Mutiltasking behaviors receive cover story treatment in the latest issue of Time. While not a new concept, the phenomenon has increased with the explosion of opportunities to engage in multiple tasks while online (listening to music, IMing friends, searching for images, updating a MySpace profile and doing homework), especially among teens.
What captured my imagination was the observation of the impact of social media on core developmental tasks of adolescence.
Teen venues like MySpace, Xanga and Facebook--and the ways kids can personalize their IM personas--meet another teen need: the desire to experiment with identity. By changing their picture, their "away" message, their icon or list of favorite bands, kids can cycle through different personalities. "Online life is like an identity workshop," says [Sherry Turkle, professor of the social studies of science and technology at M.I.T], "and that's the job of adolescents--to experiment with identity."
The recent set of case studies on new media document the use of new communication technologies as alternative channels for messages. Turkle's observation leads me to think about how we frame our new media interventions as opportunities for teens to 'try on' and adopt new behaviors as part of their experiments in identity. We also need to understand how to constructively introduce ourselves into this dynamic set of social systems [social media].
Technorati Tags: Identity Formation, Multitasking, Teens, Social Media
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