“Teenage online community users feel part of their online community almost as much as they feel part of their own family. An international study of the users of teenage online community Habbo reveals that users identify more strongly with the online community than with their neighbourhood or offline hobby group. The study is based on a survey with 4299 respondents from United Kingdom, Spain and Japan. All three nationalities yielded similar results.
The study was authored by Dr. Vili Lehdonvirta, a researcher at the Helsinki Institute for Information Technology HIIT (currently a visiting scholar at the University of Tokyo), and Professor Pekka Räsänen from the University of Turku, Finland. The authors point out that peer groups are important for the development of adolescents’ identity and values. The study addresses the question of whether online groups are standing in for traditional peer groups that are thought to be weakening in some developed countries. The results confirm that online groups can act as strong psychological anchoring points for their members. The authors conclude that games, social networking sites and other online hangouts should be seen as crucial contexts for today’s youths’ identification and socialisation experiences.
The results also suggest that in relatively young information societies such as Spain, online groups are more often “virtual communities” consisting of relative strangers. In mature information societies such as Japan, online groups are more likely to be a way of keeping in touch with family and friends. This may influence the experiences that youth receive from online groups in different countries.
The study, titled “How do young people identify with online and offline peer groups? A comparison between United Kingdom, Spain and Japan,” is published by the Journal of Youth Studies, the leading international scholarly journal focusing on youth research. Habbo is a popular teenage virtual world developed by Sulake Corporation. It has 15 million monthly unique visitors from over 150 countries, according to Sulake. The site is available in 11 local language versions and recently celebrated its 10th anniversary. 90 percent of Habbo users are between 13 and 18 years old.”
Read more at Science Daily (Thanks @XxLadyClaireXx)
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I agree – the post post modern family is made up of friends list, not friends. For example, I feel a great kinship with Derren, whos like a virtual brother to me.
In that vein, lend us a tenner, bro..
I used to be really active on a forum for several years, and I definitely got to be closer friends with some people on there than people I had classes with in real life. In fact tomorrow me and a guy I met on this forum are going to a festival together for the 3rd year running. (:
Woah. Er, what a surprise.
Could’ve told them that, but I must admit it is nice to get something confirmed with statistics and things sometimes.
I am slowly becomming (healthily!?) obsessed with LC, let alone Coops!
Interesting to hear that the results were similar in Japan and Spain too. We’ve just completed a similar study into the online social life of teens (11 – 16 year olds) and their relationship with social networking sites; for example how, why and what kind of content tweens are sharing their peers and how it can function as social capital.
An article about our research – http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/opinion/the-secret-social-life-of-tweens/3015607.article
It’s not surprising at all. I know I’ve practically grown up online, and those younger than me will have done so from an even younger age. You are also more likely to share more personal thoughts over the internet due to the relative anonymity, which means that you inspire trust in others online and feel closer to them.
There’s also the fact that online communities make you more able to find people with similar outlooks/interests than you would necessarily find offline.
i agree it’s not surprising. when i was a teenager, i identified with the dinosaurs a lot more than my own family…
Being a teenager myself, I can confirm this. I have made many friends through Twitter, mainly fellow DBers. They feel closer to me than many people, although I may not have met them.
I think Kat has hit the nail on the head. On each forum, blog or message board, the posters are united by a common interest. This removes the need for the preliminary chit-chat that usually establishes common ground, as the common ground is already obvious.
For example, on this blog, we are all obviously united by some sort of psychosis.
(or at least a liking for the thought-bending beardy one)
I agree with what Kat said. You get on better with people if you have a common interest & to me the whole point of forums & the virtual worlds like Habbo is to make friends with people though shared intrests. You’re obviously going to get on with people from an online community if you’ve found something in common with people in that community & they could be worlds apart from your family.
Since I was 10 I have been apart of online comunities & it has felt like a real lifeline to me to be able to speak freely & be fanatic about things. I’m 17 now & still apart of some of the communities I started out with & I still dont idenity well with my parents even though I have a good relationship with them. I dont think any young person ‘identifies’ with their parents, its all about growing up.