at best a tangential relationship to newmedia practices. It is beyond the scope of this effort to do justice to thecomplex realities of young people’s economic lives. The issues surroundinghow young people gain and spend money, particularly on media and communications,is a crucial topic that deserves an even more sustained treatmentthan we can give in this book. In this section we focus on somewhatmore exceptional cases that illustrate the avenues that young people arefinding to mobilize new media for economic gain. While the majority ofyouth in our study did not engage in these innovative new forms of economicactivity, the cases that we do have are compelling: they illustratethe emerging potential for activating youth entrepreneurism and real-lifelearning through online networks of peer-based commerce and mediasharing. Unlike training-oriented genres of participation, these entrepreneurialpractices involved youth from a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds(though overall these cases were rare). They also involve kidsengaged in productive labor in the here and now rather than as a modelof preparatory work or training.Youth with expertise and interests surrounding media and computersoften understand that they have skills that can translate to economic gain.At the same time, their avenues for earning money from these abilities andinterests are limited. Until they finish with their schooling, they do nothave the option of fully entering the competitive marketplace for high-

Work 309tech and media jobs. Among youth whose primary occupation is schooling,and who are interested in capitalizing on their new media skills, wehave found three modes of economic activity: publishing and distributionof creative work, freelancing, and the pursuit of enterprises.Publishing and DistributionIn our discussion of creative production, in chapter 6, we describe the waysin which young creators are using online venues as a way of publishingand disseminating their work. While the vast majority of these efforts arenot oriented toward immediate economic gain, some of the more entrepreneurialyoung creators are reaping economic benefits from their creativework. Even if they are not receiving actual revenue, they see online sitessuch as MySpace, deviantART, and YouTube as spaces where they canpromote their careers as musicians, artists, or video makers.A small number of creators we encountered were successfully makingmoney off their work, either by selling the actual work or by acquiring adrevenue online. As described in chapter 6, Patricia Lange’s study (YouTubeand Video Bloggers) is peppered with cases in which youth were aspiringto make it big through YouTube and were at times successful in monetizingtheir participation or gaining mainstream attention for their work. Perhapsone of the most visible examples is Caitlin Hill, 2 a nineteen-year-oldAustralian woman who is ranked thirty-first among most-subscribed-toYouTubers of all time. Coming from a modest economic background, sheused her grandmother’s digital camera to make videos. Her grandmothernow comes to her when she has computer problems. As her channel pageindicates that she is a YouTube partner, she is presumably receiving a shareof ad revenue from ads placed on her YouTube videos. Another youth inLange’s study, Max (a white fourteen-year-old), was contacted by ABCabout getting his video shown on television. Although he did not ask toget paid for this, after the ABC appearance other requests started to comein. He explained that now “I’ve gotten pretty good. . . . I’d say ‘Oh. I wantto get paid if you’re gonna . . . for my video.’ And they’d be like, ‘Oh. Yeah,we are expecting to pay you,’ and then, we would negotiate about priceand stuff like that.” While these cases represent the much-sought-after goalfor youth who aspire to media careers, most will acknowledge that it isquite difficult to achieve this level of success on one’s own as a purelygarage operation.

310 Mizuko ItoIn Dilan Mahendran’s study of young hip-hop musicians (Hip-HopMusic Production), he found a strong entrepreneurial spirit among manyof the youth he spoke to. Some of the beat makers sold their creations torappers who would use them for their own song production. Others producedmix tapes of their own work or that of other artists and sold themon public transportation or in other pedestrian areas. Artists can often feelconflicting loyalties over whether they are pursuing their craft for the loveof the work or for economic goals, and this is tied into widely recognizedtensions between hip-hop culture and the commercial rap industry (Mahiriet al. 2008). Louis gave voice to this ambivalence:It shouldn’t be about a meal ticket. It’s not always about money. I mean, it’s twoways to do it. It’s either you make music to make music, or you make music to makemoney. Me? I do both. . . . I know that the music I make, it’s not necessarily goingto be accepted by all, because not everybody is going to be able to identify and agreewith it. But the thing is, is that in order for that to survive, I have to make musicthat people can identify with, that people are going to listen to.Although hip-hop may be an example of a form of media in whichpractitioners have an unusual amount of self-reflexivity regarding theproblems of commercialization, many young creators struggle with thisboundary between a creative pastime and a more work-oriented commercialstance.Among the case studies of anime and Harry Potter fans, we have alsoencountered examples of youth who have successfully capitalized on theircreative talents. Although intellectual-property regimes make it difficult forfans to make money off fan-related creative production, there are someniches where economic gain is possible. Becky Herr-Stephenson’s study ofHarry Potter fans focused in part on podcasters who comment on thefranchise. Although most podcasters are hobbyists, a small number havebecome celebrities in the fandom who go on tours, perform Wizard Rockmusic, and in some cases, have gained financial rewards. Mizuko Ito, aspart of her study on anime fans, spoke to Ian Oji 3 , an artist who drawscomics as part of a comic writers’ collective. Once a year the group selfpublishesa comic anthology that it sells at local anime conventions. Allthe large anime conventions have an “artist’s alley” that will feature youngaspiring artists selling their artwork, stickers, T-shirts, pins, and bookmarksfor a small fee. These same artists generally will also have online sites thatpromote their work. The peer-based spaces of the convention floor and

Work 311online sites are closely linked; they are spaces for artists to both promoteand sell their work in an informal economy.These kinds of ventures are examples of ways in which youth can makemoney from some of their creative talents, even if for relatively smalleconomic gains. Youth recognize that it is highly competitive to make aliving off their creative talents, but digital media and distribution provideavenues into online distribution and advertising that enable new possibilitiesfor marketing their talents. As described in chapter 6, most of theseventures stay in the domain of hobbies, but a small number, such asSnafuDave, described in box 7.1, are able to parlay these efforts into successfulcommercial careers. In many ways, these ventures are examples thatare very much in line with the historical position of the work of youth,conducted largely “around the edges of the formal labour market” (Mizen,Pole, and Bolton 2001, 38) and often involving gray zones outside of officiallysanctioned forms of work (McKechnie and Hobbs 2001). At the sametime, digital distribution is opening a wider range of venues for circulatingand monetizing skilled forms of creative work, which have been largelylimited to specific professions such as child acting (Zelizer 1994).Box 7.1 “I’m Just a Nerd. It’s Not Like I’m a Rock Star or Anything”Mizuko ItoThe online world is home to a growing number of successful web comicsventures, including well-established names such as Penny Arcade and xkcd,as well as thousands of others that cater to niche and small audiences. Justas blogs have reinvented the medium of news, web comics are reinventingthe comic strip, using digital authoring tools and online publishing to connectto different publics. Although most web comics artists are amateurs whospend more on their hobby than they bring in, there are a handful of artistswho bring in significant amounts of revenue through online publishing.SnafuDave, whom I interviewed as part of my study of anime fans, is onesuch successful web comics artist. In addition to creating his own web comics,SnafuDave, who is in his early twenties, manages a web comics site, SnafuComics (snafu-comics.com), which features comics by twelve other artists inaddition to his own. The styles and genres of the comics that SnafuDave hostson his site are diverse, but many reference Japanese popular culture. Snafu-Dave is a regular in the anime convention circuit. We first learned of Snafu-Dave’s work in a talk that he gave at an anime convention, where he gavehis audience tips on how to launch a successful website.

312 Mizuko ItoIn our interview, SnafuDave explained how he got started with web comicsin his first year of college. He went to school in what he described as a “super,super, super tiny town,” and he had been planning to major in math. Thesummer of his freshman year, he decided to stay for summer schoolwhen none of his friends did and was “bored out my mind in this littletown.” This was when he ran across Penny Arcade, the first web comic thathe had read. “I just got obsessed with it. It took me three or four days to gothrough all of their comics. And I just absolutely loved it.” He described howhe went on to find other web comics that he liked and then decided to takethe plunge himself. He went to the library and checked out HTML for Dummies,got a copy of Photoshop from a friend, and got started. After much trial anderror, and learning through a variety of online tutorials, he began to honehis craft. “About three years later, I actually started getting semigood at it”(see figure 7.1).Along the way SnafuDave tried changing majors to suit his new interests,first enrolling in a computer science major and then eventually switching todigital media. He thinks, however, that he learned few of his current skills inthe formal educational context. “This whole time, school’s more valuable forme to have basically a time frame where I could learn on my own and practice.”College also gave him the time to learn how to market his work onlineand to develop an online network of fellow creators and readers. When hewas getting started, he engaged in a wide range of strategies to get his comicsnoticed. These included asking fans to vote for his comics for top web comicslists, doing link exchanges with other comics sites, doing guest comics forother sites, and posting material to sites such as deviantART and video- andanimation-hosting sites. Eventually he began offering to host for other webcomics creators, and now, he said, “Literally every day I’ll have at least fiveor six people begging me to put a web comic on my site.”He attributed a large part of his success to the fact that he has good friendsin the web comics world and close ties to his fans through his web forums.In addition, he has made full use of the viral properties of the web in drivingtraffic to his site. This included a “tampon tag” game that he designed inwhich people could tag each other’s forum posts. After seeing the popularityof the game on his own forums, he made a version for MySpace and “it spreadlike wildfire. . . . Totally, just this viral content the people are spreadingaround. Yeah. That’s kind of how Snafu made it to the top.”Snafu Comics makes a substantial amount of money through online ads,but SnafuDave explained that he uses this revenue to pay for the costs ofmaintaining and improving the site. Since the site aggregates the work ofmultiple artists, he does not lay claim to the site revenue for his personalincome. Instead, he makes his living as a freelance web designer. The otherartists on his site also have day jobs, mostly in graphic design. When I spoke

Work 313Figure 7.1SnafuDave comics. Reprinted from www.snafu-comics.com with permission from DavidStanworth. 2006.

314 Mizuko Itoto him, SnafuDave had recently launched merchandising ventures such asT-shirts, prints, and buttons to sell at conventions. Now his site hosts a webstore where fans can order these items. At the time of our interview, he wasnot making a living off web comics. “I would really like it to be paying forall of our lifestyles someday. And definitely, right now, I believe it could.” Iasked if his family and local friends were supportive of these aspirations.Well, my mom actually thinks I’m a complete waste to society, no matter what. She’sall, “Get a real job.” Even though, I . . . yeah. Whatever. My dad thinks it’s pretty cool.About a third of my friends are really supportive of it. I’d say about two thirds . . . actually,about one third doesn’t care at all. And then another third actually despises me forit. Like they hate that I get all this attention online when I’m just a kid from a smalltown.I am curious about whether there is a stigma attached to being so involvedin comics and anime, and SnafuDave explained that the issue is more personal.“I design websites once or twice a month for clients and then I play onlineall day. And it drives people crazy. It really does. . . . But I don’t think it’s thatenvious. I’m sure it is a really cool job, but I’m just a nerd. It’s not like I’m arock star or anything.” In a follow-up email, almost two years after the initialinterview in 2006, he gave me an update. His merchandising business hadstarted paying off enough that he quit his day job to devote himself full timeto web comics. He may not be a rock star, but he is one of a handful of artistswho have parlayed their web comics hobby into a professional career.FreelancingAnother category of paid work that young people can gain access tothrough new media is different forms of freelance and contract labor.Technically sophisticated youth recognize that they have marketable skillsthat are in demand from their peers and adults in their vicinity. Most ofthese kids do not try to profit from this and engage in informal help andsharing with family and friends. This is in the vein of chores and childcare, for which youth may receive small financial rewards, but the workalso often is framed as household obligation. Altimit, an eighteen-year-oldFilipino American told Mac Man, a seventeen-year-old Filiipino Americanin Katynka Martínez’s study (High School Computer Club), that his fatheroften asks him to help out fixing his family’s and friend’s computers:Altimit: Yeah, and like my friend’s house, usually my family friend, theywould say, “Oh, something’s broken.” So, rather than him coming, hesends me. So, like, “I’m trying to play World of Warcraft.” “I don’t care.

Work 315Go. You’re not doing anything anyway.” I’m like, “I’m trying to level.”“I don’t care. Go.”Mac Man: Do you get paid to do it?Altimit: No.Mac Man: Hey, that’s sad.Altimit: I wish I did. Make a lot of money.The challenge for many youth is to move their labor from a category ofunpaid helping to a category of valued labor, which might be potentiallymonetized. Marjorie Faulstich Orellana (2001) describes how adultsoften resist describing the children as “workers” and prefer to describewhat the kids are doing as “helping,” activities that are good for kids’social development but not part of the monetized labor economy. Thisexchange with Mac Man and Altimit is evidence of how kids may seethis dynamic differently. Altimit understands the economic value of histechnical labor even though his father may not recognize it. We have seensome cases of a few entrepreneurial kids overcoming these challengesand making real money off their technology skills. The case of SnafuDavein box 7.1 is one example of a youth’s transitioning into a successfulcareer as a freelance web designer and later into one that centers on hisown creative work.One fifteen-year-old white participant in Patricia Lange’s YouTube andvideo bloggers study described how he has started a small design company.“I have a couple clients that I do web hosting for. And then, I’ve donesome programming, but I’m not that good at it. But I’ve pretty much donesome of every geeky thing that there is out there.” He built his client basefrom personal connections, beginning with family and then branching outto friends at school and people he met online.I have pretty good customer services. Since I have a very small client base, I canafford to help them make websites and [with] any problems that they have, so a lotof it is just helping them make websites, fix websites, change things, and basic thingslike that.In a similar vein, as described in box 7.2, sixteen-year-old Zelan built upa career as a freelance technical expert.In the gaming world, the most-skilled players can gain sponsorship orwin financial awards through tournaments, and a number of game titleshave a professional gaming scene. The top players can make a livingplaying the games on the marketing value they gain as a result. Hundreds,

316 Mizuko Itothousands, and even millions of dollars in prize money are turned out eachyear for competitors in these tournaments. The most popular tournamentsare those run by the Cyberathlete Professional League, the World CyberGames, the World eSports Games, the Electronic Sports World Cup, theChampionship Gaming Series, and Major League Gaming. It was rare toencounter youths in our study who were actually able to make money offtheir gaming. Even among those who did, none saw gaming as a primaryoccupation. For example, Altimit described making small amounts ofmoney off his Warcraft play. Scottanime (a white thirty-one-year-old), oneof the interviewees in Mizuko Ito’s study of anime fans, described howwhen he was younger he used to be a card-game expert. He would be hiredby gaming companies to demonstrate the games at conventions. He didnot see this as a sustainable or secure career option, however, and he wenton to take a job as a mail carrier. Similarly, MercyKillings, 4 a white thirtyfive-year-oldin Ito’s anime fans study, was also a professional gamer aftercollege, but he maintained a day job working in construction. These storiesparallel the kinds of involvements that youth have historically had withsports; gaming is an activity most children and youths participate in regularly,but very rarely does it translate into a career. Although we saw manyinstances of youth who admired pro gamers, we did not have examples ofkids who actually were pursuing pro gaming as a career.Box 7.2 Technological Prospecting in Rural LandscapesChristo SimsAbout an hour’s drive east of Sacramento, the Great Central Valley ofCalifornia meets the Sierra Nevada range. The valley’s end loosely binds oneedge of Sacramento’s suburbs. As one climbs into the mountains, roads andrivers narrow, towns and neighborhoods become smaller and more far-flung.About 150 years ago these hills were the epicenter of the California GoldRush. Evidence of this historical prospecting can still be read on the landscape.Ashen ruptures in otherwise pine-green panoramas continue to marksites where hydraulic mining sluiced ore from the mountainsides. Locals callthese barren desertlike patches “diggins.” It was in one of these diggins thatZelan was first introduced to video games:When we lived in Sacramento my parents got me a Game Boy to go out there in thediggins. ‘Cause we’d come here on the weekends and go dig for gold. And I never reallyliked it, so I’d sit in the corner and, you know, play with Batman or whatever I was into.

Work 317And so one day they got me a Game Boy for my birthday, and I sat in the corner andplayed games all day.As his parents prospected for gold, Zelan began his trajectory of engagementwith digital media, one that would lead him far beyond gaming as onlya way to kill time. As Zelan recalled it, this incident occurred when he wasfour or five years old. He was sixteen at the time of our interview, and for thepast eleven years his family has lived in a secluded rural town near wherethey used to go digging for gold. In pursuing his passion for games he hasdeveloped pragmatic strategies for making and managing money, he hasacquired unique technical skills and knowledge, and, lately, he has configuredthese resources into his own form of prospecting, one that enacts and imaginesmodes of work that defy local tendencies and expectations.This pragmatic sensibility partially stems from, and continues to mix with,his passion for video games and digital media. After immersing himself in theGame Boy, he pursued newer and better consoles. As he did so he also learnedhow they worked. His parents did not like buying him gaming gear, so hebecame resourceful. When his neighbors gave him their broken PlayStation2, he took it apart, fixed it, and upgraded from his PlayStation 1 in the process.Soon he started devising ways of making money to support his hobby. Helearned that the technical knowledge he was developing could be applied asemployable labor. When he was in middle school a teacher asked him to helprun the audiovisual equipment. He soon transferred this knowledge into a DJbusiness. In another case he made two hundred dollars fixing a teacher’scomputer. More recently, the high school has hired him to help maintain“the empire” of more than two hundred computers on the school’s network.In addition to selling his labor, Zelan has begun to realize that he can be avaluable broker in markets for used technology goods. In several instances hehas acquired broken computer equipment or game consoles, fixed them, andthen sold them for a profit (see figure 7.2).Since these opportunities have built up, he now imagines starting atechnology-centric business after he graduates high school:I wanna start a business about, you know, just like computer repair, gaming, just anythingcomputerwise. So I can get it all started and hopefully start another business andget two businesses going and, or two chains going or whatever, and hopefully just beable to sit back when I’m older. Not to just sit there and do nothing. Have the businessesgoing around me.This vision of work differs considerably from the manual labor practiced byhis parents and many others in his local community. His town is one of themost remote and blue-collar of those feeding his regional high school. Bothof Zelan’s parents make money by performing manual labor; his mom cleanshouses and his dad is a freelance handyman. Zelan seems to understand that

318 Mizuko ItoFigure 7.2Attic workbench where Zelan and his dad tinker with remote control aircraft and otherelectronics. Photo by Christo Sims, 2006.many of his peers will end up in similar careers as his parents and neighbors.In describing his “nerd” identity, Zelan differentiated his work trajectory fromthe one he imagines for his peers:But the jocks, they’re more into construction. And my group’s into the computers, andthe computer jobs where you have to do little to nothing to make your money. Everybodyelse is into hard labor and mechanics. That’s what the metalheads are in . . . they’rethe mechanics. And, you know, the computer nerds, I think they’ve got the best side ofit. ’Cause computers are spreading, if you can see, they’re everywhere in this room. Youknow, everybody’s houses are turning into that, and they’re just everywhere. And they’regonna be here. Before long houses are gonna be computers.For Zelan, being a “nerd” is a purposely unconventional path, one deeplyentangled with practical economic concerns. In embracing a nerd identity,he imagines an alternative life of work, one that sidesteps the expectation ofa career in manual labor. By entwining technology with an entrepreneurialtrajectory, Zelan echoes those who brought sluices and shovels, and thenhoses and hydraulics, to his region of California nearly 150 years before. Withthem, technology is implicated in an effort to bypass the gridlock of socialmobility, a partner for creatively prospecting the economic landscape.

