Youth, Privacy, and Texting

Danah Boyd offers some insightful commentary in reaction to an article in Sunday’s NY Times discussing the digital divide between tech-savvy teens and the adults that try to understand them. The article talks about the miscommunications and frustrations that result from the generational/technological gap, as well as the emergence of a “new sensibility” that comes from instant and constant communication via text and mobile phone calls. Teens’ desire for privacy, secrecy, and socializing, the story points out, are aided by unlimited SMS packages, calls, and uninterrupted connection to their peers via the web (and particularly, social networking sites).

In her response, Boyd acknowledges the way mobile technology has changed the way teens interact and establish boundaries between themselves and their guardians, but also offers a deeper look at the technology-as-cultural-agitator perspective:

…The mobile phone changes the rules. Texting allows people to communicate even when they aren’t at arms length or can’t arrange simultaneous interactions. Because texting happens silently, it’s far more effective as a backchannel mechanism than whispering. Codes are not necessarily about hiding from adults as much as efficiency; deleting sent/received messages is far more effective than codes…

There’s an arms race going on: parental surveillance vs. technology to assert privacy. We aren’t seeing the radical OMG technology ruins everything stage. We’re seeing the next in line of a long progression. And it’s just the beginning. The arms race is heating up. As parents implement keyboard tracking, kids go to texting. How long until parents demand that companies send them transcripts of everything?… The very nature of publicity and privacy are getting disrupted. As kids work to be invisible to people who hold direct power over them (parents, teachers, etc.), they happily expose themselves to audiences of peers. And they expose themselves to corporations. They know that the company can see everything they send through their servers/service, but who cares? Until these companies show clear allegiance with their parents, they’re happy to assume that the companies are on their side and can do them no harm.

Generation gap and technology ruining everything stories will be forever more. These do sell and they are fun to read. Yet, for parents and teachers and other concerned folks wanting to get a clear perspective of what’s going on, it’s important to remember that at the end of the day, the intentions and desires aren’t changing… it’s just the architecture that makes the practices possible that is. The refraction of light is changing because the medium through which it is channeled is changing, but the light itself stays the same and to guide our children, we need to remember to pay attention to the light, not the refraction or the medium that’s causing the refraction.

Apophenia: How Youth Find Privacy in Interstitial Spaces