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114 danah boydforms of sociability are reinforced and heightened. Teens are able to keepin closer and ongoing touch with one another and to support the relationshipsthat they are nurturing in their local peer-based networks, whichmost see as their primary source of identity and affiliation. They develop“always-on intimate communities” with their broader peer group. However,articulating those friendships online means that they become subject topublic scrutiny in new ways; teens are able to display new dimensions ofthemselves but they also may have their self-representations reframed byothers in a public way. This makes lessons about social life (both the failuresand successes) more consequential and persistent. While these dynamicshave played out through fashion, appropriating spaces and lunchroomsat school, or congregating with friends in public spaces such as the mall,social network sites make these dynamics visible in a more persistent andaccessible public arena.Social media mirror and magnify teen friendship practices. Positiveinteractions are enhanced through social media while negative interactionsare also intensified. Teens who are growing older together withsocial media are coconstructing new sets of social norms with their peersand through the efforts of technology developers. The dynamics of socialreciprocity and negotiations over popularity and status all are being supportedby participation in publics of the networked variety as formativeinfluences in teen life. While we see no indication that social media arechanging the fundamental nature of these friendship practices, we do seedifferences in the intensity of engagement among peers, and conversely,in the relative alienation of parents and teachers from these social worlds.Youth continue to experience their teenage years as a time to immersethemselves in these peer-based status negotiations and to develop theirsocial and cultural identities in ways that are independent from theirparents, and they are aided now in these practices by a new suite of communicationtools.Notes1. http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2006/03/ultrafast_relea.html.2. For an overview of social network sites and their history, see boyd and Ellison(2007).