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November 18, 2008Crafting your image for your 1,000 friends on Facebook or MySpace |
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From EurekAlert! - Breaking News: Students are creating idealized versions of themselves on social networking websites --- Facebook and MySpace are the most popular --- and using these sites to explore their emerging identities, UCLA psychologists report. "People can use these sites to explore who they are by posting particular images, pictures or text," said UCLA psychology graduate student Adriana Manago, a researcher with the Children's Digital Media Center, Los Angeles (CDMCLA), and lead author of a study that appears in a special November--December issue of the Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology devoted to the developmental implications of online social networking. "Social networking sites take this to a whole new level. "People are living life online," said Manago's co-author Patricia Greenfield, a UCLA distinguished professor of psychology, director of the CDMCLA and co-editor of the journal's special issue. Participants can select "friends" and share photos, videos and information about themselves --- such as whether they are currently in a relationship --- with these friends. Many college students have 1,000 or more friends on Facebook or MySpace. "Instead of connecting with friends with whom you have close ties for the sake of the exchange itself, people interact with their 'friends' as a performance, as if on a stage before an audience of people on the network," Manago said. Middle school is too young to be using Facebook or MySpace, Subrahmanyam believes, but by ninth grade, she considers the websites to be appropriate. She recommends that parents speak with their children, starting at about age 10, concerning what they do online and with whom they are interacting.
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