Social Networking, Avatars and the Stages of Development

[Alecia Berman-Dry]

Back in college, we all learned that children go though the "identity" stage of development (according to Erikson) around the ages 13-20 years old. Has anyone seen any reasearch ANYWHERE about how developing an online personality--an avatar, a myspace page--can effect that stage of development? A superficial look at it might generate the notion that children would be more likely to develop pseudo-schizophrenic identities. But in the same way that their brains are adapting to completing multiple tasks at once, perhaps their conciousness is also developing a healthy way to deal with having two separate personalities...one online and one in "real life." Has anyone seen anything ANYWHERE having to do with this?

[Alex Ragone]

Hi Alecia, I would start with Danah Boyd http://www.danah.org/. There is also an MIT Professor who has written a couple of books about online presence early on in the Internet age, but I can't remember her name. I'll get it and make sure to post it back up here.

I look forward to discussing F2F on Monday!

- Alex

[Alex Ragone]

Now I remember. Sherry Turkle: http://web.mit.edu/sturkle/www/. Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet (Simon and Schuster, November 1995; Touchstone paper, 1997). A little old, but still very relevant. Hope this helps.

[Alecia Berman-Dry]

Thanks, Alex. These are perfect. Interestingly, I have contacted some folks who are interested in this field of research and can you believe that they were told they could not perform this research until they had their Ph.D.--Why?--because no one else had done it before. I suppose they want to leave new research to the professionals? Or perhaps its a reserved privilege? See you Mon!

[agardnahh]

People at MacCarthur foundation are doing lots of work around New Digital Media and identity, you may want to check out http://spotlight.macfound.org/. The MIT professor that Alex menitons may be Henry Jenkins. . . he writes alot about media literacy. Sherry Turkle has a new book too, but its more focussed on "Evocative objects" than online identity.

AG

[Alecia Berman-Dry]

Thank you, AG. I have been reading a lot of books on topic recently that reference Sherry Turkle. I also found a great book published in 2002 called Children in the Digital Age. In it is an essay by Sandra L. Calvert exploring "Identity Construction on the Internet." I blogged about it here, if you're interested.
http://ed-tech-axis.blogspot.com/2007/11/forming-identity.html

[Emily Kornblut]

Alecia and everyone -
For more on this topic, be sure to read some or all of the chapters in the Youth, Identity, and Digital Media volume of the new The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning.
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/toc/dmal/-/6

The series is officially launching today and also features the following volumes, which should make for some really great reading:
Civic Life Online: Learning How Digital Media Can Engage Youth
Digital Media, Youth, and Credibility
The Ecology of Games: Connecting Youth, Games, and Learning
Digital Youth, Innovations, and the Unexpected
Learning Race and Ethnicity: Youth and Digital Media