Work 319The examples of entrepreneurism that we present involve young peopleworking to break into established models of publication, distribution, andfreelance labor. These practices involve a kind of modeling of adult careersin what might be called creative-class labor (Florida 2003). Young peopleare developing skills and talents that they can market and contract out toothers. The last category of entrepreneurism that we would like to discussis one that is more closely tied to genres of practice that we associate withthe street smarts of a small-business person.EnterprisesThe classic model of a childhood enterprise is the lemonade stand. Newmedia, online distribution, and auction sites such as eBay have expandedthe potential for entrepreneurial activity that relies on digital media forthe buying and selling of goods.For example, Gerar, a fifteen-year-old from a mixed Mexican andSalvadorian background, in Katynka Martínez’s “Animation Around theBlock” study, found a market niche where he could establish his own smallbusinessenterprise. He explained how many of the youth in his neighborhoodown an iPod but not a computer. “They pay me to upload some songsfor them and depending on how many songs I have to download or uploadinto their iPod that depends how much I get paid. If I have to downloada hundred songs I charge them four bucks or something.” He has a corneron the local market, because there is only one other person in his peergroup who has a computer. The other person he has heard of who doeshave a computer, however, “does not have an Internet connection sothere’s no way he can download music and charge the others.” Toni, atwenty-five-year-old who emigrated from the Dominican Republic as a teen(Ito, Anime Fans), described how he was dependent on libraries and schoolsfor his computer access through most of high school. This did not preventhim from becoming a technology expert, however, and he set up a smallbusiness selling Playboy pictures that he printed from library computers tohis classmates. The two cases of sixteen-year-old Zelan and of seventeenyear-oldMac Man, presented in boxes 7.2 and 7.3, provide an illustrationof this small-business spirit animating youth digital ventures. These arenot privileged kids who are growing up in Silicon Valley households ofstart-up capitalists, but rather they are working-class kids who embody thestreet smarts of how to hustle for money. They are able to translate their

320 Mizuko Itotechnical knowledge and expertise into capitalist enterprises that haveimmediate financial outcomes.None of these cases represents a major restructuring of the basic financialconditions that youth live under. They replace paid unskilled formalizedlabor with new financial arrangements in the informal economy, but theyare not generating large amounts of new income. The larger impact onkids’ lives is perhaps not a financial one but is more about kids being ableto develop financial agency that is not fully determined by existing commercialmodels (such as online ads) or by the more formal school-to-worktransitions envisioned by parents and educators. These practices resist theexisting normalized pathways for youth labor. They are not part of afuture-oriented vocational or preparatory orientation, the model of youth“talent,” nor are they framed by the stance of “helping out” that underliesmost freelance youth labor. The enterprise genre described in this sectiondoes not even appear as a category of youth labor in surveys of youth work(McKechnie and Hobbs 2001). While youth have had small spaces in whichto begin their own enterprises, in at least a small number of cases we havefound, youth have mobilized online media to expand this genre of participationin new directions.Box 7.3 Being More Than “Just a Banker”: DIY Youth Culture andDIY Capitalism in a High-School Computer ClubKatynka Z. MartínezThe lunch bell rings and a group of high-school boys make their wayacross campus. They meet at the computer lab, where they view animeon their laptops and play games on computers that they have networked toone another. Although the atmosphere is relaxed, the boys have posted rulesfor their computer club: “Don’t talk loud,” “When playing don’t scream,”and “Five deaths only.” Breaking these rules is grounds for having one’scomputer privileges revoked for a week. The boys take their club quite seriouslyand hold fund-raisers to buy new equipment. Yet they still have a lotof fun joking around and teasing one another, and sometimes they eat theirlunches too.Mac Man, seventeen, is the president of the computer club, and Altimit,eighteen, is an officer. The boys met in middle school when the two wererecent emigrants from the Philippines. Their fathers, who are both computersavvy, introduced the boys to computers. Based on the stories told by theboys, it seems that their fathers introduced computers as toys rather than as

Work 321educational tools or adult devices. One boy’s father used to engage in computer-hackingactivities and both men enjoyed using computers when theywere younger. However, they are now employed as a banker and as a landlordoverseeing apartments in the United States. Altimit and Mac Man romanticizethe early days of computer programming and their fathers’ participation inthat world. The formation of the computer club may be their attempt to tapinto some of the renegade spirit that their dads once possessed.Altimit and Mac Man take on a sense of nostalgia when they remember thefirst computer games they played. For example, when Mac Man talked aboutplaying an early version of The Sims in which “everything’s all pixilated,”Altimit sarcastically responded, “Don’t remind me of those days.” A lot haschanged since “those days” and now the boys not only play computer gamesbut they fix computers themselves. Altimit’s dad taught him how to use andfix computers and now he expects Altimit to help friends and family memberswho have computer problems. Altimit recounted the ordeal he goes throughwhen his father asks him to fix someone’s computer while he is absorbed inhis favorite MMORG:Yeah, and like my friend’s house, right, usually my family friend, they would say, “Oh,something’s broken.” So, rather than him coming, he sends me. So, like [in child’s voice],“I’m trying to play World of Warcraft.” [In dad’s voice] “I don’t care. Go. You’re notdoing anything anyway!” [In child’s voice] “I’m like, I’m trying to level.” [In dad’s voice]“I don’t care. Go!”When Mac Man heard Altimit tell this story he immediately asked ifthe boy gets paid for his service. (Altimit does not receive any monetarycompensation.) Mac Man, a young entrepreneur, has found a way to developmultiple small businesses—even at school. He heats up water in the computerroom during lunchtime and sells ramen to students for a dollar. Also, whenhe learned that a group of teachers was going to be throwing away their oldcomputers, he asked if he could take them off their hands. Mac Man fixedthe computers and put Windows on them. The computer club was startedwith these computers. Mac Man still comes to school with a small bag thatcarries the tools he uses to work on computers. Teachers and other adults keptgiving him computers that were broken and he had to figure out what to dowith them. He fixed them and realized that he could sell them on eBay. Hemakes a hundred dollars’ profit for every computer that he sells.Mac Man’s entrepreneurial spirit is very much influenced by his father’swork ethic. When asked what his father thinks of his small business, MacMan told a story about his father creating the chemical mixture needed tokill cockroaches when he saw that the apartments he managed needed thisservice. His father also buys beat-up classic Mustangs, refurbishes them withhis son, and sells them. Mac Man showed off before-and-after photos of thecars they have worked on and then he said, “My dad and I—we’re similar

322 Mizuko Itobecause we’re physical people. We like to get our hands dirty, you know? Pullthings apart, put them together. See I do the computer things. My dad doesthe car things. We’re very similar.”While Mac Man recognizes that he and his father share a tinkering mentality,Altimit is frustrated by his father’s current career. Altimit’s father wasonce a computer hacker and even was friends with one of the peoplewho created the “I Love You” virus. Knowing this history, Altimit finds ithard to understand why his dad does not enjoy using computers anymore.He said that now his dad is “just a banker.” Altimit cannot look to his fatherto learn how to make a living from his interest in computers. However, hehas been able to find role models in the world of professional gaming. Altimitis an avid gamer and claims that strangers pay for his World of Warcraft(WoW) subscription just so they can play against him. This interview wasconducted during his school’s winter break and it was no surprise that hehad been spending most of his vacation watching anime and playing WoW.In a discussion of the South Park episode that features WoW, Altimit begantalking about the fact that the “best gamer in the world” makes his livingplaying games. Mac Man, the pragmatic one, explained that this gamer is“one in a million.”Altimit: He got a job for it though.Mac Man: Only a few people get a job.Altimit: No. Yeah, but he’s rich. I mean, come on, just for playing games,he’s rich.Mac Man: There are exceptions.Altimit: That’s just kick ass . . .Katynka: Is he a pro gamer or . . .Altimit: He’s the best gamer in the world, at shooter games. He can killanyone and he will not die. And I think some guy picked him up to play fortournaments. He would win all the tournaments, and then he got paid toplay games, pretty much. And like make shows, so . . .Katynka: And does this guy seem like a nerdy guy from South Park or . . .?Altimit: No. He’s normal. He’s, what he did, it’s like, what he’s doing is beforehe played games right, he would wake up, eat, jog, like exercise. Play gamesfor three hours. Play console games for four hours, and then play PC games,eat again, just take a break, three hours again. I do three, four, three.Mac Man: Is that what you do?Altimit: Yes.Mac Man: Why are you not getting paid for it?Both Altimit and Mac Man are high-end users of new technology. However,they have very different personalities and approach media in different ways.

Work 323Altimit said that he is the “software guy” while Mac Man is the “hardwareguy.” Altimit spends hours playing video games and drawing manga whileMac Man occasionally plays games but does not have aspirations of makinga living from this leisure-time activity. He was asked what his ideal job wouldbe and was told that he could make up a profession or job if it did not alreadyexist. He said that his ideal job would “be either in biomedical engineeringor in business.” He added, “In both of these career choices, I would definitelybe using computers.”The boys imagine that computers will continue to be a central part of theirlives. Now they are engaging in this technology on their own terms. By startingup a computer club at their high school, they are establishing their owncommunity in a hierarchical environment that can often be hostile for kidswho do not conform to mainstream interests and activities. Both boys bringa DIY (do-it-yourself) ethos to the construction of their identities. Altimitparticipates in a DIY youth culture by drawing his own manga while MacMan engages in a type of DIY capitalism by selling ramen and refurbishedcomputers. An initial childhood interest in gaming led them to deeper explorationsof computer technology. It is unknown whether, as adults, they willbe able to find employment opportunities and continue to establish newforms of social organization that hold on to the same inquisitive spirit thatdrew them to games and computers in the first place.Nonmarket WorkAlthough most young people in our study were not engaged in paid workrelated to digital media, there was a substantial number of kids who wereengaged in nonmarket work with new media. Amateur and nonmarketactivities historically have been a place for middle-class and elite kids to“practice” work, develop creative talents, and gain experience in selfactualizationand responsible work. While formal education can impartknowledge and skills, nonmarket work provides domains where youth canput these to practice in a context of accountability and publicity. Whetherthat context is a piano recital, helping out at a church, or being part of asoccer team, these activities are domains where young people can developtheir identities as productive individuals engaged in serious and consequentialwork, in contexts where they can build reputations and gainpublic acknowledgments of their accomplishments. Lareau’s argument(2003) is that these activities of concerted cultivation, which are pursued

324 Mizuko Itovigorously in privileged families, are a site for the production of classdistinction.Children in working-class and poor families engage in fewer of thesekinds of activities, and they are often expected to perform much moredomestic work. The domestic work of cooking, cleaning, and child carecontributes directly to the household economy but is invisible outside thehome. These forms of nonmarket domestic work, while instilling a senseof responsibility and self-efficacy, do not build the broader networks ofhuman relations and skills for navigating various contexts of publicity asyou see in activities of concerted cultivation outside the home. While theseforms of helping and domestic work can have many benefits to youth whoengage with them (Orellana 2001), they are not directly tied to immediateparticipation in contexts of publicity with new media, with the exceptionof some of the categories of practice described in the previous section.The relation between concerted cultivation and vocation is not straightforward,however. The same families who encourage sports, arts, and musicas childhood activities also push their children toward traditional highstatuscareers with more stable and guaranteed financial rewards. Uppermiddle-classyouth who are avid fan producers, for example, are stillpursuing traditional career paths through elite universities. One accomplishedfan producer seemed puzzled by Mizuko Ito’s question as towhether he might consider a career related to anime. “Well, first off, [myparents] would kill me. Secondly, I could probably make more as a biomedicalengineer than anything in that neighborhood” (Ito, Anime Fans). Bycontrast, less privileged families might see creative-class careers as one oftheir few chances at upward social mobility, what one of Ito’s intervieweesdescribed as a “pipe dream for a fancy job.” In the previous section, wediscuss some of the ways in which new media might provide broadenedaccess to new forms of economic networks. We see how youth from a widerange of class backgrounds exploited these networks for economic gain. Inthe case of nonmarket work, household economic status is a strongerdeterminant of forms of participation. Here we see youth who choose toengage in unpaid labor in far-flung networks that makes no contributionto their household economy. While they are arguably gaining experiencethat will help them in their longer-term career aspirations, immersiveparticipation in these activities is predicated on the fact that they do notfeel pressures to engage in domestic work or paid work outside the home.

Work 325Nonmarket Peer ProductionWithin the field of digital-culture studies, theorists are debating how tounderstand the “free” nonmarket labor that supports activities such asopen-source software development, citizen science, game modding, fansubbing,and Wikipedia authoring. For example, Yochai Benkler (2006) sees“nonmarket peer production” as part of a fundamental shift from themarket mechanisms that characterized cultural production in high capitalism.Other theorists see these processes as exploitation of users and consumersfor the commercial gain of media industries (Ross 2007; Terranova2000). These kinds of practices differ in important ways from traditionalforms of volunteerism and community service, yet they may provide someof the same social benefits for youth. When examining youth practice inthis domain, we need to negotiate a complicated tension. On one hand, itis important to value these activities as spaces where youth can engage inactive forms of social organization and develop a sense of efficacy and leadership.Further, these activities are part of a “free culture” sharing economythat has a unique ethic of civic participation aimed at developing publicrather than proprietary goods (Lessig 2004). On the other hand, widespreadyouth participation in unpaid digital cultural production is part of a resilientstructural dynamic in which many constructive activities of youth arenot “counted” as a contribution to economic productivity (Qvortrup 2001).The enthusiasm that media-savvy youth are bringing to nonmarket digitalproduction represents a unique twist to these existing dynamics.As part of Mizuko Ito’s case study on anime fans, she has researched thepractices of amateur subtitlers, or “fansubbers,” who translate and subtitleanime and release it through Internet distribution. Chapter 6 describessome of the ways in which they form tight-knit work teams, with jobs thatinclude translators, timers, editors, typesetters, encoders, quality checkers,and distributors. Although the quality of fansubs differ, most fans thinkthat a high-quality fansub is better than the professional counterpart.Fansub groups often work faster and more effectively than professionallocalization industries, and their work is viewed by millions of anime fansaround the world. Fansubbing, like much of digital-media production, ishard, grinding work—translating dialogue with the highest degree ofaccuracy, timing how long dialogue appears on the screen down to thesplit second, fiddling with the minutiae of video encoding to make thehighest-quality video files that are small enough to be distributed over the

326 Mizuko ItoInternet. They often work on tight deadlines, and the fastest groups willturn around an episode within twenty-four hours of release in Japan. Forthis, fansubbers receive no monetary rewards, and they say that they pursuethis work for the satisfaction of making anime available to fans overseas andfor the pleasure they get in working with a close-knit production team.Similarly, fan conventions are organized entirely by volunteers, who atbest might get a free hotel room for months of work in organizing an eventfor thousands of fans. Some of the most dedicated of convention organizersIto interviewed described spending almost all of their vacation time and asubstantial amount of their own financial resources to act as volunteerorganizers. Gamers also pour tremendous amounts of time and energy intoorganizing online guilds and developing their own content to enhance thegaming experience for others, such as game reviews, walk-throughs, mods,and machinima. Because these activities are constructed as fan or playeractivities, and there are legal constraints on their monetization, participantsare doubly hampered in translating these activities into personalfinancial gain. The nonmarket ethic of fan-based production is that thiswork is done “for fellow fans” and not for financial gain. This stance representsa kind of accommodation between fans and commercial mediaindustries, in which the latter tolerates some degree of fan distribution andderivative works, provided they are not framed as commercial work.Box 7.4 Final Fantasy XI: Trouncing TiamatRachel CodyAccording to Wurlpin, 5 a twenty-six-year-old white male in San Diego, “FinalFantasy XI is like a chat room with action in the background.” The game isabout the people. It is the peer groups—from friends to linkshells 6 —thatprovide motivation for many to log in to the game and make the gamemeaningful. The communities and relationships developed within the gameextend beyond it into websites, forums, instant messenger programs, andemail. The players chat with one another across servers or linkshells in thesecommon spaces, sharing their strategies, advice, and questions. Workingcollectively allows a level of success in the game that would be impossibleto attain individually. One of the most impressive acts of coordination andcollaboration during my fieldwork was the slaying of the dragon Tiamat bythe linkshell KirinTheDestroyers (KtD).At the time of our fieldwork, Tiamat was one of the most difficult dragonsin Final Fantasy XI. When linkshells were first attempting to kill her, Tiamatwould often require more than two alliances 7 (thirty-six players) and four

Work 327hours of coordinated teamwork to defeat. Strategies to kill Tiamat had to dealwith a variety of the dragon’s special moves and abilities as well as an increasein difficulty for the last ten percent of her health.Despite how daunting the fight seemed, KirinTheDestroyers 8 had spent thefirst half of 2005 taking on progressively harder areas and monsters in thegame and wanted a new challenge. As Wurlpin told me, new activities “keepthe game interesting” and “keep the challenge on.” A successful defeat ofTiamat would demonstrate how far KtD had advanced in the game and thecapabilities of its members. When KtD began discussing a linkshell attempton Tiamat in June 2005, none of the linkshell members had experience fightinganything like Tiamat. KtD members had grown up together in the gameas a linkshell, and nearly all the experience the players had with the game hadbeen acquired through linkshell activities. And none of the linkshell activitieshad been dragons like Tiamat. It took the linkshell two months of effort,frustration, heartache, and brainstorming to be able to conquer the dragon.The first attempt at Tiamat relied on the advice of a new KtD member,Bokchoi, 9 who joined the linkshell only a few days before the first attempt.Bokchoi, a twenty-two-year-old white male in Florida, came from the onlyEnglish-speaking linkshell on the server that had successfully killed Tiamat,and brought with him a wealth of knowledge about the fight. Using the linkshell’swebsite forums, Bokchoi provided the strategy that his former linkshellhad used in its Tiamat fight. He used a screen shot of the fight, with arrowspointing where people should stand during the fight. Through text and thescreen shot, Bokchoi explained where the fight would take place, where peoplewould stand depending on their jobs, where the dragon would be keptthroughout the fight, and what each job should do during the fight. Bokchoiwarned the linkshell, however, that the strategy would need to be tailored toKtD’s strengths and weaknesses:I would like to say this is by no means the only way to defeat Tiamat and during thecourse of the fight the strategy can be altered to benefit from the linkshell’s strengthsand overcome any weaknesses. I would also like to say even going in with a provenstrategy it is no easy fight, and in all honesty do not expect to walk away with a win.This fight takes a bit of practice and some reworking of strategies to enhance this basicstrat to work for KtD. I think KtD has the numbers and the skill, just needs a bit ofpractice to get a fight like this down.After reading Bokchoi’s strategy, KtD members used the forums to formgroups and discuss their individual moves for the fight. One officer debatedbetween different moves that players could perform in the fight: “SpinningSlash is better for Tiamat. Spiral hell will do more Damage at 300% TP, but it’smore efficient to do 3 Spinning Slash in the same amount of time.” 10 Otherplayers used the forum thread to organize parties and coordinate their moveswith one another. Coordinating with one another before the fight allowedKtD members to discuss ways to maximize their damage and efficiency.

328 Mizuko ItoThe first Tiamat attempt was not successful. After several hours, the dragonwas down to nine percent health before KtD was forced to leave because ofsheer exhaustion. Tiamat had become much more difficult in the last tenpercent of her health and KtD would need to modify its strategy to be successful.Despite not killing Tiamat, KtD’s attempt became part of a largerconversation as many in the server’s community watched and discussed thefight. As the linkshell left the fight with heavy hearts, a KtD member loggedin and said, “I heard the news, it’s all over the server. Lol everyone’s talkingabout us.” The mood in the linkshell brightened at this collective supportand it started a battle cry of “TIAMAT!”KtD didn’t attempt Tiamat again for another month, using the time todiscuss the first attempt, difficulties they had, possible solutions, and newstrategies on their forums. More than fifteen players contributed to thesebrainstorming sessions. Once the main problem was identified—the tanks 11were dying too fast—players relied on their experiences within the game tosuggest solutions. As Fyrie, 12 a seventeen-year-old Asian-American in NewYork, suggested, “Next time we fight him, we definately need more NINs 13 totank his last 10% left when he spams mighty strikes. 14 It was doing about580~ to our PLD 15 and they fell in 2 hits.” Some of these suggestions requiredminor changes, such as using different players for different roles or modifyingthe spells they would use. Other changes, such as using different subjobs, 16required some players to spend hours or days leveling a new subjob. Forexample, Ghostfaced, 17 a nineteen-year-old white male in Oregon, offered tolevel his white mage subjob so that he could be more versatile in the fight.Another major contributor to the strategy for the second fight was a newKtD member, Tacoguy. 18 He posted in the brainstorming thread, “Alright welli have a friend on a different server and him and his ls have taken downtiamat many many times and i asked him how do they do it so quick causeit takes them about 1 : 30 [one hour and thirty] minutes.” Tacoguy served asa messenger between KtD and his friends on the other server, asking questionsabout the fight and posting their strategies onto the KtD forums.KtD tried Tiamat again in August, armed with their previous experienceswith Tiamat, the adaptations to Bokchoi’s and Tacoguy’s strategies, and theirown brainstorming and hard work. The new strategies proved successful forthe first half of the fight, but a minor mistake by one player had major consequencesand the linkshell lost claim, or ownership, over the dragon, andKtD chose to withdraw rather than start over. Many in the linkshell werefrustrated and angry that their hard work had not met with success, but afew remained positive. One member posted on the forums, “One way oranother we should all be proud for doing what we have the past two attempts.Grats and a pat on the back to everyone.”

