The explosion in social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook, Bebo and Friendster is widely regarded as an exciting opportunity, especially for youth.Yet the public response tends to be one of puzzled dismay regarding a generation that, supposedly, has many friends but little sense of privacy and a narcissistic fascination with self-display. This article explores teenagers' practices of social networking in order to uncover the subtle connections between online opportunity and risk. While younger teenagers relish the opportunities to recreate continuously a highly-decorated, stylistically-elaborate identity, older teenagers favour a plain aesthetic that foregrounds their links to others, thus expressing a notion of identity lived through authentic relationships. The article further contrasts teenagers' graded conception of `friends' with the binary classification of social networking sites, this being one of several means by which online privacy is shaped and undermined by the affordances of these sites.

is a Research Fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute. Her research interests include the use of information and communication technologies in different contexts by people from vulnerable groups. This article reports on research funded by an Economic and Social Research Council grant (RES-335-25-0008) as part of the "e-Society" Programme, with co-funding from "AOL-UK"," BSC", "Childnet-International", "Citizens Online", "ITC" and "Ofcom" (see www.children-go-online.net). Thanks are due to Magdalena Bober for her work on this project. We are also grateful for the careful comments of several anonymous reviewers.

Little academic and policy attention has addressed the 'digital divide' among children and young people. This article analyses findings from a national survey of UK 9-19 year olds that reveal inequalities by age, gender and socioeconomic status in relation to their quality of access to and use of the internet. Since both the extent of use and the reasons for low and non-use of the internet vary by age, a different explanation for the digital divide is required for children compared with adults. Looking beyond the idea of a binary divide, we propose instead a continuum of digital inclusion. Gradations in frequency of internet use (from non and low users through to weekly and daily users) are found to map onto a progression in the take-up of online opportunities among young people (from basic through moderate to broad and then all-round users), thus beginning to explain why differences in internet use matter, contributing to inclusion and exclusion. Demographic, use and expertise variables are all shown to play a role in accounting for variations in the breadth and depth of internet use. Keywords Internet, children and young people, digital divide, digital inclusion, internet literacy.

This article explores gender inequities and sexual double standards in teens’ digital image exchange, drawing on a UK qualitative research project on youth ‘sexting’. We develop a critique of ‘postfeminist’ media cultures, suggesting teen ‘sexting’ presents specific age and gender related contradictions: teen girls are called upon to produce particular forms of ‘sexy’ self display, yet face legal repercussions, moral condemnation and ‘slut shaming’ when they do so. We examine the production/circulation of gendered value and sexual morality via teens’ discussions of activities on Facebook and Blackberry. For instance, some boys accumulated ‘ratings’ by possessing and exchanging images of girls’ breasts, which operated as a form of currency and value. Girls, in contrast, largely discussed the taking, sharing or posting of such images as risky, potentially inciting blame and shame around sexual reputation (e.g. being called ‘slut’, ‘slag’ or ‘sket’). The daily negotiations of these new digitally mediated, heterosexualised, classed and raced norms of performing teen feminine and masculine desirability are considered.

As Internet use becomes widespread at home, parents are trying to maximize their children's online opportunities while also minimizing online risks. We surveyed parents of 6-to 400

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Renewed debates over media literacyThe concept of media literacy, like that of literacy itself, has long proved contentious (Luke, 1989). The hugely significant skills of reading and writing have been augmented by the also-significant skill of 'reading' audiovisual material from the midtwentieth century onwards. Today, as we witness a further major shift in information and communication technology (ICT), a new form of literacy is emerging, uneasily termed computer literacy or internet literacy. This new form of literacy, if its is indeed 'new', and if it is appropriately labeled 'literacy', lies at the heart of a series of lively debates intersecting the academy, the policy community, and the public.A casual search of bookshops makes plain the explosion of academic interest in questions of literacy, with titles exploring literacy in the electronic era (Snyder, 1998), the information age (Kubey, 1997), the digital era (Warnick, 2002), the digital world (Tyner, 1998) or even cyberliteracy (Gurak, 2001). These volumes draw together a multidisciplinary mix of specialists in literacy, culture, media education, human-computerinteraction, and social studies of technology (Kellner, 2002;Kubey, 1997;Poster, 2001;Tyner, 1998). Meanwhile, policy makers are determining regulatory frameworks required to produce an ICT-literate population, at times turning to the academy for guidance.This mix of disciplines and stakeholder interests is perhaps generating more heat than light at present. This is exacerbated by the fact that so far, research has been mainly 2 analytic, for few have explored new literacies empirically. Indeed, only recently has the majority of the public even had the chance to come to terms with the new skills required of them not just in their leisure, as with television, but crucially also at work, in education and in their community (Livingstone, 2002). This brief paper takes the opportunity to draw out a series of key intellectual challenges posed by the introduction of new information and communication technologies for our thinking about media literacy. Is 'literacy' a useful term?History tells us that even the narrow and common-sense meaning of the term -'being able to read and write' -masks a complex history of contestation over the power and authority to access, interpret and produce printed texts (Luke, 1989) Some might argue that we should leave the somewhat opaque, contested term 'literacy' to its origins in high culture (Williams, 1976), rejecting its association with the world of authoritative printed books and its tendency to stigmatize those who lack it. Doubtless the spawning of new literacies -computer literacy, cyber-literacy, internet literacy, network literacy, digital literacy, information literacy -is infelicitous. And how do these relate to the existing literacy terms -print literacy, audiovisual literacy, critical literacy, visual literacy, oral literacy, cultural literacy or social literacy ((Freire and Macedo, 1987;Hirsch, 1987;Street, 1995)? When the dominant media shifted from printba...

In both schools and homes, information and communication technologies (ICT) are widely seen as enhancing learning, this hope fuelling their rapid diffusion and adoption throughout developed societies. But they are not yet so embedded in the social practices of everyday life as to be taken for granted, with schools proving slower to change their lesson plans than they were to fit computers in the classroom. This article examines two possible explanations -first, that convincing evidence of improved learning outcomes remains surprisingly elusive, and second, the unresolved debate over whether ICT should be conceived of as supporting delivery of a traditional or a radically different vision of pedagogy based on soft skills and new digital literacies. The difficulty in establishing traditional benefits, and the uncertainty over pursuing alternative benefits, raises fundamental questions over whether society really desires a transformed, technologically-mediated relation between teacher and learner.