Youth and Social Networking

It is almost scary how sites like Facebook and MySpace are signs of status in a way. They are practically running the lives of teens today.
Henry Jenkins said:
"MySpace has over 78 million registered accounts while Facebook has approximately 8 million. While over 85% of college students participate on Facebook if it exists on their campus, MySpace is a cultural requirement for American high school students. Or, as one teenager said, “If you’re not on MySpace, you don’t exist.” Not all MySpace users are teenagers, but most American teenagers have accounts on MySpace.
These sites play a key role in youth culture because they give youth a space to hang out amongst friends and peers, share cultural artifacts (like links to funny websites, comments about TV shows) and work out an image of how they see themselves. They also serve as digital publics, substituting for the types of publics that most adults took for granted growing up, but are now inaccessible for many young people – neighborhood basketball courts, malls, parks, etc. Youth are trying to map out a public youth territory for themselves, removed from adult culture. They are doing so online because their mobility and control over physical space is heavily curtailed and monitored."
When I heard it said this way, that youth are trying to map out a public youth territory for themselves, it made me consider these social networking sites in a new way. I certainly had never thought about it in that sense. It is understandable that teens just want a place for themselves. As long as they are being careful, i.e. predators, dangers of meeting people on there, etc. then maybe it is good for them to have their own outlets.