Work 329In September 2005, KtD attempted Tiamat for the third time using the samestrategy as in the second attempt. KtD members were confident that despitethe mistake in the second attempt, the strategy would work. Members used thetime between the second and third attempts to relax, better their gear, andincrease their playing abilities through other activities. Quite experienced withthe fight by this point, KtD’s third Tiamat fight resembled a choreographeddance. The tanks were rotated out of the fight as they became exhausted;players moved in a cycle of positions as they fought, healed, were attacked, orrested; and the black mages had an elaborately ordered system in which theytook turns casting special spells against the dragon. After four hours of thisextremely coordinated and intense teamwork, KtD successfully killed Tiamat.The conquering of Tiamat was a collective success; it was the work of morethan fifty players who diligently combed through their experiences, outsidevideos and screen shots, and the experiences of their friends to create a successfulstrategy. They brought years of collective experience and ideas to thebattles and brainstorming sessions, and their deaths in the dragon pit taughtthem even more. Screen shots and videos were researched by some membersto suggest other successful ideas. Bokchoi became a mentor, and Tacoguybecame a resource and messenger of questions for his friends, who had moreexperience with Tiamat. Throughout their journey, KtD members combinedall that they knew or thought, laid it bare, disassembled it, analyzed it fromevery direction, demolished some parts and polished others, and then reassembledit to be a work of art. It was a strategy that took two months toperfect, but the success was worth the effort.Another version of nonmarket work is the kind of involvements thatyouth have with online gaming economies that exhibit many of the samefeatures as real-life economies, but that are quite separate from them. Theseinvolvements are most evident in multiplayer online gaming worlds(Castronova 2001; Dibbell 2006), but they also are an important part ofsites such as Neopets or games such as Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh! thatinvolve the buying and selling of game items. The grind of nonmarketwork is familiar to any player in a massively multiplayer online roleplayinggame (MMORPG). Rachel Cody’s case study of a linkshell’s defeatof a high-level monster (see box 7.4) documents a culminating momentfor players who have poured months of their time into the repetitive laborof “leveling” their characters by battling monsters and engaging in menialcraftwork. Laura Robinson’s study of Neopets (see section 7.5) illustrates

330 Mizuko Itosome of the energies that young people bring to these online economies,even though they do not translate to real-life capital.Fan production and gaming production are not the only examples ofpractices youth engage in that involve many of the same disciplines ofprofessional media production but that bring none of the financial rewards.Even an activity such as the creation of YouTube videos, which often seemsplayful and off-the-cuff, involves this kind of grinding labor to create goodwork. One of the youths Patricia Lange interviewed, Jack, a seventeen-yearoldwhite male (YouTube and Video Bloggers), described a video shoot witha group of fellow homeschooled teens.The environment was just, you know, torturous. And tempers were flaring ‘cause wewere all . . . we would be shooting day in and day out for, you know, sometimes fortwo or three days in a row, and we would just be sitting there and we’d get reallymad at one another. And then looking back, we just always laugh at it because it’sjust so ridiculous that we’re all sitting here in this hundred-degree weather with allthis stuff around us, and we’re just absolutely dying. Reshooting the same sceneover and over again, and, you know, and it never just progressed anywhere.Youth pour their energies into producing videos, writing fan fiction,making music, or recording podcasts, and they most commonly releasetheir work on the Internet for free. At the time of Google’s purchase in2006, YouTube was valued at more than a billion dollars, capitalizing onthe economy of freely shared amateur media production, for which creatorsdid not earn a penny from the distribution of their work online.Although business models and terms of service for online sharing sites arechanging, and there are more opportunities for amateur creators to gainrevenue from online distribution, most amateurs, youth, and fan producersdo not see any economic gain from their work.These practices add a new twist to our existing understanding of volunteerismand civic engagement. Just as with more long-standing forms ofyouth volunteer work and internships, this nonmarket work is a space foryoung people to experiment with different work practices before they makecommitments to jobs and careers. For example, in Ito’s study of fansubbers,some described how poeple “retire” because “it wasn’t fun anymore” or itwas becoming too much like a “real job.” Although the practices resemblemarket-based labor in many ways, they are still a form of volunteer practicethat youth can drop out of with little material consequence. Still, relationshipsthey foster with their peers in these groups provide opportunities formentorship and for youth to take on identities as leaders and media pro-

Work 331ducers. Further, these activities are often animated by a civic spirit ofsharing that takes “free culture” as a rallying point in working toward acultural commons that is not dominated by commercial interests. At thesame time, it is important to keep in mind the broader political economicconditions in which these kinds of engagements occur. Most of these moresophisticated forms of nonmarket online production are the province ofrelatively privileged youth who are pursuing these activities during collegeor other times in their lives when they are not under financial and timepressures to engage in domestic or paid work.While we should look to these youth practices as examples of highlyengaged forms of youth mobilization and creativity, we must also recognizehow they remain embedded in existing structural conditions of inequityand in a robust set of commercial practices that define the contoursof Web 2.0 industry. In many ways, the free-culture movement and industryattention to user-generated content are part of a cultural logic that isgrowing in salience and that defines a particular historic moment in theevolution of media and communications. We see youth innovation ascentral to defining these new genres of cultural participation, even as theyare very much under flux, through a complicated set of struggles betweendifferent media industries and sectors as well as the everyday activity ofyouth and adults.Box 7.5 Eddie: Neopets, Neocapital, and Making a Virtual BuckLaura RobinsonEddie is a precocious teen from California who is a self-described formerNeopets addict. In his words, “I loved the economic stimulation!” Significantly,while some players talk about the social aspects of the site, for Eddie,Neopets was a solitary activity. He explained that while it was okay to playwhile he was in junior high, by the time he got to high school the youngerplayers would tell the older players that they were too old. So Eddie continuedto play, alone, in secret, long after it was “cool” for someone his age to playthe game. For Eddie, the excitement of Neopets was rooted in the potentialfor economic activity; the interest in Neopets was almost solely for its economicventures. When asked about his relationship with his pet, he said witha laugh, “I think mine all died! I never checked on them.” For Eddie, theNeopets connection took place on the site’s simulated financial sector throughbank accounts and a stock market that absorbed all his attention. He elaborated,“I just wanted to hoard my cash to make more. I wouldn’t waste my

332 Mizuko Itopoints feeding my pets. I didn’t want to buy them anything—just to play themarket.”What is most interesting about this player is that all his activities essentiallycomputed into the following equation: time = money. For him, time did notequal creative output, social relations, or fun. Rather, all activities were aimedtoward the single overarching goal of amassing capital—neocapital. Eddieinvested time in playing the games, not for the enjoyment of the games butfor the economic points to add to his bank account. He relished checking hisbank balances on Neopets and reported experiencing great satisfaction indoing so: “I would log in just to see my balances. It was really satisfying.”When Eddie engaged in other site activities, it was always with an eye tocapital acquisition. He explained that when he built a home or opened astore, he had the same goal in mind: time = labor = points = money. “It wassimple; if it made me money, I did it.” Unlike most of the other players whowere interviewed, he stated that all the community-building activities on thesite or the informal offline player communities were of little or no interest tohim because they served no monetary purpose.This interview is also interesting in that this player very self-reflectivelystated that he “knew” Neopets was teaching an extreme capitalist agendabecause all activities—regardless of the players’ skills—would likely result insome kind of neopoint financial yield. In Eddie’s opinion, the normativeenvironment fostered by Neopets teaches an unrealistic expectation thatfinancial gain will be the “natural” outcome of the varied site activities, whichare rooted in making money via stocks, playing for points, and opening storesas financial ventures. Eddie cautioned that the Neopets stock markets taughtkids an unrealistic view of the market. In his words, “Yeah, you have to becareful because it creates unrealistic expectations. I mean no stock markethas stocks that only go up in value.” He further reported that no matterthe stocks, all stocks increased in value through time; Neopets playerscould be sure that if they bought low they would eventually be able to sellhigh. His own strategy was to always buy low-priced stocks when they firstcame out because, unlike in the “real” stock market, all neostocks increase invalue through time. When asked if the value of stocks on Neopets fluctuatedwildly, simulating “real” market activity, he said that in his own experiencethis was not the case. Rather, Eddie explained that all engagement in capitalistactivities on the site produced positive economic yield. “There were highsand lows in the market fluctuations but never any real crashes. No one evergot wiped out.”Eddie further explained his own rationale for investing time and energy inthe site. He said that the site whetted his appetite for the kind of stimulusresponsecreated by financial risk. Eddie also believed that his playing was

Work 333rooted in this extreme interest in the financial aspect of Neopets, an interestthat grew through time. While Eddie made these connections regarding hisown activities on the site, he did not mention any of the advertising thattakes place there. Rather, for Eddie, the relationship to the site was framed aspreparation for future financial success. His play on Neopets taught him howto save money, spend wisely, and invest in the future. While his connectionwith the site became centered on his capital- /revenue- /monetary-seekingactivities, he claimed that it was always as a training field for his imaginedadult practices. “You know I want to make money someday and playing allthe time like that made me feel that it was all real. That everything had realconsequences.”ConclusionAn exploration of different forms of work that youth engage in throughand with digital media illuminates some important dimensions of youthparticipation in labor and economic activity. Throughout this discussionwe see the resilience of existing forms of class distinction in structuringyoung people’s access to particular job trajectories and their orientationstoward labor and work. Further, youth labor has tended to be ghettoizedinto unskilled labor or informal economies that are generally framed as“helping” rather than activity with clear financial motives. New mediaparticipate in the production of these familiar distinctions. While recognizingthese conservative tendencies and existing structural divisions, in thischapter we try to highlight the potential of new media engagement inchanging some of these conditions by describing somewhat exceptionaland innovative cases. If these cases are any indication of broader shifts, weare beginning to see evidence that new media are helping to open newavenues for young people to exercise new forms of agency with regard tolabor and work.Although it is rare for teens to get real jobs that make use of their technicaland media expertise, their knowledge of new media can support formsof economic activity and work that were not previously available to them.We discuss this in terms of ways that kids can earn money through distributingtheir work, freelancing, and entrepreneurism. These forms ofgrassroots economic mobilization are particularly evident among youth

334 Mizuko Itofrom less privileged backgrounds. By contrast, elite youth, particularlythose who spend many years in higher education financed by their parents,often parlay their new media skills into the nonmarket sector. Much likehow different forms of volunteerism and internships have functionedhistorically, networked peer production provides opportunities for kids toexperiment with different forms of work and public participation. Theseactivities, varying from creative production to fansubbing to virtual currencytrading, are training grounds for participation in the twenty-firstcenturyeconomy. The difference, however, between these and structurededucational and preparatory programs is that youth who participate inthese activities engage in work that is immediately consequential; theseare not training exercises but activities that provide them immediate gainsin the context of a network of peers or a broader audience of viewers andreaders. Particularly in the context of the United States, where there arecomparatively few high-quality apprenticeship and vocational programsfor teens not on an academic track (Hansen, Mortimer, and Krüger 2001),these opportunities fill a social vacuum.In our discussion, we try to work against the assumption that digitalmedia are opening up opportunities to tech-savvy kids in the same ways.Kids from a wide range of economic and social backgrounds are mobilizedaround diverse forms of new media work. Though we have seen a generalopening up of opportunity for participation in various forms of new mediawork, the vast majority of these engagements do not translate to payingjobs and successful careers in the creative class. Elite kids have access tothe real-world social and cultural capital where they may be able to translatethese skills to jobs and paid work, and they have a leg up on kids whodo not have this social and cultural capital. Even among privileged kids,we see a tendency for them to see these forms of work as serious hobbiesthat are separate from their real-life trajectories, which guarantee them astable future career through standard and well-established forms of education.By contrast, less privileged youth may look toward creative-classcareers for new kinds of opportunities, but they may not have the socialand cultural capital to translate their talents into careers. In either case, wesee a growing space of creative-class work that is not directly tied to theday jobs of the people participating in them. The economies of P2P tradingthat are flourishing online, and the venues for amateurs to showcase their

Work 335work, are creating a new media ecology that supports these more informalkinds of work and economic arrangements. Across the class spectrum, wesee kids and young adults choosing to participate in creative and technicalwork because of the pleasure of productive activity that they engage in ontheir own terms, regardless of whether or not there is economic benefit.Whether the work is economic activity or nonmarket work, many kidsare looking online for sites for exercising autonomy and efficacy andmaking their labor visible in a public way. Digital-media ventures are moreattractive than the unskilled labor usually available for kids. Many motivatedkids are not satisfied with a purely preparatory role and look forreal-life consequences and responsibilities in the here and now. Many areready for these responsibilities and launch successful careers online. Youthappreciate the opportunity to be “taken seriously” by their coworkers informs of work that have clear productive benefits to others and where thereis public validation and visibility. For others these activities are a way toexperiment in certain forms of work without highly consequential failure.While educators have long noted the importance of learning in situationsof real-life work and apprenticeships, there are relatively few examples ofthese forms of learning in the United States. Studies of Girl Scout cookiesales (Rogoff et al. 2002) give one example that does come from the UnitedStates, but many of the most celebrated examples in the literature comefrom cultural contexts where kids are engaged more directly in economicactivity (Lave and Wenger 1991; Nunes, Schliemann, and Carraher 1993).Aside from volunteerism and concerted cultivation, which are framedmore as preparatory activities, kids in the United States have few contextsfor this kind of learning. The cases we describe, by contrast, are about newmedia’s providing access to high-stakes and real environments where learninghas consequences on kids’ and others’ lives.The ways in which new media intersect with youth’s activities of workare indicative of the complicated role that youth labor has occupied inmodern society. Although youth were largely shut out from the formal,high-status labor economy, they have continued to work in a wide varietyof forms. New media are making some of these activities more visible andvalued, in part because of young people’s new media literacy, which canoften exceed that of their elders. The examples of youth practice, in turn,are part of a broader restructuring of what counts as work and productive

336 Mizuko Itolabor, one that sees a greater role for the informal, peer-based economiesthat have unique affinities with the social positions and cultures of youngpeople. While the relationships between these peer-based economies andexisting commercial sectors is still very much under negotiation, we canexpect that the activities of youth today will result in resilient changesto the relationships among public engagement, cultural exchange, andeconomic participation.Notes1. “New economy” generally refers to a shift from an industrial and munfacturingbasedeconomy to one centered on services and knowledge production. Informationtechnologies are considered key elements of the infrastructure supporting the neweconomy.2. “Crowdsourcing” describes the process in which work that used to be outsourcedto a contractor is now performed by an undefined, large group of people in an openenvironment. Some examples of crowdsourcing are collective citizen-science projects,some of the work of MoveOn.org, or Wikipedia.3. “Caitlin Hill” is her real-life name.4. “Ian Oji” is a real pen name.5. “Mercykillings” is a real screen name.6. “Wurlpin” is a real character name.7. “Linkshells” are in-game communities that require invitation, have dedicatedchat channels, and often have their own organized activities. They are like the guildsof other MMORPGs.8. An alliance is a group of three parties.9. KirinTheDestroyers is the endgame linkshell in the MMORPG Final Fantasy XIwith whom I did fieldwork.10. “Bokchoi” is a real character name.11. Spinning Slash and Spiral Hell are both moves within the game that can bedone using a resource called TP.12. “Tanks” are players whose role is to “take the hits” of a fight. Certain jobs aremore beneficial for this role because of health, abilities, and gear.13. “Fyrie” is a real character name.14. “NINs” are ninjas, who have an ability that absorbs damage.

Work 33715. A “mighty strike” is a special move of Tiamat that does a lot of damage.16. “PLDs” are paladins, another tanking job.17. “Subjobs” are a secondary job that players can have to supplement their primaryjobs.18. “Ghostfaced” is a real character name.19. “Tacoguy” is a real character name.

ConclusionThe goal of this project and this book is to document the everyday livesof youth as they engage with new media and to put forth a paradigm forunderstanding learning and participation in contemporary networkedpublics. Our primary descriptive question is this: How are new media beingtaken up by youth practices and agendas? We have organized our sharedanalysis across our different case studies according to categories of practicethat correspond to youth experience: media ecologies, friendship, intimacy,families, gaming, creative production, and work. In this way, wehave mapped an ecology of different youth practices as well as mappingthe broader social and cultural ecologies that contexualize these practices.As we take into account these larger structuring contexts, we remain attentiveto the dynamics of youth culture and sociability, seeking to understandnew media practices from a youth point of view. We describe the diversityin forms of youth new media practice in terms of genres of participationrather than of categories of youth based on individual characteristics. Inthis way, we articulate the relationship between broader social and culturalstructures and everyday youth activity in ways that take into account thechanging and situationally specific nature of youth engagement with particularpractices. Although we see our work as essentially exploratory, asamong the first steps toward mapping the terrain of youth new mediapractice, we try to identify some initial landmarks and boundaries thatdefine this area of ethnographic inquiry.Following from our descriptive focus, we have a central analytic question:How do these practices change the dynamics of youth-adult negotiationsover literacy, learning, and authoritative knowledge? We suggest thatparticipation in networked publics is a site of youth-driven peer-basedlearning that provides important models of learning and participation that

340 Conclusionare evolving in tandem with changes in technology. We argue that whatis distinctive about our current historical moment is the growth of digitalmedia production as a form of everyday expression and the circulation ofmedia and communication in a context of networked publics enabled bythe Internet. We see peer-based learning in networked publics in both themainstream friendship-driven hanging out in sites such as MySpace andFacebook as well as in the more subcultural participation of geeked outinterest-driven groups. Although learning in both of these contexts isdriven primarily by the peer group, the structure and the focus of the peergroup differs substantially, as does the content of the learning and communication.While friendship-driven participation is largely in the modeof hanging out and negotiating issues of status and belonging in local,given peer networks, interest-driven participation happens in more distributedand specialized knowledge networks. We see kids moving betweenthese different genres of participation, often with the mediating practiceof experimental messing around with new media. Networked publicsprovide a space of relative autonomy for youth, a space where they canengage in learning and reputation building in contexts of peer-based reciprocity,largely outside the purview of teachers, parents, and other adultswho have authority over them.These frameworks for understanding the shape of youth participation innetworked publics help us understand what may be the most productivelevers of change and intervention. Skills and literacies that children andyouth pick up organically in their given social worlds are not generallyobjects of formal educational intervention, though they may require agreat deal of social support and energy to acquire. In friendship-drivencontexts, young people learn about the opinions and values of their peersthrough testing of social norms and expectations in everyday negotiationsover friendship, popularity, and romantic relationships. These negotiationstake place in peer publics that have been largely segregated from adultsociability ever since the establishment of teens as a distinct cultural demographic.On the interest-driven side, gamers and media creators are oftenmotivated by an autodidactic ethic, rejecting or downplaying the valueof formal education and reaching out to online networks to customizetheir own learning practices. Given the centrality of youth-defined agendasin both of these contexts, the challenge is to build roles for productiveadult participation that respect youth expertise, autonomy, and initiative.

