When a younger family member "friended" me on Facebook, I was shocked to see some of the photos she posted of her self. In college Facebook circles, uploading albums overflowing with pictures taken by you/of you is a social no-no. I can accept that a middle schooler behaves differently on a social networking site, but it was the nature of the photos that was unsettling (nothing illegal - just a few Miley-esque skimpy bikini shots).
After reading this article in the Hartford Advocate, I felt far less worried for my family, but all the more concerned for the generation as a whole. Apparently girls across the U.S. -- the newspaper dubbed them "Nokia Nolitas" -- have been snapping pictures of themselves and posting them online; some have been so scandalous that the girls have been charged with child pornography.
In some ways, I think this is just another aspect of teens figuring out who they are and acknowledges the reality that they are awakening sexually as human beings. It's healthy for girls to dress up, play around with makeup, take glamorous snapshots, and tap into their inner exhibitionist. I remember doing the same thing, to some degree. Without camera phones, Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter, this step of self-discovery couldn't be made so public with such ease. At the same time, our popular culture has become increasingly sexual (with porn becoming much more mainstream and accessible, especially online) so many teen girls may be mimicking what they see online, on TV, and in music videos.
In the past six months alone, there's been a deluge of news stories about middle- and high-school students getting into trouble for sending around naked pictures and sex videos of themselves or classmates. The disposition of the cases has been wildly disparate: Some kids are arrested, some punished at school and others are lectured about online safety.Just how widespread is this trend, and how should officials handle it when students make their sex lives public? There are endless MySpace profile pictures, taken in the mirror or at arm's length, of teenage girls in bras and boy shorts, eyes lined in black and lips slightly parted. Friendships nursed online often come with requests for nudes--or n00dz. "Nine out of 10 kids I see have had experiences where they have put provocative photos of themselves on MySpace or Facebook," says Sonya Rencevicz, a clinical social worker and therapist in Greenwich who deals with adolescents.
Wow. Nine out of 10 seems really, really high. Is this the media creating more moral panic around teens and the internet or has this practice become that widespread? What do you think?
Posted by casey
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"It's healthy for girls to dress up, play around with makeup, take glamorous snapshots, and tap into their inner exhibitionist."
Got any more info on how this is healthy? i'd like to share this with some parents i know
Posted by: lisas | July 17, 2008 2:04 PM
Hi Lisa. I think that it's just a normal part of identify formation. From a 2007 piece in the New York Times:
Psychologists and others who study teenagers say the digital self-portraiture is an extension of behavior typical of the young, like trying on different identities, which earlier generations might have expressed through clothing and hairstyles. "Most of what I've been seeing is taking place in the bedroom," said Kathryn C. Montgomery, a professor of communication at American University, referring to teenage self-portraits. Dr. Montgomery studies the relation of teenagers to the digital media. "It's a locus of teen life where they are forming their identities, and now it's also a private studio where they can develop who they are.
"What better tool could they have than one that allows them to take pictures of themselves and manipulate them like never before?"
To Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, a developmental psychologist, digital self-portraiture is a high-tech way of expressing an impulse among teenagers and young adults that psychologists call "the imaginary audience."
"This is the idea that adolescents think people are more interested in them than they actually are, that people are always looking at them and taking note of what they are doing, even if it is just walking across the school cafeteria," said Dr. Arnett, who is a Fulbright scholar at the University of Copenhagen.
To Dr. Arnett, the role-playing evident in many self-portraits found online is "a form of pretend: the adolescent version of children dressing up."
Posted by: anastasia | July 17, 2008 2:26 PM