Teen girls’ professed privacy concerns actually mask reputational face-management

Evidence

In the months during which I observed the girls and musical.ly, I never got to the point of producing a successful lip-sync video myself. It occurred to me that while I was fixated on privacy concerns, I also overlooked the fact that these very young teenage girls were exhibiting elegant and savvy digital literacies and skills that required much corporeal and emotional negotiation. While the girls had initially framed their deliberate nonposting and nonpublic facing profiles as “privacy” concerns, my deeper inquiry revealed that they were less concerned about personal privacy than about face, status, and value within their social networks, desiring to avoid gossip, rumor, and mockery for subpar performances. While the girls reiterated that they were just being on musical.ly “for fun,” they also demonstrated a great investment in effort and time to perfect their moves. And while it may appear that they were focused on producing content for the app, my observations provided an insight that musical.ly was often an important lubricant or social “excuse” for the girls to get together in the flesh and spend physical, co-present time together. Although they were very much influenced by microcelebrities and influencers on musical.ly, none of the girls saw these actors as role models in that they did not desire to pursue publicity and fame, thus decoupling “inspiration” and “aspiration” in the concept of microcelebrity. — Crystal Abidin and Megan Lindsay Brown (eds.), Microcelebrity Around the Globe, 485

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Goffman’s backstage/frontstage dramaturgy and Abidin’s disclosive intimacy concepts named in the chapter itself; also deepens the platform-rules-reconditioning-authenticity thread from earlier chapters. — connects to: Attention operates as an addictive wealth of increasing returns — Crystal Abidin and Megan Lindsay Brown (eds.), Microcelebrity Around the Globe:…, 347; Perceived parental surveillance in public shames immigrant teens acutely — Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being…, 608; Privacy behaviors serve measurable psychological functions necessary for healthy development — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1530 (+1 more)
• SEED: Article angle: ‘privacy’ as a folk label for reputation work among teens — how researchers and parents systematically misread what kids mean by keeping accounts private.
• DEEPTHINKING: The decoupling of inspiration from aspiration upends the commonsense assumption that admiring microcelebrities equals wanting to become one, and reframes platform participation as offline social lubrication.

Broader Connections

• Perceived parental surveillance in public shames immigrant teens acutely #complicates (0.75) — Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being…, 608
• Privacy behaviors serve measurable psychological functions necessary for healthy development #corroborates (0.72) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1530
• The girl’s narcissism follows from an early craving to be looked at by others #corroborates (0.70)