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Friendship 95displayed on social network sites, there are social tensions concerningwhom to include and whom to exclude. Furthermore, as many IM clientsand most social network sites require confirmation for people to list oneanother, 5 choosing to include someone prompts a “Friend request” thatrequires the recipient to accept or reject the connection. This introducesanother layer of social processing. While teens are developing a set ofshared social practices for Friending, the norms for these practices are stillin a state of flux and interpretive flexibility, as is characteristic of the earlyyears of adoption of a new technology. Further, the technology capabilitiesalso are evolving in tandem with the development of user practices ornorms. Teens’ ongoing debate and negotiation over what is socially appropriate,combined with Internet companies’ efforts to monitor and regulatethese practices, is gradually stabilizing a set of practices for how youthpublicly articulate their social relations on social network sites.Teens have different strategies for choosing whom to mark as Friends.By and large, the teens we interviewed include as Friends those theyknow—friends, family, peers, and so on. Yet, even within the confines ofthis general rubric, there is immense variation. Teens may choose to acceptrequests from peers they know but do not feel close to, if only to avoidoffending them. They may also choose to exclude people they know wellbut do not wish to have present on Facebook or MySpace. This categorymay include parents, siblings, and teachers.Both MySpace and Facebook offer many incentives for adding peopleother than close friends. Many of the privacy features that were introducedduring the course of our study limit non-Friends from profile viewing,leaving comments, and, in some cases, sending messages. Teens who wishto talk with peers or friends of friends are encouraged to accept requestsfrom peers so as to open the channel of communication. Likewise, teenswho use MySpace to distribute their music think it is important to acceptrequests from any potential fans.Teens must determine their own boundaries concerning whom to acceptand whom to reject. For many, this is not easy. In determining boundaries,there are common categories of potential Friends that most teens addressin their decision-making process. The first concerns strangers. While manyearly adopters of MySpace gregariously welcomed anyone and everyone asFriends, the social norms quickly changed. For most teens, rejectingsuch requests is now the most common practice. Although teens who