Thing #20 Libraries & Social Networks/Newsletter 8

I'm so happy to be able to blog again. I've been forced to do too many everyday library tasks to continue the Things. I have been reading the Facebook articles off and on however and thinking about them. This is really a teen thing, for sure. Newsletter 8 came also during my hiatus (I love the newsletters, can you keep sending them, so I can keep trying out the new things?) . The newsletter brought me back again to YouTube, where I watched some of the Award winning videos. And I went to makeuseof.com--that's a keeper. Some of the library MySpace pages seems too pathetically trying to be hip. But I found a useful presence for some. I know the idea is to just to have kids be aware of libraries at a minimum. The Pew Internet study reinforced some of my own observations about the social networking sites. For instance that they are used for sharing artistic creations; girls blog more than boys; boys used the sites more for viewing videos and posting their own videos. In our library, I can see that when boys are communicating on these sites, it's usually with a girl, other wise they are playing games, or watching the videos. I also think that for the more technologically aware, e-mail is the new snail mail. I just hope that kids will wise up at some point and realize that what they post on the Internet IS world wide and possibly can be seen by many and may be used against them.