FACEBOOK - TEEN OBSERVATION**

My little sister Christina, who is 16, has an ipod, a laptop, can't remember life without cell phones and is an avid Facebook user. She has 453 Facebook friends, most of whom indicate that they are in her high school network. Since I am her Facebook friend I can view a certain aspect of her life whenever I want. Facebook allows me to see what her life is like outside of the family. I can tell who her closest friends are by seeing them repeatedly in photographs. She has 162 photos that she did not post herself and about 170 that she posted. I really have access to a small clip of a documentary of her life with her friends.

The photos include typical teen photos friends, always smiling and looking like they're having a good time. There are also other photos of the girls making sexy poses, such as at the mall with mannequins or at the beach in bikinis. When I was her age, we didn't pose in bikini's together. I'm not sure if it's the result of mass media or if it's just that we are different. She lives in New Jersey and she goes to a high school with a good reputation. She has had photography classes and you can see some of the photos get more experimental through the point of view or composition.

When I look at her wall or view the photo comments I can see bits and pieces of conversations she has with her friends. I know that her and her girl friends tell each other some form of "I love you" on a regular basis and they tell each other that they are pretty. They sometimes post little web cam videos that are about 30-60 seconds long saying nothing much besides "hello" and possibly "I love you".

I can tell that most of her friends are white, but there are some other nationalities/ethnicities mixed in, some of which are not easy to tell just by a photograph. Two of the boys that seem to be a part of her group of friends are black, but their ethnicity is hard to tell. One time at the dinner table at my father's house (she's my father's daughter) she agreed with me that something he said sounded racist. It made me think of a photo on her Facebook page lounging next to a black boy at a friend's house.

Without Facebook I would not know these things about Christina. Some of her other Facebook friends her own age must have the same experience if they choose to click around her Facebook pages. I wonder if it brings her and her friends together, if it adds space or if it adds a superficial dimension to their relationships. I think of high school as a time of being self-conscious. If this is true for most teenagers, how does Facebook play into that? One fact that cannot be argued is that growing up with Facebook as a part of your life is different than when it was not an option. What does it mean for those who do not have access to Facebook in today's society, like many kids growing up in low-income households? It is adding to the cultural capital that helps more affluent children to succeed as adults? These are questions I can ask, but I at this point I do not have the answers.