Conclusion 341We believe that one key to productive adult involvement is in takingadvantage of this current moment in interpretive flexibility about thenature of public participation. We have an opportunity to define, in partnershipwith youth, the shape of online participation and expression andnew networked, institutional structures of peer-based learning. In thisconclusion, we summarize the findings of our research in terms of whatwe see as potential sites of adult participation and intervention in youthpractices. We do this in the spirit of suggesting avenues for future researchand programmatic exploration. Our work has not focused on evaluatingspecific pedagogical approaches or institutional configurations, but we dobelieve that our work has implications for those seeking to do so. Weorganize this concluding discussion in relation to current debates over newmedia literacy, online participation, and the shape of contemporary learninginstitutions.Shaping New Media LiteraciesIn our descriptions of youth expression and online communication, weidentify a range of practices that are evidence of youth-defined new medialiteracies. On the friendship-driven side, we have seen youth developingshared norms for online publicity, including how to represent oneself inonline profiles, norms for displaying peer networks online, the ranking ofrelationships in social network sites, and the development of new genresof written communication such as composed casualness in online messages.The commonplace practices of youth who are not framing themselvesas particularly tech or media savvy—creating a MySpace profile,looking around for information online, finding and using a gaming cheat,or knowing how to engage in an appropriately casual IM conversation—arepicked up within a networked social ecology widely available to youthtoday. Chapters 2 an 3, on friendship and intimacy, argue for an appreciationof the social and literacy skills that youth are developing in theseways. A mere decade ago, however, even these kinds of commonplaceonline competencies were the province of a technology elite of early adoptersand certain professional communities.On the interest-driven side, youth continue to test the limits on formsof new media literacy and expression. Here we see youth developing a widerange of more specialized and sometimes exclusionary forms of new media

342 Conclusionliteracies that are defined in opposition to those developed in more mainstreamyouth practices. When youth engage in practices of messing around,they are experimenting with established rules and norms for media andtechnology use and expression. In geeked out interest-driven groups, wehave seen youth engage in the specialized elite vocabularies of gaming andesoteric fan knowledge and develop new experimental genres that makeuse of the authoring and editing capabilities of digital media. These includepersonal and amateur media that are being circulated online, such asphotos, video blogs, web comics, and podcasts, as well as derivative workssuch as fan fiction, fan art, mods, mashups, remixes, and fansubbing.Chapters 6 and 7, on creative production and work, describe many of thesepractices. In these geeked out practices, and in the more mainstream practiceson the friendship-driven side, we see youth actively negotiating theshape of new media literacies. While standards for literacy are constantlyunder negotiation in any community of practice, we do believe that therelative newness of digital production and online communication meansthat we are in a moment of interpretive flexibility, where values, norms,and literacy are particularly malleable.Although youth online expressions may seem very foreign to those whohave not grown up with them, youth values in this space are not so far offfrom those of adults. In our work, contrary to fears that social norms areeroding online, we did not find many youth who were engaging in anymore risky behaviors than they did in offline contexts. As we describe inchapter 5, on gaming, those practices most commonly associated with badbehavior, such as play with violent video games, when viewed in a socialcontext are an extension of familiar forms of male bonding. And just likein adult worlds, youth are engaged in ongoing struggles to gain a sense ofautonomy and self-efficacy and to develop status and reputation amongpeers. We think it is important to recognize these commonalities in valuesthat are shared among kids and adults; we see no need to fear a collapseof common culture and values. We do not believe that educators andparents need to bear down on kids with complicated rules and restrictionsand heavy-handed norms about how they should engage online. For themost part, the existing mainstream strategies that parents are mobilizingto structure their kids’ media ecologies, informed by our ongoing publicdiscourse on these issues, are more than adequate in ensuring that theirkids do not stray too far from home.

Conclusion 343At the same time, our research does enable us to be a bit more preciseabout the influence of these technosocial shifts on intergenerational relations.Although the underlying social values may be shared intergenerationally,the actual shape of peer-based communication, and many of itsoutcomes, are profoundly different from those of an older generation. Wefound examples of parents who lacked even rudimentary knowledge ofsocial norms for communicating online or any understanding of all butthe most accessible forms of video games. Further, the ability for manyyouth to be in constant private contact with their peers strengthensthe force of peer-based learning, and it can weaken adult participation inthese peer environments. The simple shift from a home phone to a mobilephone means that parents have lost some of the ambient social contactthat they previously had with their children’s friends. When you have acombination of a kid who is highly active online and a parent who isdisengaged from these new media, we see a risk of an intergenerationalwedge. Simple prohibitions, technical barriers, or time limits on use areblunt instruments; youth perceive them as raw and ill-informed exercisesof power.The problem lies not in the volume of access but the quality of participationand learning, and kids and adults need to first be on the same pageon the normative questions of learning and literacy. Parents need to beginwith an appreciation of the importance of youth’s social interactions withtheir peers, an understanding of their complexities, and a recognition thatchildren are knowledgeable experts on their own peer practices. If parentscan trust that their own values are being transmitted through their ongoingcommunication with their kids, then new media practices can be sites ofshared focus rather than sites of anxiety and tension. In the chapter onfamilies, as well as in those on gaming and creative production, we seenumerous cases of parents and kids’ coming together around new mediain ways that exhibit a shared sense of what counts as valuable learningand positive sociability, and where both parents and kids bring interestsand expertise to the table. These examples vary from parents who engageplayfully in kids’ online peer communications, who watch telenovelas withtheir kids in the living room, who work on collaborative media productionswith their kids, who will play a social game with a visiting boyfriend,to parents who simply encourage and appreciate kids’ self-motivated learningwith media and technology, giving them space and time to experiment

344 Conclusionand tinker. It is important to note that these kinds of engagements dorequire parents to invest in some basic learning about technology andmedia, and we believe issues of differential participation and access maybe just as important for parents as they are for kids.We also believe it is important to recognize the diverse genre conventionsof youth new media literacy before developing educational programsin this space. Particularly when addressing learning and literacy that growout of informal, peer-driven practices, we must realize that norms andstandards are deeply situated in investments and identities of kids’ owncultural and social worlds. Friendship-driven practices of hanging out andinterest-driven practices of geeking out mobilize very different genres ofnew media literacy. While it is possible to abstract some underlying skills,it is important to frame the cultural genre in a way appropriate to theparticular context. For example, authoring of online profiles is an importantliteracy skill on both the friendship- and interest-driven sides, but onemobilizes a genre of popularity and coolness and the other a genre of geekcred. Similarly, the elite-speak of committed gamers involves literacies thatare of little, and possibly negative, value for boys looking for a romanticpartner in their school peer networks. Following from this, it is problematicto develop a standardized set of benchmarks to measure kids’ levels of newmedia and technical literacy. Unlike academic knowledge, whose relevanceis often limited to classroom instruction and assessment, new media literacyis structured by the day-to-day practices of youth participation andstatus in diverse networked publics. This diversity in youth values meansthat kids will not fall in line behind a single set of literacy standards thatwe might come up with, even if those standards are based on the observationsof their own practices.We believe that if our efforts to shape new media literacy are keyed tothe meaningful contexts of youth participation, then there is an opportunityfor productive adult engagement. Many of the norms that we observedonline are very much up for negotiation, and there were often divergentperspectives among youth about what was appropriate, even within aparticular genre of practice. For example, as described in chapter 2, theissue of how to display social connections and hierarchies on social networksites is a source of social drama and tension, and the ongoing evolutionof technical design in this space makes it a challenge for youth to developshared social norms. Designers of these systems are central participants in

Conclusion 345defining these social norms, and their interventions are not always gearedtoward supporting a shared set of literacy practices and values. More robustpublic debate on these issues that involves both youth and adults couldpotentially shape the future of online norms and literacies in this space insubstantive ways. On the interest-driven side, we see adult leadership inthese groups as central to how standards for expertise and literacy are beingdefined. For example, the heroes of the gaming world include both teensand adults who define the identity and practice of an elite gamer. The sameholds for all the creative production groups that we examined. The leadershipin this space, however, is largely cut off from the educators and policymakers who are defining standards for new media literacy in the adultdominatedworld. Building more bridges between these different communitiesof practice could shape awareness on both the in-school andout-of-school side if we could respond in a coordinated and mutuallyrespectful way to the quickly evolving norms and expertises of more geekedout and technically sophisticated experimental new media literacies.Participation in Networked PublicsAt least since the early 1990s, the question of online access and publicparticipation has been on the radar of policy makers in the form of agendasaddressing the digital divide (Bikson and Panis 1995; The White House1993; Wresch 1996). While national context and economic factors havebeen central to this question, debates over the digital divide also examinedfactors such as gender and age as structuring differential access to technology-relatedcompetencies (Ito et al. 2001; Shade 1998). Throughout the1990s, policy interventions in the United States focused on providingpublic access to the Internet through community institutions such aspublic schools and libraries (Fabos 2004; Henderson and King 1995). Todaythe picture is much more complex. Basic access to technology, the abilityto navigate online information, and the ability to communicate withothers online are increasingly central to our everyday participation inpublic life. At the same time, the range and diversity of networked publicsand forms of participation have proliferated dramatically, making the definitionof baseline technology access and literacy difficult if not impossibleto achieve. Further, commercial online access and Web 2.0 sites havelargely overshadowed the public and nonprofit sites and infrastructures of

346 Conclusionthe Internet, even as we have seen a steady growth in user-generatedcontent (Fabos 2004). A digital-divide agenda focused on technology accessdoes not address what Jenkins and his colleagues (2006) have called the“participation gap.” The more complex and socially contextualized skillsof creating digital media, sharing information and media online, socializingwith peers in networked publics, and going online to connect withspecialized knowledge communities require both high-end technologyaccess and social and cultural immersion in online worlds (Seiter 2007).We suggest that the notion of networked publics offers a framework forexamining diverse forms of participation with new media in a way that iskeyed to the broader social relations that structure this participation. Indescribing new media engagements, we look at the ecology of social, technical,and cultural conditions necessary for certain forms of participation.When examining the kind of informal, peer-based interactions that are thefocus of our work, we find that ongoing, lightweight access to digitalproductiontools and the Internet is a precondition for participation inmost of the networked public spaces that are the focus of attention for U.S.teens. Further, much of this engagement is centered on access to social andcommercial entertainment content that is generally frowned upon informal educational settings. Sporadic, monitored access at schools andlibraries may provide sufficient access for basic information seeking, but itis not sufficient for the immersed kind of social engagements with networkedpublics that we have seen becoming a baseline for participationon both the interest-driven and the friendship-driven sides.On the friendship-driven side, participation in online communicationand gaming is becoming central to youth sociability. As described inchapter 1, youth who are shut out from these networks for technical oreconomic reasons often develop creative work-arounds, such as going to afriend’s house to play games, befriending the computer-lab teacher, orusing a digital camera as an MP3 player. The fact that these friendshipdrivenpractices are so widely distributed in youth culture functions as adriver for a kind of bottom-up universal-access agenda. Although there arestill kids who are excluded from participation, they get a substantial pushof both motivation and peer support because these practices are part ofthe common currency of youth social communication. For example, as wediscuss in chapter 6, although most kids were not well versed in web designand HTML, they generally could find a friend who could help them with

Conclusion 347setting up their MySpace profile. In many ways, these processes of youthparticipation in mainstream popular culture are similar to how media suchas television, music, and popular games function as a “ticket to play” forkids’ communication (Dyson 1997). Economic barriers have continued tobe an issue for lower-income kids’ participation in commercial cultures(Chin 2001; Seiter 2005). New media accentuate this tendency by requiringmore expensive technology and sophisticated forms of technical literacy.Adult lack of appreciation for youth participation in popular commoncultures has created an additional barrier to access for kids who do nothave Internet access at home. We are concerned about the lack of a publicagenda that recognizes the value of youth participation in social communicationand popular culture. When kids lack access to the Internet athome, and public libraries and schools block sites that are central to theirsocial communication, they are doubly handicapped in their efforts toparticipate in common culture and sociability. These uses of new mediafor everyday sociability also can be important jumping-off points formessing around and interest-driven learning. Contemporary social mediaare becoming one of the primary “institutions” of peer culture for U.S.teens, occupying the role that was previously dominated by the informalhanging out spaces of the school, mall, home, or street. Although publicinstitutions do not necessarily need to play a role in instructing or monitoringkids’ use of social media, they can be important sites for enablingparticipation in these activities. Educators and policy makers need tounderstand that participation in the digital age means more than beingable to access “serious” online information and culture; it also means theability to participate in social and recreational activities online. Thisrequires a cultural shift and a certain openness to experimentation andsocial exploration that generally is not characteristic of educationalinstitutions.When we turn to interest-driven practices, we see kids developing morespecialized forms of expertise and engaging with esoteric and niche knowledgecommunities. The chapters on gaming, creative production, and workaim to map some of the characteristics of these interest-driven communitiesof practice. These are groups that see value in subcultural capital thatis not widely distributed in mainstream culture. These are not practicesthat are amenable to being codified into a baseline set of literacies, standardizedbodies of knowledge, or normalized forms of participation. Young

348 Conclusionpeople who know how to mess around and pursue self-directed learningwith new media have mastered genres of participation that are applicableto different content domains if given the necessary contextual supports.We believe that these genres of participation can generalize across a widerange of cultural and knowledge domains. For example, in both chapters5 and 6 we note how youth who have been engaged in geeked out practicesoften participate in multiple technical or creative communities concurrentlyor serially. As technical and media skills and practices become moremainstream, the kids who are associated with these more specializedgroups will compete to differentiate themselves with even more specializedforms of expertise that test the boundaries of technical virtuosity. Becauseof this, a participation gap in relation to these practices is a structuralinevitability, and in fact, drives motivation and aspirations. In this domainwe should value diversity rather than standardization to enable more kidsto succeed and gain recognition in different communities of interest.Although we have not systematically analyzed the relation betweengender and socioeconomic status and participation in interest-drivengroups, our work indicates a predictable participation gap. Particularly inthe case of highly technical interest groups and geeked out forms ofgaming, the genre itself is often defined as a masculine domain. Thesedifferences in access are not simply a matter of technology access but haveto do with a more complex structure of cultural identity and social belonging.Girls tend to be stigmatized more if they identify with geeked outpractices. While we may recognize that geeked out participation has valuablelearning properties, if these activities translate to downward socialmobility in friendship-driven networks of status and popularity, many kidsare likely to opt out even if they have the technical and social resourcesat their disposal. The kinds of identities and peer status that accompanycertain forms of new media literacy and technical skills (and lack thereof)is an area that deserves more systematic research.The focus of policy and educational agendas needs to be not on thespecific content or skills that kids are engaged in when they pursue interestdrivenparticipation but rather on the genre of participation. We identifya series of peer-based learning dynamics that operate in these contexts,with basic social principles that drive engagement, learning, and the developmentof expertise. We also describe how youth can transition betweendifferent genres of participation by shifting from hanging out forms of

Conclusion 349media engagement to messing around, to geeking out. Conversely, we haveseen youth who use their geeked out interests or marginalized identitiesto leverage online connections and build friendships with like-mindedpeers not available to them locally. For example, chapter 6 describes deepfriendships built through media production, and chapter 3 describes howfor gay youth, online groups can be a lifeline for affiliating with other gayteens. Although not discussed at length in this book, C. J. Pascoe andNatalie Boero’s study of pro-anorexia and pro-bulimia groups are also anexample of how online spaces can support marginalized identities andpractices. This latter case, in particular, argues for the importance ofkeeping these specialized interest spaces open to participation by experiencedand credible leadership that can steer the community in productivedirections. These are stories about changing structures of participation thatare supported by different social, cultural, and technical ecologies. It is notsufficient to design specific learning environments or pedagogical interventionswithout considering the overall ecology of social, technical, andcultural support that young people need to navigate these transitions.For youth who do not have easy access to digital-production tools andthe online networks of interest-driven groups, local youth media programsplay an important role as a place to connect with like-minded peers. Thecase studies on local youth media programs that we examine, such as thehip-hop project, the video-production center, the after-school video game–production project, and school computer labs that have opened their doorsto kids during breaks and after school, are all examples of adults providingresources and institutional cover for kids to pursue their hobbies and interestsin new media. The most successful examples we have seen are programsthat bring kids together based on kids’ own passionate interests andthat have plenty of unstructured time for kids to tinker and explore withoutbeing dominated by direct instruction. Unlike classroom teachers, theselab teachers and youth-program leaders are not authoritative figuresresponsible for assessing kids’ competence, but rather they are what DilanMahendran has called “co-conspirators,” much like the adult participantsin online interest-driven groups. In this, our research is in alignment withwhat Vivian Chávez and Elisabeth Soep (2005) have identified as the“pedagogy of collegiality,” which defines adult-youth collaboration inwhat they see as successful youth media programs. Again, this is an areathat we believe deserves further research and attention to pedagogical

350 Conclusiondesign. Programs of this kind provide leadership and models for youth toaspire to in addition to the resources for kids to access the means for digitalproduction. These are examples of public institutions not only providingthe basic access to technology tools and skills training but also fillinga gap in the broader ecology of social, cultural, and technical resourcesto enable participation in the more informal and social dimensions ofnetworked public life.Intergenerational Learning InstitutionsAdult participation as coconspirators in interest-driven groups providessome hints as to how educators and policy makers can harness these socialdynamics for learning agendas that are more keyed to adult social worlds.In many ways, the crucial ingredient in youth engagement and successfuladult intervention in these spaces seems to be a stance of mutual respectand reciprocity, where youth expertise, autonomy, and initiative are valued.We describe this in terms of peer-based learning, in which those who youthidentify as peers are a crucial determinant of whom they look to for status,affiliation, and competition. In friendship-driven networks, these dynamicsare not so different from what their parents grew up with, involvingthe same growing pains of learning to take responsibility for their actionsin a competitive social environment. On the interest-driven side of theequation, the ways in which we have sheltered youth from workplaces andinstitutionalized them in age-segregated schools means that there are fewopportunities for youth to see adults as peers in these ways. As we describein chapters 6 and 7, when kids have the opportunity to gain access toaccomplished elders in areas where they are interested in developing expertise,an accessible and immediate aspirational trajectory that is groundedin an organic social context can be created. In contrast to what they experienceunder the guidance of parents and teachers, with peer-based learningyouth take on more grown-up roles and ownership of their self-presentation,learning, and evaluation of others.As we point out, adults can have an important role in providing leadershipand role models for participants in interest-driven groups, even incontexts of peer-based learning. In friendship-driven practices that centeron sociability in given school-based networks, direct adult participation isoften unwelcome, but in interest-driven groups there is a much stronger

Conclusion 351role for more experienced participants to play. Unlike instructors in formaleducational settings, however, these adults participate not as educators butas passionate hobbyists and creators, and youth see them as experiencedpeers, not as people who have authority over them. These adults exerttremendous influence in setting communal norms and what educatorsmight call learning goals, though they do not have direct authority overnewcomers. How adult roles are structured in these peer-based interestdrivengroups is one element of how the genre of participation is defined,and it could be studied more systematically as a particular pedagogicalstance that is grounded in a structure of reciprocity.This dynamic is fundamentally different from the deferred-gratificationmodel that youth experience in schools, where they are asked to acceptthat their work in one institutional context (school) will transition at someuncertain time to what they imagine for themselves in the future (work).By contrast, their participation in interest-driven groups and their localfriend-based sociability are about status, reputation, and validation in thehere and now of their lives. As we describe in chapter 7, less privilegedyouth can be particularly critical of the aspirational models put forth byschools, because they understand that the odds are stacked against themas far as translating their accomplishments in school into social capital inadulthood. For these youth in particular, the aspirational trajectoriesoffered by more informal economies and flexible forms of creative productionin networked publics can be a way out of alienating learning experiencesin formal education.Interest-driven networked publics are often organized by local, niche, andamateur activities that differ in some fundamental ways from the model ofprofessional training and standardized curriculum that is put forth inschools. Just as amateur sports leagues are predicated on a broader base ofparticipation than professional sports, hobby groups and amateur mediaproduction lower the barriers to active participation in networked publics.At the same time, kids still can find role models and heroes in these smallerscalenetworks, but these role models and heroes are much more accessiblethan the pros, where the aspirational trajectory is distant and inaccessible.Success and recognition in these niche and local publics can be tremendouslyvalidating, and they mark a pathway toward a more civic and participatorypublic life. Kids from less privileged backgrounds understand thatthe ideology of equal opportunity through public education does not

352 Conclusionoperate in the same way for them as for more privileged kids. Even thosekids who are not going to navigate successfully to adult careers by pleasingtheir teachers can find alternative pathways toward participation in differentkinds of publics that are not defined by structures they see as unfairand oppressive. We see the implications of our work less in the service ofreshuffling the deck of who succeeds in professional careers in new media,and more in terms of how educational interventions can support a moreengaged stance toward public participation more generally.Our work across the different domains of practice that we examinedqueries the changing shape of participation in different kinds of publics,but our focus is on youth-driven publics, not civics as defined by adultagendas. While the latter is something that requires additional research,we believe that some of the most promising directions for encouragingonline civic engagement begin from youth-driven bottom-up social energies,an ethic of peer-based reciprocity, and a sense of communal belonging,rather than from a top-down mandate of adult-directed civic activity.We have some examples of this in our research, including the mobilizationof kids to immigrant-rights protests through MySpace, connecting withactivist groups online, or helping out in school or community institutionsas technical and media experts. For the most part, however, local communityinstitutions and activity groups made little use of digital technologiesand kids’ media interests and did not extend beyond the local givensocial networks. Few kids we spoke to were interested or involved in traditionalpolitics, even though they might be highly energized by their localpoliticking among peers on social network sites or in other online groupsand games. We did not focus our research on uncovering the more exceptionalcases that might function as models in this domain (as we did inthe case of creative production), so this is an area that we also believedeserves more research. The gap between the energies that kids bring totheir peer-based politics and social engagements, and their participationin more adult-centered civic and political worlds, represents a missedopportunity.Kids’ participation in networked publics suggests some new ways ofthinking about the role of public education. Rather than thinking of publiceducation as a burden that schools must shoulder on their own, whatwould it mean to think of public education as a responsibility of a moredistributed network of people and institutions? And rather than assuming

Conclusion 353that education is primarily about preparing kids for jobs and careers, whatwould it mean to think of education as a process of guiding kids’ participationin public life more generally, a public life that includes social, recreational,and civic engagement? And finally, what would it mean to enlisthelp in this endeavor from an engaged and diverse set of publics that arebroader than what we traditionally think of as educational and civic institutions?In addition to publics that are dominated by adult interests, thesepublics should include those that are relevant and accessible to kids now,where they can find role models, recognition, friends, and collaboratorswho are coparticipants in the journey of growing up in a digital age. Weend this book with the hope that our research has provoked thesequestions.

