Thursday, March 29, 2007

'Distributed friendship'

Ninety percent of British youth have access to a computer at home, and more than 60% of UK 13-to17-year-olds have profiles on social-networking sites, The Telegraph reports in its thorough, thoughtful article, "Can u speak teenager?" Like the New York magazine piece I linked to last week, this one reflects some interesting analysis occurring about how all this online socializing is affecting growing up now – and how it compares to the way we grew up. For example, we maybe had a few really close friends with whom we shared "everything." The average teen now has 75 friends rather than 5, London School of Economics Prof. Sonia Livingston told The Telegraph. Today's youth are connected to a whole community of peers. Closeness, intimacy, the sharing of secrets is distributed rather than individual and private. This gives new meaning to "strength in numbers." And there is a "culture of openness" now that Dr. Arthur Cassidy, a psychologist at the Belfast Institute, told The Telegraph can be "particularly therapeutic for teenage boys."

1 comment:

  1. This is the magic of the advancement of technology...the super information highway have made our world a global village and therefore the youth class is simply making the best use of it...just as we bloggers are doing :)

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