I type, therefore I am.

It’s the same old story. You’re minding your own business, chatting away to your best friend on facebook or myspace, when a handsome stranger’s profile pic pops up on your screen. You say to yourself, ‘hallo!’ whilst your mother’s voice lingers… “never speak to strangers.” You agree, that’s why you’re chatting online. They can’t physically take you home, or harm you. After all, you can just log off, or change your username and it’s all sweet, or is it?

This scenario has been repeated time and time gain in the classroom and beyond. It affects adults and adolescents alike. It seems great and no strings attached. All parties get to have a lot of fun. What’s problematic, is that you can never be sure who it is that you’re speaking to. Is their profile pic really theirs? Are they really who they say they are, or have they constituted so much false identity that they believe that their virtual identity is reality?

This is alarming, but for many teens the prospect of looking at such virtual spaces as being dangerous is a void matter. This is because, “profiles [on such sites] provide an opportunity to craft the extended intended expression through language, imagery and media.” (Boyd, 2006) What this means is that adolescent identity, through digital culture is a platform for social construction and identity.

An interesting way to engage students and still make them aware of the dangers is to create a wikispace for a character, then get the class to write a story that is played out on the wiki in the form of blogs, where students carry out a potentially hazardous story. In this, students are creating text, but at the same time are understanding how easy it is to mislead others and how some virtual spaces are just like their creation: mere fiction.

Any thoughts?

Reference (a great article that talks about identity and virtual spaces)

Boyd, D. (2006 February 19) “Identity production in a networked culture: why youth heart myspace.” American Association for the advancement of science. St. Louis, MO found at http://www.danah.org/papers/AAAS2006.html.