Appendix I: Project OverviewThe Digital Youth Project was led by four principal investigators, PeterLyman, Mizuko Ito, Michael Carter, and Barrie Thorne. During the courseof the three-year research grant (2005–2008), seven postdoctoral researchers,1 six doctoral students, 2 nine M.A. students, 3 one J.D. student, 4 oneproject assistant, 5 seven undergraduate students, 6 and four research collaborators7 participated and contributed fieldwork materials for the project.To gain an interdisciplinary understanding of the intersection of youth,new media, and learning, principal investigators sought out individualswith expertise in a wide range of fields including anthropology, communication,political science, psychology, and sociology as well as computerscience, engineering, and media studies. Many of the researchers alsoworked in industry and community organizations and built upon thisexperience to forge meaningful collaborations across research projects anddisciplines.Just as the examination of young people, new media, and learning calledfor scholars of diverse disciplinary backgrounds and arenas of expertise,our research agenda also demanded new sites and strategies of investigation.As noted in the introduction, our project was designed to document,from an ethnographic perspective, the learning and innovation thataccompany young people’s everyday engagements with new media ininformal settings. Specifically, our focus on youth-centered practices ofplay, communication, and creative production located learning in contextsthat are meaningful and formative for youth, including friendships andfamilies as well as young people’s own aspirations, interests, and passions.In practice, this perspective meant that we maintained a broad commitmentto understanding the worlds of our research participants by learningabout and engaging in the significant new media practices in young

356 Project Overviewpeople’s lives. Moreover, we recognized that young people’s engagementswith new media were not necessarily isolated to particular media or locations.For example, social network sites such as MySpace or Facebook areoften most meaningful when understood in relation to teenagers and kidsat school and at home, with their friends and by themselves. Because thesepractices move across geographic and media spaces—homes, schools, afterschoolprograms, networked sites, and interest communities—our ethnographyincorporated multiple sites and multiple methods (Appadurai 1996;Barron 2006; Gupta and Ferguson 1997; Marcus 1995, 1998).Alongside participation and observation, the hallmarks of ethnography,we developed questionnaires, surveys, semistructured interviews, diarystudies, observation and content analyses of media sites, profiles, videos,and other materials to gain insights into the qualitative dimensions ofyouth’s engagement in digital media and technologies. Where appropriateand relevant, we also interviewed teachers, program organizers, parents,and individuals working in specific media industries. A series of pilot projectsconducted by M.A. students at the University of California, Berkeley,were completed in 2005. The bulk of the fieldwork for this project wasconducted in 2006 and 2007 by postdoctoral researchers and Ph.D. students.Collectively, we conducted 659 semistructured interviews, 28 diarystudies, and focus group interviews with 67 individuals. Interviews wereconducted informally with at least 78 individuals and we participated inmore than 50 research-related events, such as conventions, summer camps,award ceremonies, or other local events. Complementing our interviewbasedstrategy, we carried out more than 5,194 observation hours, whichwere chronicled in regular field notes, and we have collected 10,468 profiles,transcripts from 15 online discussion group forums, and more than389 videos as well as numerous materials from classroom and after-schoolcontexts. The majority of the participants in our research were recruitedthrough snowball sampling in person, via emails, and through institutions,as well as through the placement of recruitment scripts on websites andlocal community newsletters.In addition to interviews, we administered paper and online questionnairesto develop a comparative portrait of our participants. The generalquestionnaire was completed by 363 respondents. 8 Based on the surveymaterial of a significant subset of our research participants, we know that

Project Overview 357the population we have examined is distinctive in some important ways.Our survey population ranged in age from 7 to 25, with a median age of16; 86 percent of these respondents fell between 12 and 19 years of age.Our respondents were evenly split in terms of gender identification. Interms of the ethnic identities designated by our participants, we skew fromnational averages in having a larger proportion of Asian participants anda smaller proportion of whites. 9 These proportions were influenced by thelocation of many of our research sites, such as online interest groups andin the large metropolitan centers of California. 10 The focus of our work hasbeen to develop a series of in-depth case studies of youth practice, not indeveloping a nationally representative sample. Many of our studies focusedon online interest groups and youth media programs that representedmedia-savvy youth at the forefront in innovation of new media literacyand practice. We also sought to counterbalance this focus by developingcase studies that were centered on mainstream youth and their friendshipdrivenpractices as well as on lower-income communities with memberswho do not all have the same access to technical resources. The surveymaterial on its own does not permit us to make generalizations for theoverall population we have looked at, but it does enable an understandingof some of the key variations in the different populations that we haveexplored, and how they are situated in relation to other broader quantitativeindicators. (See section 1.1 for more on how our study relates toquantitative studies on youth, media, and technology.)Notes1. The seven postdoctoral researchers include Sonja Baumer (University of California,Berkeley), Matteo Bittanti (University of California, Berkeley), Heather A. Horst(University of Southern California/University of California, Berkeley), Patricia G.Lange (University of Southern California), Katynka Z. Martínez (University ofSouthern California), C. J. Pascoe (University of California, Berkeley), and LauraRobinson (University of Southern California).2. The six doctoral students include danah boyd (University of California, Berkeley),Becky Herr-Stephenson (University of Southern California), Mahad Ibrahim(University of California, Berkeley), Dilan Mahendran (University of California,Berkeley), Dan Perkel (University of California, Berkeley), and Christo Sims(University of California, Berkeley).

358 Project Overview3. The nine master’s students include Judd Antin (University of California, Berkeley),Alison Billings (University of California, Berkeley), Megan Finn (University ofCalifornia, Berkeley), Arthur Law (University of California, Berkeley), Annie Manion(University of Southern California), Sarai Mitnick (University of California, Berkeley),Paul Poling (University of California, Berkeley), David Schlossberg (University ofCalifornia, Berkeley), and Sarita Yardi (University of California, Berkeley).4. Judy Suwatanapongched is a J.D. student at the University of Southern California.5. Rachel Cody was a project assistant at the University of Southern California.6. The seven undergraduates are Max Besbris (University of California, Berkeley),Brendan Callum (University of Southern California), Allison Dusine (University ofCalifornia, Berkeley), Sam Jackson (Yale University), Lou-Anthony Limon (Universityof California, Berkeley), Renee Saito (University of Southern California), and TammyZhu (University of Southern California).7. The collaborators include Natalie Boero, an assistant professor of sociology atSan Jose State University; Scott Carter, a Ph.D. candidate at the University ofCalifornia, Berkeley, who now works at FXPal; Lisa Tripp, assistant professor ofschool media and youth services, College of Information, Florida State University;and Jennifer Urban, clinical assistant professor of law at the University of SouthernCalifornia.8. These respondents were those we conducted interviews with in our homes- andneighborhood-focused studies as well as in a number of other projects, includingPatricia G. Lange’s study “Thanks for Watching: A Study of Video-Sharing Practiceson YouTube,” Mizuko Ito’s “Transnational Anime Fandoms and Amateur CulturalProduction,” Becky Herr-Stephenson’s “Mischief Managed,” and danah boyd’s “TeenSociality in Networked Publics.” While some parents and other adults participatedin the survey, all statistics reported here are based on survey participants who are25 years old or younger, of which there were 363 respondents.9. We presented respondents with 14 ethnicity categories (one being “other”) andasked them to choose all that apply to them—49.3 percent of our population identifiedas white and 10.5 percent of our participants self-identified as African-Americanor black; 9.6 percent self-identified as Other Spanish-American/Latino and another5.2 percent self-identified as Mexican/Mexican American/Chicano; 6.3 percent ofour participants declared themselves Chinese/Chinese American; and just over8 percent of our respondents identified themselves as Asian, a category that inthe United States incorporates East Indian/Pakistani, Filipino/Filipino American,Japanese/Japanese American, Korean/Korean American, Vietnamese/VietnameseAmerican, and Other Asian. Another 5.2 percent identified as Other. Because respondentswere able to choose more than one category, the percentages did not add upto 100 percent. Our participants diverged from the averages calculated by the 2000

Project Overview 359U.S. census, particularly in terms of the density of the Asian population (which isquite a bit above the national proportion of 3.6 percent) and white populations(which is far below the national proportion of approximately 75 percent).10. In California, whites make up approximately 60 percent of the population andAsians constitute around 11 percent of the state’s population, according to the 2000U.S. Census. Latinos, who are not clearly defined in the 2000 U.S. Census, are alsoprominent in California.

Appendix II: Project DescriptionsIn this appendix, we provide an overview of the research sites included inthe Digital Youth Project. We have organized the sites into four generalcategories: homes and neighborhoods, institutional spaces, networkedsites, and interest groups. While the categories are primarily organizational,they do help to emphasize the range of sites of inquiry that we drawupon for the analysis here—twenty distinctive research projects in total 1 —as well as the epistemology that shaped the ways we approached our effortto understand youth’s engagement with new media from an ethnographicperspective. As is evident in our descriptions, many projects moved amongdifferent categories of research sites. For example, Lisa Tripp and BeckyHerr-Stephenson’s study of Los Angeles middle schools and KatynkaMartínez’s study of Pico Union families followed students at school andwithin their homes and neighborhoods. The points of intersection anddivergence between the kids in the different studies were of great interest,such as when a researcher in the neighborhood cluster of studies discoveredan anime fan, or conversely, when interest-based new media hobbieswere notably absent among kids in a particular study. In this book, wedescribe practices that we observed in multiple case studies that emergedthrough collaborative analysis, and the specificities of the research sitesand projects have largely been erased. In this appendix, we introduce theindividual projects to provide the reader with some of the context thatreaders may feel is missing in previous chapters. Each study comprises anethnographic analysis of new media in the lives of a particular population;taken as a whole, they offer a broader ecological perspective of how newmedia practices are distributed among diverse youth in diverse contexts.

362 Project DescriptionsHomes and NeighborhoodsWe focused on homes and families in urban, suburban, and rural contextsto understand how new media and technologies shaped the contours ofkids’ home lives and, in turn, how different family structures and economicand social positions may structure young people’s media ecologies(Bourdieu 1984; Holloway and Valentine 2003; Livingstone 2002;Silverstone and Hirsch 1992; see also chapter 4 in this book). Working inthe context of multicultural California (among other sites), we have takenseriously the need to understand the influence of ethnic, racial, gender,and class distinctions on many young people’s media and technologypractices (Chin 2001; Escobar 1994; Pascoe 2007a; Seiter 2005; Thorne2008). Indeed, one of the advantages of this large-scale ethnographicproject is the diversity of sites that we have been able to access.In their study of middle-school students and their families in Los Angeles,Lisa Tripp, Becky Herr-Stephenson, and Katynka Martínez conductedparticipant observation in the classrooms of teachers involved in aprofessional-development program for media arts and technology as wellas participant observation in after-school programs (Martínez, AnimationAround the Block; Martínez, High School Computer Club; Martínez, PicoUnion Community Center). In addition to the work in institutionalizedsettings, this study also incorporated interviews with kids, their siblings,and their parents. The interviews were conducted in English and Spanishand took place, when possible, at students’ homes, which allowed theresearchers to better understand the rich contexts of neighborhood andfamily life, such as Martínez’s study “Pico Union Families”. In a similarvein, but with a very different population, Heather Horst’s study “SiliconValley Families” examined the appropriation of new media and technologyin Silicon Valley, California. Recruiting her research participants fromparents’ email lists at schools in the region, she focused her studies on therole of new media in kids’ communication, learning, knowledge, and playin families with children between the ages of eight and eighteen to understandthe gendered and generational dynamics of the incorporation of newmedia at home.In their study “Living Digital,” C. J. Pascoe and Christo Sims conducteda multisited ethnographic project in order to analyze how teenagers communicate,negotiate social networks, and craft a unique teen culture using

Project Descriptions 363new media. In C. J. Pascoe’s case, she introduced herself to students in alocal digital-arts program in an ethnically diverse suburban area of the EastBay, near San Francisco, where she later interviewed many of the highschool–aged teenagers outside of school. Christo Sims (Rural and UrbanYouth) carried out research in homes in an area near the Sierra Nevadarange of rural California with a population of primarily white working- andmiddle-class families. In addition, he conducted work in Brooklyn, NewYork, an area that boasts a significant Caribbean, African-American, andLatino population; he gained access to the community with the help of alocal after-school program. By looking at teens across a variety of geographiclocations (rural, urban, and suburban) and socioeconomic statuses,Pascoe and Sims aimed to understand how new media have been foldedinto teens’ friendship and romance practices.Megan Finn, David Schlossberg, Judd Antin, and Paul Poling’s study“Freshquest” also focused on the role of media and technologies in thelives of teenagers through an examination of technology-mediated communicationhabits of freshman students at the University of California,Berkeley. Using a survey administered to 3,161 first-year students between2005 and 2006, their primary goal was to understand how students adoptand use information and communication technologies and how they talkabout growing up with technology, both in relation to their socioeconomicstatus and social networks. Finn and her colleagues also administered 140surveys and conducted focus-group interviews with first-year students at acommunity college in a suburb of the San Francisco Bay Area in 2006. Asnoted throughout this book, most of the material described is derived fromthe focus groups conducted with undergraduates at the University ofCalifornia, Berkeley.Along with interviews, surveys, and questionnaires, many of the projectsin our homes-and-neighborhoods studies experimented with differentways of engaging young people, using the media in kids’ everyday lives tonarrate and explain their varying engagements and commitments to newmedia. Dan Perkel and Sarita Yardi’s project “Digital Photo-Elicitation withKids” used digital-photography diary studies to show the technology practicesof kids entering middle school. Moving from an after-school programin the San Francisco Bay Area to the context of family life, Perkel and Yardilooked at the kinds of technologies participants used in their homes andin their summer activities, who they used them with, and what these

364 Project Descriptionsactivities meant to kids. With the assistance of Scott Carter, a doctoralstudent at the University of California, Berkeley, we also developed a diarystudy that used digital cameras and cell phone cameras (camphones)(Carter 2007). Building upon recent use of diary studies to documenteveryday media use (cf. Dourish and Bell 2007; Horst and Miller 2005;Ito, Okabe, and Anderson forthcoming; Okabe and Ito 2006; Van Houseet al. 2005), participants used mobile phones and digital cameras tochronicle their use of new media. Combined with other interviews,observations, and participation in many arenas of young people’s neighborhoodand home lives, this methodology enabled researchers to developa deeper understanding of the media ecologies that young people createand inhabit.Learning Institutions: Media-Literacy Programs and After-School ProgramsOver the past two decades, researchers interested in “informal learning”have increasingly turned their attention to institutions such as libraries,after-school programs, and museums as sites that structure learning experiencesthat differ from those in school (see Barron 2006; Bekerman, Burbules,and Silberman-Keller 2006). As institutions temporally and spatially situatedbetween the dominant institutions in kids’ lives—school and family—after-school programs and spaces offered potential for observing instancesof informal learning, particularly given the increasing importance of afterschooland enrichment programs in American public education.In light of the possibilities of these spaces, a number of our projectsfocused on after-school programs in an effort to understand how they fitinto the lives of young people. For example, Judd Antin, Dan Perkel, andChristo Sims investigated media-production classes at a San Franciscotechnology center. Assuming roles as volunteer program helpers for theirproject “The Social Dynamics of Media Production,” Antin, Perkel, andSims looked at how the students from low-income neighborhoods negotiateand appropriate the structured and unstructured aspects of the programto learn new technical skills, socialize with new groups of friends, and takeadvantage of the unique access to both technical and social resources thatoften are lacking in their homes and schools. In this case, researchers participatedregularly in the program. In some instances, researchers conductedinterviews with the participants in their homes or outside the

Project Descriptions 365program in an effort to understand how the program—and, more broadly,new media—shaped their lives.Although we primarily focused on learning spaces outside formal schoolcontexts, we also carried out two research projects in structured learningcontexts. Moving beyond binary questions of access, such as digital divides(Compaine 2001; Servon 2002), Lisa Tripp and Becky Herr-Stephenson’sstudy “Los Angeles Middle Schools” examined the complex relationshipsbetween the multimedia-production projects that were undertaken in middle-schoolclassrooms and the students’ out-of-school experiences withmultimedia. Contextualizing these in-class observations with interviews inhomes and schools throughout urban Los Angeles, Tripp and Herr-Stephenson aimed to understand the gaps and overlaps of media usewithin the contexts of homes and schools. Similarly, Laura Robinson’sstudy “Wikipedia and Information Evaluation” examined the role materialresources played in everyday information-seeking contexts among economicallydisadvantaged youth at a high school in an agricultural regionof central California. Project researchers primarily focused on the schoolsites in an effort to think about how digital and online media may facilitateproductive learning environments. In addition, our work in schools andafter-school programs was motivated by a desire to get to know youngpeople across the multiple contexts of their lives. In all of our institutionalprojects, researchers carried out observations in the programs and providedformal and informal feedback to the organizations that provided themwith access and support.Networked SitesRather than restricting our focus to bounded spaces or locales (Appadurai1996; Basch, Schiller, and Szanton-Blanc 1994; Gupta and Ferguson 1997),as researchers we wanted to acknowledge the “world of infinite interconnectionsand overlapping contexts” (Amit-Talai 2000, 6) that young peopleinhabit through new media. Often working in tandem with other formsof media and communication, new media provide communication venuesthat individuals incorporate into their lives to form, maintain, andstrengthen social ties and relationships (Boase 2007; di Gennaro andDutton 2007; Hampton 2007; Hampton and Wellman 2003; Miller andSlater 2000; Panagakos and Horst 2006; Wellman et al. 2003; Wilding

366 Project Descriptions2006). Recent scholarship of online communities illustrates that significantrelationships and community can be formed, even in the absence of physicalcopresence (Baym 2000; Constable 2003; Hine 2000; Kendall 2002;Rheingold 2000; Smith and Kollock 1999; Varnelis 2008; Wilson andPeterson 2002). Indeed, the Digital Future Project reveals that the percentageof individuals who report membership in an online community hasmore than doubled in the past three years (USC Center for the DigitalFuture 2008), indicating the growing importance of new media in facilitatingsocial groupings and community in the United States. For this reason,a significant part of our research focused on a number of the most prominentonline websites with the aim of understanding the inner workingsof online groups and emerging practices surrounding communityformation.Exploring a series of sites that dominated young people’s media ecologiesbetween 2005 and 2007, we concentrated our efforts on understandingpractices as they spanned online and offline settings, without privilegingone context as more or less authentic, or more or less virtual (Kendall2002). We were not interested in establishing a boundary between onlineparticipation as distinct from offline; rather, we saw specific online sites asan entry point into a varied set of hybrid practices that flowed throughthese sites. For example, in the discussion of social network sites thatbecame popular in 2005 (such as Bebo, Facebook, and MySpace), we arguethat the online contexts are largely a mirror and extension of sociabilityin teens’ local school-based relations. In her study “Teen Sociality inNetworked Publics,” danah boyd examined the ways in which teens usesites such as MySpace and Facebook to negotiate identity, socialize withfriends, and make sense of the world around them. Her project addressesteens’ friendship-driven practices and contextualizes their use of networkedpublics in their lives more broadly. Dan Perkel’s study “MySpace ProfileProduction” investigated how young people create MySpace pages. Whereasboyd examined the sociality of MySpace, Perkel concentrated on the sociotechnicalpractices and infrastructure of profile making, including gettingstarted with the help of friends, finding visual and audio material online,and copying and pasting snippets of code. The project revealed how aMySpace profile is produced through the socially and technically distributedactivity of many people and is intimately tied to the specific, localcommunities that the profile owner inhabits.

