Teen net-researcher danah boyd (@zephoria) has been taking parental questions about teens' use of the net on Twitter and here are her responses:
@mirroredpool: What borders to teens place of social networking sites and education? How would they react to using an SNS to do class work?
@annejonas: i'm curious if they want schools involved in social networks or if they like it as a social space outside the realm of formal edu.
This is messy. Many teens have ZERO interest in interacting with teachers on social network sites, but there are also quite a few who are interested in interacting with SOME teachers there. Still, this is primarily a social space and their interactions with teachers are primarily to get more general advice and help. In some ways, its biggest asset in the classroom is the way in which its not a classroom tool and not loaded this way. Given that teens don't Friend all of their classmates, there are major issues in terms of using this for groupwork because of boundary issues.
@shcdean: What future do they see for FB or Twitter.
They don't use Twitter. When asked, teens always say that they'll use their preferred social network site (or social media service) FOREVER as a sign of their passion for it now. If they expect that they'll "grow out of it", it's a sign that the service is waning among that group at this very moment. So they're not a good predictor of their own future usage.
@lazygal: Do they really care about/use school library websites? Twitter? Pageflakes? Libguides? or only if teacher insists?
Nope, they don't. All but Twitter are categorized as school tools and are only used when absolutely necessary and Google won't suffice.
answers to questions from Twitter on teen practices
