When danah boyd talks, people listen. The academic, blogger, and rock star of social networking research has just completed her PhD dissertation, “Taken Out of Context: American Teen Sociality in Networked Publics." 

SLJ caught up with her to talk about the way American teens socialize on sites like MySpace, Facebook, LiveJournal, Xanga, and YouTube. 

What's the biggest misperception adults have of social networking sites?
Since many adults use the Internet to find information and meet new people, they tend to assume everyone does. When social network sites gained popularity among youth, many adults assumed that teens were using the sites for networkING (as in meeting new people), when the most common use of social network sites by teens is peer-based socialization. In other words, teens use social network sites to hang out with their friends, not meet new people.

How have social networking sites changed the social behavior of teens?
By and large, social network sites mirror and magnify preexisting practices. What has changed has to do with the structural features of these sites. For example, it's not particularly normal to have to publicly list all of your friends. Having to do so complicates social relations. Thus, this feature has inflected many social relations in funny ways.

The other big change that's clear is that teen practices are much more visible to adults as a result of these public sites. As a result, much of what adults think is occurring because of social network sites is simply just visible because of social network sites. Take bullying for example. Bullying was a problem long before the Internet, but it's more visible now.

What impact do you think it will have on teens when they become adults?
Today's teens are having to learn how to navigate a very public culture as a part of coming-of-age. I think that we're going to see an adult culture that is much more tolerant of nonnormative practices as a result of this type of hypervisibility.

What most surprised you about your findings?
Well, what surprised me the most was how unwilling adults were to let go of myths that they had about youth practices. What saddened me most was the way that social network sites reinforce preexisting social ills. Like many others, I had hoped that social media would help bridge differences and engender tolerance. I was saddened to find that it tends to reify differences and magnify social divisions.

What's the most important thing educators can take away from your dissertation?
Social media is here to stay, and it's increasingly a part of everyday life. Educators have an important role to play in shaping how young people understand and interpret life around them. It would be tremendously valuable if educators would learn how these systems work and help young people engage with a world that is shaped by these systems.

You’re speaking at AASL’s national conference in November. What can you tell school library media specialists to help them better understand how this shift in our culture is changing the way students communicate with each other and represent themselves online?
Librarians know better than anyone how new genres of media reconfigure public life. This is why so many librarians have been part of movements to increase literacy and democratic participation.

This new genre is radically reconfiguring public life and information dissemination, as well as sociality. We're seeing a culture of individuals that are writing themselves into being, portraying themselves through media-rich bricolage. All of a sudden, media is not just something to consume, but to interact with as part of identity presentation and communication. We're seeing a cultural iteration. We grew up trying to place ourselves in stories, writing book reports on Lord of the Flies by trying to imagine ourselves on the island. Now, youth are combining media to express themselves as an active part of everyday life. All that happens online is an extension of what was happening before, inflected in new ways.

How can librarians see this as an opportunity to create new learning experiences for their students? 
Librarians are trying to help young people understand the world around them. If they recognize the ways in which new social media extends old practices, they can help provide guidance in a meaningful way. An educator's role is fundamentally about helping people build roots and grow wings. Understanding the relationship between new media and old media is critical. Putting sociotechnical changes in context is what librarians do best.