Project Descriptions 367Two of our researchers examined the phenomenon of YouTube, thevideo-sharing site that became popular in 2006. Patricia G. Lange analyzedhow children and youth interactively negotiate aspects of the self by creating,sharing, and watching videos on the site. In her study “YouTube andVideo Bloggers,” Lange examines how and what participants learn bymaking videos and providing feedback. She argues that through socialinteraction and self-comparison to other video makers, YouTubers learnhow to represent themselves and their work in order to become acceptedmembers of groups who share similar media-based affinities. In additionto conducting interviews and analyzing videos, Lange became a videoblogger and received feedback on her videos posted (and featured) onYouTube and on her own research website. Sonja Baumer focused on identitypractices of American youth on YouTube in her study “Self-Productionthrough YouTube.” Baumer’s study emphasizes self-production as an agentiveact that expresses the fluidity of identity achieved through forms ofsemiotic action and through practices such as self-presentation, differentiationand integration, self-evaluation, and cultural commentary.Just as social network sites and YouTube emerged as central to a widerange of young people’s participation in online sites during the course ofour research, gaming sites also piqued the interests of kids and teens.Heather Horst and Laura Robinson’s study “Neopets” explored culturalproducts and knowledge creation surrounding a popular children’s website.Looking at practices varying from authoring relatively simple web pages,participating in online auctions, writing stories, and creating galleries toshowcase collections of specialized items, the study used questionnairesand interviews to examine how participants develop notions of reputation,expertise, and other forms of identification. Rachel Cody examined avery different kind of online game in her study of the massively multiplayeronline role-playing game Final Fantasy XI. By becoming a memberof a linkshell, the communities through which players organize theirgame playing, Cody’s research examined how the social activity extendedbeyond the game into websites, message boards, and instant-messengerprograms. This contact strengthened the relationships formed within thegame and encouraged a level of collaboration that is impossible withinthe game, allowing players to create strategies through videos, screenshots, and community experiences. Throughout all of the online-basedresearch, a commitment to participation and engagement through these

368 Project Descriptionssites remained central to developing an understanding of these sitesand practices.Interest-Based GroupsAlthough social scientists have studied youth subcultures for some time,the relationship between media and youth culture emerged most cogentlyin the British cultural studies movement in the 1970s and 1980s. 2 Rangingfrom music, fashion, hairstyles, language, lifestyle, and other forms ofpopular culture, research emphasized youth cultural forms and agency(Hall and Jefferson 1975). Looking at differences in practices across age,class, ethnicity, race, gender, and other measures of difference and power(Hebdige 1979; Jenkins 1983; McRobbie 1980; Willis 1977), cultural studiesscholars examined youth, popular culture, media, and the creation ofalternative publics, with particular attention to the ways in which themeaning, or texts, resisted and subverted normative practices and structuresin society (Amit-Talai and Wulff 1995; Bucholz 2002; Maira and Soep2004; Snow 1987). For example, rebellion and the development of analternative lifestyle was pervasive in the do-it-yourself (DIY) ethos of punkculture, one of the first groups to market and circulate its own musicoutside mainstream society and, in turn, to challenge traditional sites ofproduction, consumption, and copyright (Hebdige 1979). This DIY ethiccontinues in the remix culture of the early hip-hop and DJ movements(Gilroy 1987; Hebdige 1987; Sharma 1999). This attention to the relationshipbetween media and popular culture and the changing relationshipsamong production, consumption, and participation continues in much ofthe work on youth and the ethnography of media (e.g., Askew and Wilk2002; Ginsburg, Abu-Lughod, and Larkin 2002).Recognizing the tremendous transformations in the empirical and theoreticalwork on youth subcultures, new media, and popular culture throughthe past decades, researchers across our project focused on the modes ofexpression, circulation, and mobilization of youth subcultural forms in andthrough new media. For example, Dilan Mahendran’s project “Hip-HopMusic Production,” explored the practices of amateur music-makingagainst the background of hip-hop culture in the San Francisco Bay Area’safter-school settings. Mahendran’s research illuminated the centrality ofmusic-listening and -making by both enthusiasts and youth in general as

Project Descriptions 369world-disclosing practices that challenge the assumption that youth aresimply passive consumers. The commodification of digital media technologiesfocused on the low-cost private or personal-computing model hasenabled DIY music makers to create, produce, and distribute both highlycollaborative and individual works of art. Following the DIY theme inherentin many subcultural artistic communities, Mizuko Ito’s “Anime Fans”examined a highly distributed network of overseas fans of Japanese animation.She focused on how the fandom organized and communicated onlineand how it engaged in creative production through the transformativereuse of commercial media. Becky Herr-Stephenson’s study “Harry PotterFandom” investigated multimedia production undertaken by young HarryPotter fans and the role technology plays in facilitating production anddistribution of fan works. Herr-Stephenson’s research situates young fans’media production at the intersection of interest-driven and friendshipdrivenparticipation, calling attention to the unique characteristics of thislarge, vibrant, and prolific fandom.Where much of the early work on subcultures and media focused oncreative and artistic modes of expression, we are only just beginning tounderstand the scope and scale of other subcultural practices. C. J. Pascoeand Natalie Boero’s study “Pro–Eating Disorder Discussion Groups” examinedthe construction of online eating-disorder communities by analyzingpro-anorexia (“ana”) and pro-bulimia (“mia”) discussion groups. Based onparticipants’ characterizations of anorexia as a lifestyle choice rather thana disease, the project attempts to move beyond dominant clinical narrativesof eating disorders, instead highlighting participants’ ambivalenceregarding gender, body size, and offline relationality. Pascoe and Boeroreveal how the ana and mia lifestyles are produced and reproduced in theseonline spaces. Moreover, their study demonstrates the ways new mediabring to the fore other practices that previously existed but remainedunderground or outside the purview of mainstream society.Like the anorexic and bulimic communities that have found new modesof expression in online venues, gaming cultures and communities havebecome more public in the new media ecology. Focusing on a local gatheringplace for gamers in the San Francisco Bay Area, Arthur Law’s study“Team Play” explored the social context in which teenagers are madeuse of video games at a cyber café. The study highlighted two styles ofgame play at the café: solo teenagers playing a real-time strategy game by

370 Project Descriptionsthemselves and groups of teenagers playing first-person shooters together.Despite their differences, each style is highly social and demonstrates thatonline video games can be seen as a venue for maintaining friendshipsacross vast distances or providing additional social activities on top oftraditional ones such as basketball or football. Looking at the emergenceof networked gaming, Matteo Bittanti’s study “Game Play” examines thecomplex relationship between teenagers and video games. Bittanti focusedon the ways in which gamers create and experiment with different identities;learn through informal processes; form peer groups; develop a varietyof cognitive, social, and emotional skills; and produce significant textualartifacts (e.g., information, comments, reviews, music videos, and gamevideos) through digital play. Electronic gaming has become a focus foryoung people’s social interaction, interest-driven learning, and creativeproduction.Notes1. Three pilot projects that we do not discuss at length in this report book wereformative in structuring our research methodologies and attention to informallearning. The first, Dan Perkel and Sarita Yardi’s project “Searching for CountWhistleboy: Explorations in Collaborative Storytelling through Design Research”used a design research approach to explore the possibilities of collaborative storytellingamong fifth graders. Through design activities, games, group discussion, andinterviews, Perkel and Yardi examined the topics of collaboration, appropriation,and social dynamics around the kids’ creative productions. The second project,Sarita Yardi and Sarai Mitnick’s study “Media Literacy Education: UnderstandingTechnology and Online Media in the Lives of Middle-School Girls,” investigated therole of technology and online media in the lives of girls in an after-school technologyprogram for middle-school girls in Oakland, California. The third project, AlisonBillings’s “Wondering, Wandering, and Wireless: An Ethnography of the Explainersand Their Brief Affair with a Mobile Technology,” examined the ways in whichtechnology could be incorporated more effectively for technology literacy. Billingsexplored how “Explainers,” or young people who are front-line educators to thevisitors at a science and technology museum in the San Francisco Bay Area, used anew mobile device in an effort to improve the quality of their work by providingthem access to on-the-fly resources.2. Mintz (2004) argues that youth subcultures did not emerge until in the 1950s.

Appendix III: Project IndexStudy’s Short Title Study’s Full Title Study’s AuthorsAnimation Aroundthe BlockAnime FansCollaborativeStorytellingDigital Photo-Elicitation with KidsFinal Fantasy XIAnimation Around the Block:After-School Game DesignTransnational Anime Fandomsand Amateur Cultural ProductionSearching for Count Whistleboy:Explorations in CollaborativeStorytelling through DesignResearchDiscovering the Social Context ofKids’ Technology UseLife in the Linkshell: TheEveryday Activity of a FinalFantasy CommunityKatynka Z.MartínezMizuko ItoDan Perkel andSarita YardiDan Perkel andSarita YardiRachel CodyFreshquest Freshquest Megan Finn,David Schlossberg,Judd Antin, andPaul PolingGame Play Game Play Matteo BittantiHarry Potter FandomHigh SchoolComputer ClubHip-Hop MusicProductionLiving DigitalLos Angeles MiddleSchoolsMischief Managed: MultimediaProduction in the Harry PotterFandomThe Student-Led Startup: OneHigh School’s Computer ClubHip-Hop Music and Meaning inthe Digital AgeLiving Digital: Teens’ SocialWorlds and New MediaTeaching and Learning withMultimediaBecky Herr-StephensonKatynka Z.MartínezDilan MahendranC. J. Pascoe andChristo SimsLisa Tripp andBeckyHerr-Stephenson

372 Project IndexStudy’s Short Title Study’s Full Title Study’s AuthorsMedia LiteracyEducationMySpace ProfileProductionNeopetsPico UnionCommunity CenterPico Union FamiliesPro–Eating DisorderDiscussion GroupsRural and UrbanYouthSelf-Productionthrough YouTubeMedia Literacy Education:Understanding Technology andOnline Media in the Lives ofMiddle-School GirlsThe Practices of MySpace ProfileProductionVirtual Playgrounds: AnEthnography of NeopetsNew Media in an OldCommunity CenterBedroom Culture and the StudioApartment: Media, Parents, andChildren in Urban Los AngelesNo Wannarexics AllowedRural and Urban Youth (Part ofthe Living Digital: Teens’ SocialWorlds and New Media Project)Broadcast Yourself: Self-Production through OnlineVideo-Sharing on YouTubeSarita YardiandSarai MitnickDan PerkelHeather A. HorstandLaura RobinsonKatynka Z.MartínezKatynka Z.MartínezC. J. Pascoe andNatalie BoeroChristo SimsSonja BaumerSilicon ValleyComing of Age in Silicon Valley Heather A. HorstFamiliesTeam Play Team Play: Kids in the Café Arthur LawTeen Sociality inNetworked PublicsThe SocialDynamics of MediaProductionWikipedia andInformationEvaluationWondering,Wandering, andWirelessYouTube and VideoBloggersTeen Sociality in NetworkedPublicsThe Social Dynamics of MediaProduction in an After-SchoolSettingInformation the Wiki WayWondering, Wandering, andWireless: An Ethnography of theExplainers and Their Brief Affairwith a Mobile TechnologyThanks for Watching: A Study ofVideo-Sharing Practices onYouTubedanah boydJudd Antin,Dan Perkel, andChristo SimsLaura RobinsonAlison BillingsPatricia G. Lange

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IndexAccessafter-school programs and, 258barriers to, 346–347computer, 319conditions of, 192cost of, 71, 150, 179–181, 214, 233creative production and, 287demographics of, 32–35economic networks and, 324gaming and, 198, 221–222, 230, 240geeking out and, 73–75Internet, 30lack of, 182–183media, 32, 79, 113, 150messing around and, 62–65restrictions on, 8, 47, 71, 94, 95, 113,190schools and, 47work-arounds and, 48, 61–62Addictions, 79, 92, 152, 190–191Adolescence, 118, 119, 297Adultsas co-conspirators, 174–175as collaborators, 263–268, 349–351as coparticipants, 7, 207participation of, 340–341, 344as peers, 274tension between youth and, 2, 14,23–24, 25, 82, 113, 114, 146, 156,182, 185–190, 249Advertising, 284, 287, 309, 311, 312“Affinity groups,” 35After-school centers/programs, 62,63–65, 254, 256–259, 263, 280, 288,291, 301, 305–307, 349–350Agecreative production and, 245dynamics, 158gaming and, 196, 197–198, 199gradation, 8media use and, 33Agency, 6, 9, 14, 57, 220, 247, 301,320, 333Agendaseducational, 2, 348equity, 298, 302, 305learning, 350literacy, 24public access, 345–347youth, 13“Always-on” communication, 20, 84,85, 113, 128, 129Analysis, organization of, 339Anime, 66, 67–69, 70, 71, 197, 211,244, 253, 262, 268, 269, 275–276,282–283, 285, 292n, 295, 296,310–311, 324, 325–326, 358nconventions, 68, 69, 276, 283, 284,285, 310, 311–314, 316, 326music videos (AMVs), 68, 74, 253,262, 269, 275–276, 278–279,282–283, 285, 292n

400 IndexAntin, Judd, 46, 62, 63, 81, 118, 162,197, 202, 256, 296, 305, 358n, 363,364, 371, 372Anxietyadult, 24, 45, 121, 150, 152, 186, 191,199social, 8, 24, 25teen, 101, 104, 141Appadurai, Arjun, 13, 19, 356, 365Apprenticeship, 306, 307, 334, 335Aspiration, 150, 153, 264–266, 268,284–290, 291, 295, 299, 302, 323,324, 350, 351–352Attitudesadult/parental, 35, 82, 150–154, 190cheats and, 222feedback and, 278–279Audiences, 144, 244, 245, 251,280–284, 285, 286–287, 291invisible, 19niche, 289–290, 291Authority, 2, 9, 14, 82, 113Autonomy, 1, 5, 38, 57, 61, 63, 66, 82,117, 119, 127, 152, 153, 163, 164,190, 191, 249, 296, 335, 340, 342, 350Availability, 128–130Bandwidth, 182–183Baumer, Sonja, 46, 244, 252, 357n,367, 372Bedrooms, 155–163, 191Beliefs, 150, 151, 178, 183–184,190–191, 196, 209, 302–305Benkler, Yochai, 19, 284, 300, 325Bittanti, Matteo, 66, 172, 175, 197,203, 207, 209, 214, 222, 223, 230,231, 232, 235, 257n, 370, 371BitTorrent, 68, 69, 72, 74, 76Blogs, 244, 274Boero, Natalie, 349, 358n, 369, 372Boundaries, 147, 151, 175–176blurring, 287creative production and, 290gaming and, 239setting, 95, 97, 139–141, 151, 192sharing and, 280–281work, 118, 227–235work/play, 310boyd, danah, 19, 41, 80, 81, 94, 97,113, 114n, 115n, 118, 124, 139, 141,151, 156, 157, 163, 176, 177, 182,183, 185, 186, 189, 190, 197, 203,229, 232, 260, 261, 281, 357n, 358n,366, 372Breaking up, 106–107, 123, 132–138,146Buckingham, David, 2, 3, 8, 9, 10, 25,28, 80, 150, 199, 246, 247, 248, 249“Buddy lists,” 94Bullying/“cyberbullying,” 27, 84, 105,107–109, 112Capitalcultural, 305, 334gaming, 214, 220, 222social, 334subcultural, 234Capitalism, 204, 319–323, 331–333Careers, 288, 290, 295, 297, 298,311–314, 315–316, 322, 334–335Career training, 301–302Carter, Michael, 355Case studies (short titles), 2, 5–6Animation around the Block, 296,319, 362, 371Anime Fans, 66, 68, 70, 74, 174, 176,195, 197, 211, 239, 244, 253, 262,275, 279, 281, 282, 284, 285, 295,296, 310, 311, 316, 319, 324, 325,369, 371Collaborative Storytelling, 370n, 371Digital Photo-Elicitation with Kids,151, 163, 165, 208, 363, 371Final Fantasy XI, 69, 197, 203, 208,216–218, 219, 237, 296, 326–329,336n, 367, 371

Index 401Freshquest, 60, 81, 91, 118, 125–126,131, 138, 162, 171, 174, 363, 371Game Play, 66, 172, 175, 197, 203,209, 210–211, 214, 222, 223, 230,231, 232, 235, 370, 371High School Computer Club, 64, 213,233, 296, 314, 320–323, 362, 371Hip-Hop Music Production, 194, 244,269, 279, 281, 283, 291, 296, 305,310, 349, 368, 371Living Digital, 39, 46, 48, 81, 96, 99,105, 106, 118, 151, 175, 177, 180,181, 182, 186, 276, 362, 371, 372Los Angeles Middle Schools, 42, 47,167, 174, 183, 221, 296, 361, 365, 371Media Literacy Education, 370n, 372MySpace Profile Production, 48, 54,72–73, 81, 89, 179, 207, 224, 244,254–255, 256, 260, 366, 372Neopets, 197, 204–206, 223, 296,329–330, 331–333, 367, 372Pico Union Community Center, 255,362, 372Pico Union Families, 74, 81, 151, 167,194n, 361, 362, 372Pro-Eating Disorder DiscussionGroups, 369, 372Rural and Urban Youth, 39, 41, 49,50, 56, 72, 76, 81, 90, 97, 98, 102,111, 118, 123, 126, 129, 130, 131,132, 137, 138, 140, 141, 143, 151,155, 174, 179, 180, 193n, 212, 236,296, 363, 372Self-Production through YouTube, 46,244, 252, 367, 372Silicon Valley Families, 29, 42, 67, 81,149, 155, 165, 173, 176, 182, 185,186, 189, 197, 203, 212, 231, 252,295, 307, 362, 372Social Dynamics of Media Production,the, 46, 62, 63, 197, 202, 203, 207,229, 254, 256, 280, 288, 296, 305,364, 372Team Play, 197, 215–216, 369, 372Teen Sociality in Networked Publics,41, 81, 118, 124, 139, 141, 151, 156,157, 163, 176, 177, 182, 183, 185,186, 189, 190, 197, 203, 229, 232,260, 261, 281, 358n, 366, 372Wikipedia and InformationEvaluation, 55, 365, 372Wondering, Wandering, and Wireless,370n, 372YouTube and Video Bloggers, 56, 151,166, 172, 197, 223, 233, 244, 273,279, 289, 296, 309, 315, 330, 367,372Cheats/cheating, 55, 71, 220–222, 227,241n, 341Childhoodculture of, 6–7sociology of, 6–7studies, 13–14Civic engagement, 160–162, 325, 330,352–353Class, 190–191access and, 348aspiration and, 351–352dynamics, 152–154enterprises and, 319–320gaming and, 199–200media use and, 33, 34mobile phones and, 176–177, 179–181new media practice and, 5nonmarket work and, 323–324online spaces and, 182–184, 185–186training and, 301–304, 307work and, 298, 299, 333–334“Co-conspirators,” 349–350Cody, Rachel, 69, 70, 197, 203, 208,219, 237, 238, 296, 329, 358n, 367,371Collaboration, 263–274, 285–287creative, 225–226, 245, 250gaming and, 214, 216–218, 226youth-adult, 349, 350–351

