Week 5/Thing 10

Wow, my last post was 2/27--do I need to catch up! I've actually been looking forward to his activity since Facebook and MySpace have played such a huge part in the lives of my children. One is 26 and very committed to this technology as a way to keep in touch with high school friends and let them know what's she's doing. My son is 21 and also uses social networking to "get the word out "about himself and find out about others. It's easy as an adult (to whom this way of communication is so foreign) to look for something sinister here and many young adults are now just realizing that what they post can be available to employers and school authorities and that even when they request that a profile be taken down, it still lingers on a server someplace. Also, according to my kids, the whole "friending" aspect of it can result in uncomfortable situations. At their ages, they are savvy to the realities of privacy and fraud, but I still have concerns when thse technologies tricle down to middle school students. Still, this is the way that many younger people communicate and it has outgrown the college community to become mainstream. I really liked Digg with its political focus and Ning was ok,too. With regard to libraries creating MySpace pages, I actually think its a viable idea to connect with young adults would be much more likely to access My Space than the traditional library website.