1. By: Hilary Dion
CMS 298

2. • CHOSEN TOPIC: Friendship
• WHY: Social media has in many ways affected my life through
relationships, family or friend drama, or even work related
issues.
• HOW TO ACCSESS MY PRESENTATION: I took a lot of the
authors points and twisted them into my own point of view or
analysis. Some of the slides have discussions highlighted in
red. These are for you to answer or think about. I think it’s
important that while you’re watching a slideshow to not only
take it all in but also to be able to think about the issues and
points at hand.
• MY GOAL: For you to enjoy and learn about friendships via
social media site. I look forward to all of your presentations.
• CHEERS.

4. • Boyd states, “For many contemporary teenagers, losing
access to social media is tantamount to losing their social
world” (p. 79).
• Making friends on social sites has virtually become the
new fad for being “cool” or “popular” for young teens of
this generation.
• How many likes you receive on you Facebook status,
how many retweets you get on twitter, or even how many
people like your picture on instagram has now become a
definition of worthy friendships with intertwined bonds in
the social media networked world.

5. • Everyday communication with teens has essentially
formulated the socially derived world of technology along
with the obsession of being involved in daily activity with
friends on twitter, Facebook, Myspace, or the newly
found Instagram.
• “This chapter documents how social media are
incorporated into teen friendship practices in the context
of everyday peer groups (Boyd, pg. 80).
• “This chapter focuses on the role that technology plays in
establishing, reinforcing, complicating, and damaging
friendship-driven social bonds (Boyd, pg. 81).

6. • The goals of how to make friends have shifted from face-to-
face activities after school to writing on someone’s wall to
make plans or even have a conversation through messaging.
• This subcategory of my chapter explains the need/ wants of
these teens to branch away from school derived norms. By
doing this they are allowed to reach out to their “friends” via
Facebook or twitter in order to stay in contact as well as
independent from the functions or goals of the structured
environments around them.
• Boyd notes, “Medicated teen social worlds began with the
telephone and continue to today’s variegated palette of
communications technologies and popular media. Teens use
all that is available to craft and display their social identities
and interact with their peers. Just as we see in the locker
rooms and cafeterias in high schools, online spaces, introduce
opportunities for kids to display fashion and taste, to gossip,
form friendships, flirt, and even harass other peers” (p. 84).

7. • In short, I believe that the way teens in our era go about
making friends or even finding friends on these social media
sites is out of society’s hands. Media and technology has
taken over via cell phones and computers in so many ways
that this format of how relationships are formed through peers
is ever so growing.
Analysis: The way that each and everyone one of us makes
friends is a definition of who we are and how we contribute to
society’s mirage and how we represent ourselves to other
around us. It is true that social media guides us into letting the
way we make friends through this formation make us who we
are. But our way out is to not let these perceptions cast
judgments on how we take advantage of technological
advances.
• Discussion Question: When you were a teen, did you feel
pressured into making friends through social media sites
or was it just an addition into finding yourself at such a
tough age?

8. • Danah Boyd continues in this chapter by motioning that
making friends is usually formulated around morals,
cultures, or even economic features circled around each
individual.
• My selective opinion is that wherever you are in the world
making friends on Facebook is a choice strictly
personally made. What’s to be determined is whether
that friend is valuable or trustworthy enough to be on
your page, follow your daily activities, or even see your
pictures.
• Discussion: Why do you think Facebook
suggests friends for you when you should already
be friends with people who matter? 

9. • Boyd notes, “This is not to say that teens do not leverage
social media to develop friendships. Teens frequently use
social media as additional channels of communication to
get to know classmates and turn acquaintances into
friendships (p. 89).
• Later Boyd adds, “One of the ways in which social media
alter friendship practices is through forced and often
public articulation of social connections. From instant
messaging “buddy lists” to the public listing of “Friends”
on social networking sites, teens are regularly forced to
list their connections as part of the social media
participation (p. 94).

10. • Yes, teens in this day • In order to become
and age may try to socially accepted or
reconnect with even becoming able to
acquaintances in order negotiate with social
to make friends as Boyd networking competition
explains. But are they via LIKES, POSTS,
looking for friends or RETWEETS, OR EVEN
increased number of SHARES, I believe
friends on their pages? teens strive for numbers
of friends versus
valuable friendships.
• DISCUSSION: Agree or
Disagree?

11. • The constant need of increasing your number of friends
on your page can also increase the chances of having
your privacy be revoked by strangers, hackers, or socially
altered individuals looking for trouble. There are ways to
enhance the neglecting of such people through upping
your privacy features or simply hitting REJECT. It’s not
that easy.
• Boyd notes, “While most teens who connect with
strangers have no expectation of building a relationship
out of this performed connection, there are teens who
happily add people to whom they are attracted to in
hopes that one of these connections might develop into
something more” (p. 97).

12. • Analysis: By this social convention teens are mutually
expected to add anyone and everyone they may slightly
know in order to follow or abide by social norms. But is it
socially correct to push these gestures onto such a young
age group? This constant pressure will eventually grow
with them and social networking via building relationships
from these flakey bonds on these sites will formulate
actual relationships collegiately and professionally.

13. • Myspace originally came up with the idea of “top friends”. By doing this this
social media site forced teens to validate who their “real friends” were based
off of a scale of 8 specific friends. Because teen years are the years where
you find out how to make friends or even how to lose some, this way or
formulating bonds with hierarchies only put a barrier between this learning
process.
• Boyd notes, “Not all teens participate in the social
dramas that result from top friends, but it does cause
tremendous consternation for many. The top friends
feature is a good example of how structural aspects of
software can force articulations that do not map well to
how offline social behavior works” (p. 103).
• Discussion: Did you have a top friends list? If so how did
it affect your friendships as a teen?

15. • How you perceive yourself to the world can be equally
equivalent to who you are on your Facebook or Twitter page.
Or it can be a completely different version of you. Boyd wraps
up this chapter by discussing the drama and attention that
these sites provide for many of the users involved. The
“struggle” of being accepted in a school or personal setting as
well as on your page is a battle constantly fought. This balance
becomes a fight between who you want people to see you as
and also the person you wish to be for yourself. Boyd
mentions, “Teens seeking to spread rumors or engage in
drama often use social media. These acts may be lightweight
parts of everyday teen life or they may snowball in magnitude
and become acts of bullying. Regardless of the intensity, our
research shows that the acts of drama involving social media
are primarily a continuation of broader dramas” (p. 105).

16. • I believe that the most prominent concern of social media
is the acts of bullying and cyber stalking. Although this
chapter emphasizes on making friends or finding yourself
through these social sites, it is faulty to say that negative
effects do not formulate when such young children
access their pages.

17. • As Boyd believes that there are positives and negatives
to social media involving the formation of friendships, I
agree. Although friends and peers are allowed to connect
at a technologically advanced level with each other, they
are also lacking the actuality of face-to-face contact that
is more traditional.
• “While social warfare and drama do exist, the value of
social media rests in their ability to strengthen
connections” (Boyd, pg. 113).
• Discussion: Do you believe that social media causes
more positives or negatives for the growing generation of
teen youth?

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