402 IndexCollective action, 14, 219–220,326–329College, 92–93, 185–186, 312, 331family dynamics and, 162gaming and, 211, 213, 235messing around and, 63Comments/commentary, 243, 263,266, 267, 275, 278, 279, 286, 291Commercialism, 204Commercialization, 31Commitmentgaming and, 230, 233, 235–239geeking out and, 65–66jobs/careers and, 330nonmarket work and, 299Communication“always-on,” 20, 84, 85, 113, 128, 129back-channel, 48–49casual, 124–125indirect, 136–138, 146–147intergenerational, 192patterns, 11personal, 244private, 80, 120, 138–139, 181–182Communitiesbuilding of, 97creative, 245, 285, 289, 291gaming, 214–220, 221norms, 100, 104, 113, 114peer, 79“personal,” 83specialized knowledge, 268–274writing, 51–53Communities of expertise, 74Communities of interest, 288, 289Communities of practice, 14, 35–36,66Competencies, 25–26Competition, 275, 278, 283gaming and, 206, 209, 214–220Computer clubs, 64, 320–323“Conceptual blending,” 219Conceptual frameworks, 13–26“Concerted cultivation,” 153, 299, 301,323–324, 335Connectedness, 85Connection speed, 182–183Consoles, portable, 202–203Construct, conceptual, 77“Consumer citizenship,” 9, 19Consumerism, 205Consumption, 15, 88, 93, 269, 286gaming and, 221, 224media, 11, 153, 246Contentplayer-generated, 221user-generated, 301“Content creation,” 244Contextengagement and, 5gaming and, 198–201, 213, 220, 228,239–240learning and, 12–13, 77–78media use and, 31, 37nonmarket work and, 323participation and, 77–78social and cultural, 13, 15, 30“Continuous contact,” 120–121,128–130, 138, 139, 146Controlintimate relationships and, 139–141parental, 151–154, 163–164, 172, 174,175, 178, 179, 181, 185, 190, 192,193nstruggle for, 14“Controlled casualness,” 122, 124,143–144, 146Conventionsanime, 68, 69, 276, 283, 284, 285,310, 311–314, 316, 326engagement, 15genre, 280, 344Harry Potter, 285–287writing, 11Convergence, 5, 19, 108, 274Coolness, 83, 84, 96, 111, 112

Index 403Coordination, 286, 326–329creative production and, 273, 274hanging out and, 39–40Copresence, 18, 38–39, 46, 50, 147limits on, 38“Copy and paste literacy,” 256Corsaro, William, 6, 7, 8, 83, 93Courtship, 118–138Creative production, 243–293amateur, 246, 280, 290–292elite, 269everyday, 244, 250, 251–261, 290gaming and, 223–227getting started in, 261–268improvement of, 274–280nonmarket labor and, 330personal, 245, 246, 251, 252–253, 290Creativity, 245–248Credibility, 66–71Critiques, 278–279“Crowdsourcing,” 300, 336nCrushes, 122, 124, 139Cultural capital, 301–302, 305Cultural change, 30Cultural contextcreativity and, 249, 250gaming and, 220, 228, 239–240Cultural debates, gaming and, 227Cultural production, gaming and,220–227Culturebedroom, 158children’s, 6–7gaming, 220, 222, 227mainstream, 232–233, 235popular, 248production of, 19public, 92struggles over, 25youth, 5, 82–85Customizationgame content, 222–223, 227, 240profile, 251, 256–259Dating, 117, 118–122, 128–138Debate, public, 2, 25Demographic, youth as, 23Demographics, 12gaming, 195–196, 200, 233genres of participation, 34–35media use, 32–35survey participant, 356–357,358–359nyouth, 8Derivative works, 71, 248, 256, 326deviantART, 20, 244, 255, 275, 309,312“Digital divide,” 2, 18, 77, 345–346.See also AccessDigital footprints, 140–141Digital generation, 1Digital personhood, 185Distribution, 262, 287, 290, 291, 300,309–314, 333Do-it-yourself (DIY) ethic, 320–323, 368Drama, social, 100, 103, 104–112, 135,136, 144Eckert, Penny, 6, 8, 26, 37, 79, 83, 109Ecologygaming, 199, 200, 239–240media, 7, 10, 14, 23, 29–78, 151–154,173, 185, 192, 197, 244, 247, 274,292, 305, 335as metaphor, 31social and cultural, 1, 4, 18Economiesdigital, 300, 306peer–based, 334–335, 336virtual, 299, 300, 329–330, 331–333,334Education, 2, 12, 23after-school, 305–307aspirations and, 302beliefs about, 150, 151, 183–184,190–191, 302–305cultural capital and, 305

404 IndexEducation (cont.)ecology of, 12future challenges, 340–341gaming and, 196media, 246–247public, 352–353remedial, 298, 305, 307vocational, 302, 305–307, 334as work of childhood, 297–298Education and technologybeliefs about, 150, 151, 183–184,302–305media education and, 248–250new literacy studies and, 249Edutainment, 164, 175, 196Empowerment, 63, 247, 300, 305Engagementchanges/shifts in, 2, 20–21, 114civic, 352–353conditions of, 307conventions for, 15creative production and, 44, 250,261gaming and, 220, 227, 228, 232,235–239imagination and, 246intensive, 65–71learning and, 12media, 3–4, 9, 10, 11, 12–13, 15, 18,247, 249patterns of, 77practices, 5profile creation and, 256technology and, 296training and, 304–305work and, 295, 323Enterprises, 309, 319–323Entrepreneurism, 296, 299, 307–323,333Equity agendas, 298, 302, 305Ethiccivic participation, 325do-it-yourself (DIY), 320–323, 368professional, 305“self-taught,” 57, 250, 262–263sharing, 300Ethnicity, media use and, 33, 34Ethnography, 3, 4–6, 7, 10, 13, 15, 17,21, 24, 26, 36, 78n, 152, 200, 201,300, 339, 355, 356, 361, 362–363,368Evaluation, production, 274–280Experimentation, 57–62, 261–262digital tools and, 57–58gaming and, 58work and, 334work-arounds and, 61–62Expertise, 14communities of, 74gaming and, 200, 210, 212–213, 220,224–227, 228, 231, 234, 235, 240marketing of, 320peer, 274technical, 199, 200work and, 299, 308–309Experts, children as, 167–170Exploitation, 300, 325Exploring, 54–57, 76, 208Facebook, 10, 79–115creative production and, 251intimacy and, 123popularity of, 80, 81Failure, low-stakes, 58Fame, 245, 275–276, 289Families, 149–194gaming and, 206–207hierarchies in, 157–158influence of, 192transnational, 170–171, 193nvalues of, 151, 153–154Family dynamicscollege and, 162extended family and, 163–164fathers and, 165, 168–169, 173–175gender and, 165, 169, 171, 173–175

Index 405grandparents and, 163–164mothers and, 171, 173–175, 263–267parent-child, 149, 157, 165–171siblings and, 157–158, 162–163,178–179Fandoms, 66, 269, 284, 285–287anime, 269–273work and, 310Fans, 243, 312art and, 71conventions and, 326Friend lists and, 96–97practices of, 15sites of, 220Fansubbing, 26, 28, 67–68, 70, 71, 72,74, 269–273, 276, 278, 283, 295,325–326, 330Fear-based narratives, 144Feedback, 243, 249, 251, 266–267,274–280, 286mechanisms for, 274, 275, 276, 280norms for, 277peer-based learning and, 22File sharing, 301Finn, Megan, 58, 81, 91, 118, 125, 126,131, 138, 162, 171, 174, 358n, 363,371Flash software, 63, 258, 262Flirting, 120, 122–128, 143–144“Fortuitous searching,” 54–57, 76Frameworksconceptual, 13–26descriptive, 31, 75participation, 35–36“Free culture,” 300, 325, 330, 331Free labor, 325–333Freelancing, 309, 333Free speech, 279Frequency of media use, 32Friendsmaking of, 88–91mutual, intimacy and, 122, 123,125–126, 128, 146“Friends/Friending,” 94–104, 149choosing, 94–100lists, 122ranking, 100–104, 131–132, 136as term, 16Friendship, 79–115audience and, 284creative production and, 290maintenance of, 79, 88, 113networks, 312performing of, 93–100“Friendship-driven” learning, 22“Friendship-driven” practicescreative production and, 244, 250,251, 253, 261defined, 15–17friendship and, 27gaming and, 206–209intimacy and, 27, 118social network sites and, 80“Full-time intimate communities,” 84,113, 120–121Game Boy, 158, 164, 316–317GameCube, 29–30, 164, 212Gamer parents, 207GamesCommand and Conquer, 223consoles/platforms (see Game Boy;GameCube; Nintendo; PlayStation;Wii; Xbox)Counter-Strike, 213, 215–216, 228,230–231Dance Dance Revolution (DDR), 229Doom, 210–211Dungeons & Dragons, 214, 233Final Fantasy XI, 69, 197, 203, 208,216–218, 219, 237, 296, 326–329,336n, 367, 371first-person shooters (FPS), 163, 175,196, 201, 210–211, 225, 230–231,232–234, 322Flash, 202, 204

406 IndexGames (cont.)Grand Theft Auto, 175Guitar Hero, 207Halo, 196, 211–212, 213, 225, 229Mario Kart, 229massively multiplayer online, 69,207–208, 216–218, 233–234, 237,329, 336n (see also Final Fantasy XI;World of Warcraft)Millsberry, 29, 30, 223Miniclip, 202, 207MUDs, 223, 242nMUSHs, 223, 242nNeopets, 197, 204–206, 222–223, 241n,296, 329–330, 331–333, 367, 372networked, 214–220Pokémon, 10, 41, 204, 222, 329puzzle, 201, 202, 203, 207Rock Band, 207RuneScape, 42, 208The Sims, 223, 225, 236, 237, 321StarCraft, 223Tamagotchi, 204Total Battlefield, 224World of Warcraft (WoW), 163,166–167, 172, 174, 215, 219–220,233–234, 314–315, 321, 322Yu-Gi-Oh!, 227, 329Gaming, 66, 150, 195–242, 326access to, 235achievement in, 213“addiction to,” 236–237, 239, 240age and, 196, 197–198, 199, 206,227–228, 235antisocial behavior and, 196, 204,209, 241naugmented, 198, 202, 220–227, 228,326beliefs about, 209capital of, 220, 222careers in, 315–316, 322class and, 240, 241ncommitment to, 214, 220communities of, 197consoles for, 195–196, 202–203, 206,207, 241ncontext for, 198–201demographics of, 195–196, 200,206–207, 210ecology of, 199, 200, 239–240economy of, 222elite culture of, 235engagement in, 210–211, 214expertise and, 240families and, 165–167, 175–176,206–207geeking out and, 202, 231, 234–235,236gender and, 196, 199, 200, 206, 210,213, 227–235genres of participation and, 201–202genres of practice in, 201–227hanging out and, 42, 198, 201,206–209, 228, 229, 230, 234, 235,238, 240“hard-core,” 196, 233–234, 239identity and, 213, 214–215killing time and, 198, 201, 202–206,228, 232, 235, 238, 240knowledge sharing and, 213leadership in, 214, 216, 219learning and, 196, 198, 200, 201messing around and, 201–202, 204MMORPGs and, 207–208, 214,216–219modding of, 196, 222–223organizing and mobilizing in, 198,202, 214–220, 228, 230, 235, 238,240parental rules for genres of,175–176participation gap in, 239–240portability of, 202–203professional, 315–316, 322recreational, 198, 200, 201–202,209–213, 228, 229, 230, 232, 235,237, 238, 240sexism and, 196, 199

Index 407sociability in, 206–209, 210–213solitary, 201, 202–204, 210status in, 212–213strategies for, 326–329value of, 201violence and, 196, 198, 241nGay teens, 90, 127–128, 144–145Gee, James Paul, 13, 21, 24, 25, 35, 57,196Geek cred, 66–71“Geeking out,” 65–75access and, 73–75commitment and, 65–66, 73expertise and, 66–71, 74–75families and, 74friendships and, 74–75gaming and, 200, 202, 223–227geek cred in, 66–71rewriting the rules and, 71–73subcultural identity and, 71Genderaccess and, 191, 348dynamics, 158family dynamics and, 165, 169, 171,173–175gaming and, 196, 199, 200, 227–235,239–240new media practice and, 5, 33power and, 140, 148–149nsocial drama and, 109Generation gap, 2, 5, 82, 192gaming and, 207, 234–235intergenerational learning and, 5, 190,234, 350–353Genre analysis, 37Genres of participation, 11, 14–18commitment and, 76cultural, 331demographics of, 34–35expertise and, 75as framework, 35–37, 77“friendship-driven,” 27, 150, 290(see also “Friendship-driven”practices)gaming and, 197, 198, 200“geeking out,” 15–17, 27, 65–75, 290(see also “Geeking out”)“hanging out,” 37–53, 122, 163, 185(see also “Hanging out”)intensity of, 75–76“interest-driven,” 27–28, 150, 290(see also “Interest-driven” practices)“messing around,” 15–17, 27, 53–65,290 (see also “Messing around”)notion of, 15relationships between, 31, 77transitional, 17, 65, 76Genres of peer-based learning, 22Glitter, 86Goals, educational, 304Going out, 122–123, 128–132Going steady, 119Google, 54, 56, 57, 67, 73, 76, 78n,286, 330Gossip, 27, 79, 84, 105–109, 112, 113Growing up, 175–177Guides, strategy, 69–70, 200, 210, 211,222Hacks/hacking, 220, 222, 223code hacking, 71“Hanging out,” 37–53, 122, 163, 185back-channel communication and,48–49coordination of, 39–40gaming and, 42, 198, 206–209getting together and, 38–40instant messaging and, 38–39intimacy and, 119malls and, 79–80mobile phones and, 38–39multitasking and, 49–50sharing music and, 41–42social network sites and, 38–39,79–80, 113video viewing and, 46–47work-arounds for, 47YouTube and, 46

408 IndexHarassment, online, 107–109, 112Harry Potter, 5, 66, 75, 244, 277,285–287, 296, 310, 369“Haters,” 279Herr-Stephenson, Becky, 42, 47, 61, 66,75, 151, 167, 174, 183, 221, 244, 277,296, 302, 304, 310, 357n, 358n, 361,362, 365, 369, 371Hierarchiesfamily, 157–158“Friend,” 100–104, 123gaming, 219recognition, 288Hobbies/hobbyists, 284–285, 290, 299,301, 308, 311–314, 317, 334Hochschild, Arlie, 173, 174Home/homes, 150bedrooms in, 155–163, 191helping in, 297, 298, 314–315organization of media in, 151,154–163, 185, 190–191privacy in, 155–164public media spaces in, 154–155, 191Homeschooling, 187–188, 195Homework, 44, 55, 87, 155, 184,190–191, 267, 303“Homophily,” 88Horst, Heather A., 29, 42, 67, 81, 149,151, 155, 165, 170, 173, 174, 176,181, 182, 185, 186, 189, 191, 197,203, 212, 223, 231, 252, 295, 296,307, 357n, 362, 364, 365, 367, 372HTML, 257–258, 312, 346“Hyperpersonal” effect, 127“Hypersociality,” 10, 41, 46, 227Hyphy, 271, 292nIdentity/identitiesage, 5age-specific, 40creative, 269cultural, 13development of, 22, 114display of, 41, 84, 85, 94, 97, 114,156distinctions between, 231–232,234–235dual, 20–21as experts, 262, 268, 273family, 154, 168–169, 178, 192formation of, 31gamer/gaming, 197, 199, 210, 213,214–215, 227, 228–235, 237, 239geek, 66, 228, 232, 239–240gender, 227–235, 239generational, 2, 5, 11, 26, 28n, 82,292as leaders, 330loss of, 181marginalized, 89–90, 127–128, 233,349media, 12, 35as media creators/producers, 244, 247,279, 331multiple, 37negotiation of, 9, 11, 79, 82, 83,142–143, 151nerd, 318nonmarket work and, 323oppositional, 232–233, 235profiles and, 256subcultural, 71as techne-mentors, 59–60technological, 2youth, 5, 26Ideology, 7, 24, 351Illustrator, 262Imagination, engagement with, 246Independence, 117, 119, 127, 152,190Industry, media, 9, 23, 285, 287, 326,331Inequality, 171Informationaccess to, 54credibility of, 47

Index 409exchange of, 85fortuitous searching, 54–57online sources for, 54searching for, 54–57Infrastructures, 31Instant messaging, 80, 84, 89, 94, 105,107, 108, 109, 117, 150hanging out and, 38–39intimacy and, 120–121, 123Institutionseducational, 12, 23, 25, 300–307,351–352family as, 23, 25, 30, 190homes as, 12, 150intergenerational learning, 350–353learning and, 341participation and, 346, 347Intellectual property, 310Interactive media, 10“Interest-driven” learning, 22“Interest-driven” practicescreative production and, 27–28, 244,250, 261defined, 15–17gaming and, 27–28, 197, 211, 213,230, 239, 240networked publics and, 20, 352work and, 16, 20, 27–28Intergenerational struggles, 25, 26Internetaccess to, 30, 32–35, 46, 47, 64, 67,150, 171, 182–183, 345, 346, 347gossip and, 105–197as means of distribution, 325–326,330, 340work and, 300Internet cafés, 215–216Internet relay chat (IRC), 52, 68–69“Interpretive flexibility,” 24–25, 248,341, 342“Interpretive reproduction,” 7Intervention, adult, 340–341, 350Intimacy, 117–148Ito, Mizuko, 4, 10, 15, 19, 39, 40, 64,65, 66, 70, 74, 120, 121, 164, 174,176, 195, 196, 197, 222, 227, 234,239, 244, 249, 252, 253, 254, 262,275, 279, 281, 282, 283, 284, 285,295, 296, 310, 316, 319, 324, 325,326, 330, 345, 355, 358n, 364, 369,371James, Allison, 6, 7, 154, 155Jenkins, Henry, 9, 10, 15, 19, 25, 66,199, 228, 244, 246, 248, 284, 346Jobs, 295, 298. See also Labor; Workchildhood, 297, 314–315, 324, 333creative-class, 302, 305, 307–308, 319,324, 334fansubbing, 272–273, 325–326freelance, 312, 314–319high-status, 324high-tech, 307–308MMORPG, 326–329video production, 273–274Judgment, 175–177, 191Kaiser Family Foundation, 28n, 32–34,36, 78nKey terms, 14“Kid power,” 23Killing time, gaming and, 198Knowledge, 35–36, 41, 55, 57, 84, 169,172, 211, 221, 289, 298, 305, 333,343, 344, 347–348access to, 73, 323acquisition of, 13, 14, 21, 76, 220,227, 240authoritative, 2, 13, 339engagement with, 2exchange of, 227gaming and, 231marketable, 317–318, 320negotiations over, 1, 13networks of, 213, 220, 340, 346peer, 248, 260, 263, 274, 291

410 IndexKnowledge (cont.)production of, 19, 246, 336npublics for, 284seeking of, 5, 220sharing of, 14, 59–60, 171, 213specialized, 57, 66, 67, 69, 70, 220,231, 268–269, 273, 327, 340, 342,346technical, 223–224, 317, 320Labor. See also Jobs; Workchildhood and, 296–301, 307–308domestic, 299free, 325–333gender and, 299volunteer, 297, 299, 325–326, 330Lange, Patricia G., 56, 151, 166, 172,197, 223, 233, 244, 250, 262, 273,279, 289, 296, 309, 315, 330, 357n,358n, 367, 372Language, casual, 119, 125Lareau, Annette, 152–153, 176, 299,323Lave, Jean, 12, 13, 14, 56, 335Law, Arthur, 197, 215, 216, 358n, 369,372Leadership, adult, 345, 350–351Learning, 1, 2, 3, 5, 15, 23–26, 185,250agendas for, 21beliefs about, 190–191casual, 120contexts for, 21, 30, 31creative production and, 244, 250,276, 284gaming and, 196, 198, 201, 212, 213,219–220, 227, 228, 235, 239–240genres of, peer-based, 249goals for, 300informal, 21–23, 24, 118, 351institutions and, 21–22, 349–353intergenerational, 350–353intersection with media and, 17literacy studies and, 13–14negotiations over, 2, 3networks for, 213, 220, 221, 227,250ownership of, 57peer-based, 14, 21–23, 110, 145–146,213, 249–250, 256, 262–263, 268,274–280, 291, 339–341, 343, 348,350–351popular culture and, 248–249profile creation and, 256real-life, 308self-directed, 61, 262–263, 348, 349self-motivated, 22sociocultural theories of, 12–14, 21trial-and-error, 54, 58work and, 295–296, 308, 335Legality/illegalitycopying code and, 73fansubbing and, 72, 326file sharing and, 72, 74peer-to-peer (P2P) sharing and, 72“Legitimate peripheral participation,”56Lessig, Lawrence, 300, 325LGBT teens, 90, 127–128, 144–145Ling, Rich, 4, 11, 176, 252Linking, 40–42Linkshells, 70, 208, 217–218, 219,326–329, 336n, 367Literacy/literacies, 2, 3, 12, 15, 145benchmarks, 344“copy and paste,” 256creative production and, 280negotiation of, 24new media, 23–26online interaction and, 147practices of, 26, 125standards of, 342, 344struggles over, 25theories of, 24

