The Net effect

These conditions, some very familiar to many of us but neatly packaged by social media scholar danah boyd in her just-released PhD dissertation, is what I call the “Net effect.” It’s how digital media and technologies change the equation – even though much of the behavior (adolescent or adult) is age-old. As danah (who lower-cases her name) explains, the different contexts in which we used to speak and behave – e.g., home, school parking lot, Xbox Live, classroom, Thanksgiving Dinner – are all mashed up. According to the New York Times, “much of the danger lies in the fact that, increasingly, our ‘friends’ on social networking sites are actually a mix of people – friends, family, acquaintances, colleagues – with whom we would normally share only a piece of our lives.” This is one of the real “online safety” issues for 99.9% of online-youth population (and about that many adults) – a better umbrella term is probably “digital citizenship” or “online safety 2.0.” It’s about growing up with the Net effect in place, for example, as the Times put it, “learning how not to share.” Find out how Sarah Illman – who, when she graduates this spring, “will be among the first Canadian university students to have lived her entire post-secondary academic career on Facebook” – managed all this in the Toronto Globe & Mail article.