Adolescent Identity and Literacy

I really liked learning about Adolescent Identity and Literacy and found it to be incredibly interesting to read about.  The article that I found the most interesting was “Which South Park Character Are You?: Popular Culture, Literacy, and Online Performances of Identity” which mainly talked about how students identify themselves through their MySpace and Facebook pages.  Rather than students filling out the ‘About Me’ section where they just write a paragraph about themselves, many instead identified themselves through the music, film clips, quotes, books, and other popular culture references they chose to share on their pages.  According to the article, over half of a student’s page is filled with popular cultural references.  Another interesting thing about this is that students make judgements about others based on these references and decide whether the person is worth getting in contact with through what they post.  They also fear what others may think of them and of being misrepresented by their references.  They are aware that people other than their friends and families can view these pages and they consider what people who have no knowledge of what they are like will think about them based on what they choose to share.  To me this was all really cool to discover.