Index 411LiveJournal, 11, 20, 39, 51, 81, 255,287Livingstone, Sonia, 3, 4, 8, 23, 36, 94,139, 150, 153, 154, 155, 156, 158,193, 362Local area network (LAN) parties, 212,215Lurking, 56Lyman, Peter, 355MacArthur Foundation, 2Machinima, 26, 202, 221, 224–227,241n, 269, 326Mahendran, Dilan, 194n, 244, 269,279, 280, 281, 283, 291, 296, 305,306, 310, 349, 357n, 368, 371Mainstream culture, 231–233, 235Mainstream practices, 6Maintenance, intimate relationship,128–130, 139Making friends, 88–91Manion, Annie, 211, 358nMarketing, 23, 283, 284, 287, 299, 309,310–311, 314, 315, 317, 319–323Martínez, Katynka Z., 64, 74, 81, 151,158, 167, 194n, 213, 233, 252, 255,296, 304, 314, 319, 357n, 361, 362,371, 372Masculinity, 143, 231, 348Mashups, 26, 71, 342Massively multiplayer online roleplayinggames (MMORPG), 69,207–208, 216–218, 233–234, 237,329, 336n. See also GamesMaturity, 175–177Mediaactive/passive, 246awareness of, 57circulation of, 72culture of, 9niche, 3social, 79–115Media ecologies, 7, 10, 14, 23, 29–78,151–154, 173, 185, 192, 197, 244,247, 274, 292, 305, 335Media education, 246–250, 301–307Media effects, 9, 31, 150–151, 192nMedia identity, 12Media literacy, 6creative production and, 292gaming and, 213, 240development of, 247–248, 249–250,261Media metrics, 283“Media transgressions,” 178Media usedemographics of, 33–35mobility of, 163–164Meeting, 122, 123–128Meet-ups, 274, 276, 280, 290Mentoring, 14, 59–60, 273, 274, 306Messages, composing of, 124–125“Messing around,” 53–65, 185access and, 62–65after-school programs and, 63–65experimentation and, 57–62gaming and, 58, 222–223play and, 57–62profile creation and, 260–261rewriting the rules and, 71seeking information and, 54–57as transitional genre, 65, 76work-arounds and, 61–62Mitnick, Sarai, 358n, 370n, 372Mobile phones, 80, 84, 94, 105,117hanging out and, 38–39intimacy and, 120–121, 123as “leash,” 120, 130, 178as parenting tool, 159, 176–177plans for, 179–181rules for, 178–182safety and, 176–177use of, 11

412 IndexMobilitymedia use and, 163–164social, 301, 318, 324Mobilization, economic, 333“Modding”/modifications, 220–221,222–223, 240, 241n, 254Modes of participation, 36Monitoring, 14, 80, 113, 118, 119,136–137, 138–145, 147, 154–155,156, 172–175, 182, 185Moral panics, 23–24, 91, 150, 151–152,199Multiliteracies, 25Multitasking, 47–50Music making, 269–272, 281–282,330beat making and, 269, 272, 310hip-hop and, 269, 270–272, 283, 291,310rapping and, 269, 270–272, 279–280,310Music sharing, 41–42MySpace, 10, 79–115, 281–282creative production and, 251, 254,255–261intimacy and, 122popularity of, 80, 81Negotiations, adult-youth, 2, 3, 5Nerds, 311–314, 318“Networked individualism,” 3“Networked public culture,” 92–93“Networked publics,” 18–21, 22, 79,85, 97, 130, 147access to, 251, 351breaking up and, 133–138, 146characteristics of, 19–20, 112, 113creative production and, 247, 250,289, 291, 351“friendship-driven” practices and,19–20, 82“interest-driven” practices and, 20,352participation in, 12, 22–23, 80, 84,114, 339–340, 344, 345–350, 352as term, 14, 19“Networked society,” 3New Literacy Studies, 13–14, 24, 26New media, 9–13New media literacy, 5, 14, 23–26, 113,248–249, 335, 341, 344, 345, 348,357definitions of, 25–26intimacy and, 120shaping of, 341–345New Media Literacy project, 25, 248–249New media practice, 5Newbies/noobs/noobz/nub, 205, 230News Feed, 106–107Nintendo, 158, 160, 164, 175, 201,202, 203, 211, 234 (see also Wii)“Nonmarket peer production,” 300,325–333, 334Norms, 1adult, 7breaking up and, 133challenges to, 71courtship, 118dating, 120, 122feedback, 277gaming, 199–200literacy, 26mainstream, 233meeting, 146negotiation of, 344–345online interaction and, 147relationship status and, 131social, 2, 12, 84, 119, 145, 297struggles over, 25Offline relationships, 84, 122, 125–128,145–147Online hangouts, 50–52Online journals, 244Online relationships, 84, 89–91, 122,125–128, 145–147

Index 413Online spaces, rules for, 182–190Organization of analysis, 339Outcomes, 4–5Paratexts, 68, 69, 78n, 220–221Parental authority, 82, 113Parenting, 150, 151–154, 163–164,172–175, 178–191, 302–304, 342–343Participationadult, 340–341, 344civic, 325creative production and, 284dynamics of, 251friendship-driven, 81gaming and, 212, 213, 228, 235–239importance of, 345–350institutions and, 349–350mapping of, 30, 339media, 11, 18, 153media production and, 247–248modes of, 15notion of, 14–15rules for, 190–191, 192social, 7, 13social network sites and, 79, 112training for, 334trajectories of, 9, 17, 213, 235,257–259work and, 333“Participation gap,” 77, 239–240, 343,346, 348“Participatory media culture,” 10, 15,244Pascoe, C. J., 37, 39, 46, 48, 81, 83, 96,99, 105, 106, 118, 124, 147n, 151,175, 177, 180, 181, 182, 186, 276,349, 357n, 362, 363, 369, 371, 372Passive communication, 135–138,146–147Passwords, 85, 86, 123, 139–140, 185Patterns, analysis of, 37Pedagogy, 227, 271, 301, 341, 349–350,351“Pedagogy of collegiality,” 349“Peer,” 16Peer-based economies, 308, 334–335,336Peer-based evaluation, 274–280Peer-based learning, 14, 21–23, 84,110, 145–146, 213, 249–250, 268,275, 291, 339–341, 343, 348,350–351Peer-based youth ecologies, 249Peer communities, maintenance of,79–80, 113Peer culture, 9–10, 82–85, 113Peer groups, gaming and, 231, 235Peer networks, 113, 114“Peer pressure,” 21, 84Peer production, 300, 325–333, 334Peer publics, 80Peer spaces, online sites as, 185Peer status, gaming and, 213Peer-to-peer file sharing, 72, 74, 301Perkel, Dan, 46, 48, 54, 55, 62, 63, 72,81, 89, 151, 163, 165, 179, 197, 202,207, 208, 224, 229, 244, 254, 256,260, 280, 288, 296, 305, 357n, 363,364, 366, 370n, 371, 372Persistence, 19, 132–133, 144, 147gaming and, 210machinima and, 225as quality of social media, 102, 104,105, 106, 112, 113–114“Personal communities,” 83Personal culture, 92Personalization, of games, 227Pew Internet and American LifeProject, 32–34, 78n, 244Photobucket, 85–88, 246, 252, 255Photos, 85–88, 251breaking up and, 134, 136camera phones, 254family dynamics and, 159–162modding of, 254sharing of, 252, 254–255

414 IndexPhotoshop, 58, 59, 63, 224, 258, 262,312PlayStation, 150, 155, 164, 165–166,214, 216, 222, 229, 317Podcasting, 28, 71, 168–169, 174,285–287, 310, 342Policy implications, 345, 347,348–353Popular culture, 9consumption of, 40education and, 248–249Popularity, 81, 83, 96, 104–112, 114,232Powerdifferentials in, 14, 23–24intimate relationships and, 139–141“kid,” 23PowerPoint, 45Practicecategories of, 339evolution of, 1Predators, 91, 97, 121, 144, 183, 185Privacy, 8, 20, 118, 119, 120, 138–145,147, 155–163, 164communication and, 20, 23, 38, 80,90, 120, 123, 129, 147, 181–182intimacy and, 27, 51, 145lack of, 157–158negotiation of, 158online spaces and, 75, 185parental invasion of, 149, 189–190peer-based learning and, 23settings for, 86, 94, 95, 107, 148nPrivate space, 61, 64, 164bedrooms as, 155–157, 164, 191“Pro–am,” 292nProduction, 15advanced-amateur, 283amateur, 262, 263–267, 269, 274,284–285, 288–290creative, 223–227, 243–293evaluation of, 274–280fan, 15, 26, 28, 261, 262, 269,272–273, 275–277, 281, 284–287,310–311, 324, 325–326, 330, 342,292ngaming and, 220–227professional, 288–290Professionalism/professionalization,214–215, 234, 273, 283, 285,288–290, 292n, 305, 314, 315–316,322Profiles, 251“bad,” 186breaking up and, 133–138creative production and, 255–261customization of, 256–259Friend lists and, 94–104friendship development and, 89, 92,98intimacy and, 120modifying of, 255relationship work and, 130–132Promotion, 267, 268, 278, 283, 284,287, 309, 310, 311“Prosumers,” 292n“Proteurs,” 285–287“Public culture,” 19, 92Public debate, 341, 345Public education, role of, 352–353Publicsintimacy and, 128–132, 135, 145niche, 284Public space, 79, 91, 114, 126access to, 80, 251Publishing, 277–288, 309–314Punishment, 158, 177Ranking, of Friends, 100–104Rap Project, the, 270–272Ratings, creative production and,275Reading, 11, 24, 33, 43–44, 45, 55,74–75, 226, 276–278, 312, 334

Index 415Reciprocity, 110–111, 112, 114, 129,283–284, 291feedback and, 276peer-based learning and, 22Recognition, 22, 245, 251, 278, 279,280, 283, 289Relationship dynamicsfamily, 147, 152intimate, 119–120peer, 100–104Relationshipsarticulation of, 94–104, 113cultural/subcultural, 31display of status in, 128, 130–132,133–138, 146embodiments of, 4game, 210–211, 212, 216–218genre, 31, 77intergenerational, 343intimate, 117–148peer, 330stages of, 122–123subculture/identity, 6work of, 128–132Remix, 26, 28, 226, 246, 247–249, 250,269, 284, 292n, 293nReplicability, 19Reputation, 22, 273, 280, 288, 289,291, 300, 323Researchapproach to, 3–13future, 341organization of findings and, 5participant demographics and, 356,358–359nResearch methods, 355–357case studies as, 2, 5–6, 244, 301content analysis as, 356, 367, 369diary studies as, 85, 255, 356,363–364ethnography as, 2, 4–6, 200–201, 300,355–356, 361interviews as, 29, 37, 117–118,121–122, 149, 256, 257, 277, 331,356, 358n, 362, 363, 364–365, 367,370nparticipation and observation as, 356,362, 364–365, 366–368, 369–370qualitative, 36quantitative, 32–35, 36, 356–357,358–359nquestionnaires as, 195–196, 356–357,358n, 363, 367sampling as, 77surveys as, 32–35, 356–357, 358n,363Research sites, 77, 356–357, 361–370homes and neighborhoods, 190,362–364interest-based groups, 368–370learning institutions, 364–365networked sites, 80–81, 365–368Responsibility, 175, 177, 185, 296, 299,324, 335Reviews, creative production and, 275Robinson, Laura, 54, 55, 197, 205, 223,296, 329, 357n, 365, 367, 372Role-playing boards, 292nRules, 30, 163–164, 172–175, 178–190bending and breaking of, 48, 66,178enforcement of, 163–164, 173–175,178Friending, 95, 97, 99–100, 104game-use, 199–200loosening of, 175–176media-use, 154, 156mobile phones and, 178–182negotiation of, 151, 178online-space, 182–190participation, 190–191, 192rewriting of, 71–73, 223subversion of, 174–175, 222Rumors, 105–109

416 IndexSafety, 91, 97, 126, 144–145, 176–177,281Salen, Katie, 198Schlossberg, David, 81, 118, 162, 358n,363, 371Schoolsaccess and, 47intimacy practices and, 119media training and, 301–305teen sociability and, 81, 82–85Searchability, 19Search engines, 54–57, 78nSefton-Green, Julian, 10, 12, 150, 245,247, 248, 249Seiter, Ellen, 8, 9, 10, 23, 30, 150, 153,199, 204, 241, 246, 248, 297, 298,301, 346, 347, 362“Selective sociality,” 3, 147Self-archiving, 252“Self-taught” ethic, 57, 250, 262–263Sex/sexuality, 121, 127, 142, 144–145,147n–148nSexism, gaming and, 196, 199Sharingcreative production and, 280–281,290ethic of, 300file, 72, 74illegal, 72information, 85, 92–93, 107, 142–143,144intergenerational, 234knowledge, 14media, 244, 247, 274, 308music, 41–42online space, 38–39passwords, 123, 139–140personal media, 85–88, 251–252,253–255, 280–281private information, 90skills, 314–315strategies for, 255time in families, 158–160, 164–171Sims, Christo, 39, 41, 46, 49, 50, 56,62, 63, 72, 76, 81, 90, 97, 98, 102,110, 111, 118, 122, 126, 129, 130,131, 132, 136, 137, 138, 140, 141,143, 148n, 150, 151, 155, 174, 179,180, 185, 193n, 197, 202, 211, 212,236, 256, 296, 305, 357n, 362, 363,364, 371, 372“Situated learning,” 13–14, 18Skills, 26, 295–296, 297, 298, 299,301development of, 62, 288, 289gaming, 214marketable, 314–319practice of, 323Sociability, 10gaming and, 209–213, 214–220,231–232, 238, 240mediated, 18participation in, 346–347structures of, 3Social capital, 152, 301–302Social change, 30Social communication, media for, 10Social context, for creativity, 249, 250Social drama, 100, 103, 104–112Social ecology, 1, 4, 18, 201Sociality, gaming and, 205–209Socializing, barriers to, 38“Social media,” 28n, 115nSocial mobility, 301–302, 318, 324Social network sites, 79–115, 150, 244creative production and, 251hanging out and, 38–39intimacy and, 120–121, 123stigmas of, 91Social worlds, 142–143, 145Sociocultural learning theory, 12Sociocultural perspective, 30Socioeconomic status. See ClassSociology of youth, 6–7, 82, 88, 121Sociotechnical infrastructures, 254–255,366

Index 417Space, public, 79, 80, 91, 114, 126,147, 251Specialization, 268–274, 288Sportsgames as, 214gaming and, 212, 214, 216, 240gender and, 231identity and, 231–232social bonding and, 207, 209Sports games, 210, 228, 233, 236“Stalkers/stalking,” 106, 124, 136–137,144Standardscreative, 274, 276, 278, 280erosion of, 25literacy, 26, 342, 344negotiation of, 24Statusadvanced-amateur, 283alternative, 66, 70creative production and, 289, 290display of, 94, 100, 128, 130–132,133–138, 146distinctions of, 20expertise and, 273family hierarchy and, 157–158gaming and, 199, 212–213, 220,231–232, 234, 235negotiation of, 79, 81, 82, 83, 112, 114relationship, 119, 123, 128, 130–132,133–138, 146socioeconomic, 302struggles for, 104–112“Stranger danger”/strangers, 91, 95–96,97, 123, 125–128, 144StrategiesFinal Fantasy XI, 326–329gaming, 214–220information-seeking, 54marketing, 312parenting, 152–154, 172, 178–190,191, 302–304sharing, 255Strategy guides, 69–70, 200, 210, 211,222Structural conditions, 30, 31Structure of media use, 31Struggles, intergenerational, 14, 23, 25,26, 82, 178, 183Studies, childhood, 13–14Studies, learning and literacy, 13–14Subcultures, 6, 26, 233, 234Subversion, 48, 71, 72Success, 111, 114, 299Surveillance. See MonitoringSurveysmedia use, 32–35participants in, 33, 356–357,358–359n“Techne-mentors,” 58, 59–60Technical context, for creativity, 250Technological artifacts, 25Technologyaccess to, 345–350artifacts of, 25change in, 30social bonds and, 81uptake of, 3Teen sociability, 80–81, 82Television, 25, 30, 43, 158–159, 199,225, 263–264, 267attitudes toward, 153, 246Terms, key, 14“Terror talk,” 91Text messaging, 107, 109back-channel communication and,48–49intimacy and, 123Thorne, Barrie, 6, 7–8, 37, 48, 83, 153,355, 362Time, 190boredom and, 203, 260gaming and, 195–196, 201, 214–220,233, 235–239killing, 202–206

418 IndexTime (cont.)routines and, 151, 172–175, 191–192sharing, 158–160, 164–171, 191–192wasting, 47, 236, 238Tinkering, 58, 76, 260, 261, 322Tools, production, 57–58, 244Top 8/Top Friends, 51, 100–104, 131,134Toys, attitudes toward, 153Training, 288, 295–296, 298, 301–307Trajectoriesaspirational, 284–290, 302entrepreneurial, 318participation, 9, 17, 213, 235, 257–259school-to-work, 305, 307work, 299, 333, 334Transitional genres, 17, 65, 76Transitionsschool, 63, 235school-to-work, 305, 307, 351–352work, 236Transnational families, 170–171, 193nTrial-and-error learning, 58Tripp, Lisa, 42, 47, 61, 151, 167, 170,174, 183, 221, 296, 302, 304, 358n,361, 362, 365, 371Unpaid labor, 295, 300, 324, 325Urban, Jennifer, 358User-generated content, 11, 23, 331Validation, 285, 289Values, 1, 26, 151, 153–154, 190, 192,199collective, 23family, 175shared, 342Vidding, 282, 293nVideo blogging, 26, 273Video games, 210–211modding of, 224–226Videos, 243, 252“collab,” 273–274making of, 263–267, 273–274mashups and, 26, 71, 342viewing of, and hanging out, 42Viewership, 243, 246, 266–267, 283,334Virtual economies, 329–330, 331–333,334Visibility, 280, 282, 283–284, 288Vocation, and nonmarket work, 324Volunteers/volunteerism, 118, 296,325–326, 330, 335Vulnerability, 118, 122, 123, 133, 138,142–145, 191Walk-throughs, 220–221, 222Web comics, 284, 311–314Wellman, Barry, 3, 365Wenger, Etienne, 12, 13, 14, 36, 56,335Wii, 150, 155, 207, 223, 234Wikipedia, 47, 54, 55–56, 87, 88, 325,336n, 365, 372Work, 295–337. See also Jobs; Laboraccess to, 296, 297, 333creative, 284, 301domestic, 323gaming and, 219, 235–236nonmarket, 295, 296, 299, 300,323–333paid, 299, 307–323preparatory, 295, 296, 297, 298, 299,300–301, 335productive, 297, 299, 301, 308relationship, 128–132unpaid, 295, 300, 324, 325Work-arounds,access and, 48, 61–62“hanging out” and, 47, 222“messing around” and, 61–62Writingcasual messages, 124–125conventions of, 11creative, 292n

Index 419fan fiction and, 28, 69, 71, 75, 244,269, 276–278, 281, 284, 286, 292n,330online communities of, 11, 276–278Xbox, 150, 207, 210, 212, 214, 216Yardi, Sarita, 151, 163, 165, 208, 358n,363, 370n, 371, 372Youthpractices of, 31as social category, 6–9as social problem, 8–9sociology of, 6–7tension between adults and, 2, 14,23–24, 25, 82, 113, 114, 146, 156,182, 185–190, 249terms for, 7–8Youth culture, 5, 6–9, 23, 26, 31, 82–85DIY, 320–323emergence of, 40YouTube, 10, 242, 263–268, 273–274,278, 279, 281, 282, 283, 309, 330

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