A Flaw in Danah Boyd's Ethnographic Model

We disagreed with Danah Boyd's dissection of the population of 'teenagers' in her study of online social networking spaces. She, through analyzing online sources (and never through direct face-to-face communication), crafted three categories of teenagers, those who participate in online social networking, those who conscientiously object to using such networks, and those who do not have the means to participate but would like to. We argue that this model is an over-simplification of the actual spectrum of users and non-users-- mainly that Boyd's model implies that all teenagers actively care about social networking sites. Those who conscientiously object care enough to not use the social networking sites conscientiously, and those who do not have the means to participate *would* participate if they could. She does not account for teens who might not care either way. We also believe that she over-simplifies the rational behind the conscientious objectors who she says often simply say that they don't participate because "it's stupid", while these people might actually have more complex reasons for not participating.

Overall, we believe that Boyd's argument is too strong, and that she believes that social networks are more of a part of *all* teenagers lives than they really are. This then raises other questions: what is the importance of online spaces? Will online spaces become more important than they currently are?

-Matthew Jacobs, George Miller