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48 Heather A. Horst, Becky Herr-Stephenson, and Laura RobinsonIn response to these regulations, teenagers develop work-arounds, waysto subvert institutional barriers to hanging out while in school (see Thorne1993 on the concept of underground economies in the classroom). C. J.Pascoe (Living Digital) reports that teenagers in her study regularly usedproxy servers to get online at school. She also notes that many of the kidsshe spoke with seemed to know which students were experts at findingavailable proxy servers. During one of her interviews at California DigitalArts School (CDAS), 6 one teen wanted to show Pascoe his MySpace profile,but he could not because the school’s server blocked the site. He spentthirty minutes during the interview tracking down one of the school’sexperts on proxy servers. Unfortunately, when the proxy expert sat downto log on to the proxy, he discovered that school officials had alreadyblocked the server, forcing him to start a search for a new server. Karl, afifteen-year-old mixed-race student in San Francisco, attested to the factthat teenagers who want to hang out with their friends will find ways touse MySpace in the school library even though the school bans accessto the site. As Dan Perkel (MySpace Profile Production) describes, “whilewiggling his fingers in the air in front of an imaginary keyboard, a slylook crosses his face as if to show how sneaky people are and also the biggrin on his face as he confirms, ‘They can’t ban MySpace!’ ” Karl’s generalattitude toward bending the rules in the name of maintaining contact withhis friends throughout the day is mirrored in Liz’s and her boyfriend’suse of text messaging. Liz, a sixteen-year-old high-school student who livesin a middle-class suburb in the San Francisco Bay Area, highlights theimportance to her friends of back-channel communication:C.J.: And so why is texting such a big deal?Liz: You want to talk in class, but then like you’re in different classes andso this is the only way you can talk to them. Or you just aren’t allowed totalk in class [and] your friend is sitting next to you, so you text. Or writenotes. But nobody writes notes anymore. . . .Liz’s boyfriend: Yeah, it replaced the note.Liz: Nobody.C.J.: There’s none of the elaborately folded?Liz: We sit next to each other, so sometimes we write little notes andthen usually the teacher takes it away because we’re right in front of them.But we’re not even talking about anything. But then if we’re across theroom then he’ll start texting me and I text someone else. And then if you’rein other classrooms you definitely need to text. . . . (Pascoe, Living Digital)