Interwebology Musings on the Internet and Society

Book Review: Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out

Bit of a change in blog direction here... the topic is still the internet but it will be less about silly stuff I found and more about internet research.

Soooo, in that spirit I recently finished reading Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out by Mizuko Ito and about a hundred other people (I exaggerate, but a lot of people were involved in the writing and research that went into it).

The book is about the various ways that children use the internet and related technologies, and is based on over twenty field studies on topics from Neopets and MySpace to Pro-anorexia groups and Harry Potter fans. It's a scholarly tome, particularly the introduction, but the bulk of the book uses plenty of enlightening examples and quotations from the source studies to illustrate the academic points being made, so it's not too hard going. I found the three concepts introduced in the title quite useful for understanding kids' relationships with technology, and the labels chosen seemed to be quite an intuitive and apt fit (unlike other attempts I have seen to introduce new concepts, such as Christopher Kelty's tortured labouring of "recursive publics" in Two Bits, but more on that another time).

I think it's useful here to briefly explain those concepts, as they structure the entire book:

Hanging Out

This is the state of just being present and available through technology. So it includes Facebook updates and text messages like "doing maths homework " that aren't particularly illuminating or likely to start a conversation, through to more interactive online chatter and game-play. It's a very social activity, as the name suggests: an online equivalent to loitering with friends on street corners or in the park, but they don't have to be there in person or even at the same time. In fact, as children are increasingly restricted from being with friends in public places, hanging out online may be one of few places left for them to socialise. This begs the question, if children are unable to take part in this kind of online activity (or prohibited by parents who see it as unworthwhile) will they become excluded, or even ostracised, from their normal social world?

Messing Around

This could be seen as a step-up from hanging out in terms of the engagement with technology. The kind of examples given in the book include customising a MySpace page, sharing music with friends, and fixing computer problems. It doesn't have to be a particularly intense or directed activity (although it can lead into that) but rather just playing with technology to meet a vague goal.

Geeking Out

This may develop from messing around, and covers more concerted, technical or enthusiast activity. Basically I think it means a hobby carried out wholly or partly online. Some activities, such as fan-created anime subtitles, are made feasible through the internet while others, like participating in Final Fantasy XI player guilds, can only exist online. Geeking-out activities that are a little more grounded in the offline world include learning music production and computer repair.

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I think it's possible that these ways of using the internet are not necessarily unique to children, but they may reflect what naturally happens in a population with lots of spare time in which to tinker with computers... the findings are directly applicable to university students, for example, and the book does look at such older students in historical or follow-up studies. But it would be interesting to see if the same concepts apply, for example, to patterns of usage in computer-savvy retired people — are they hanging out, messing around, and geeking out too?

All in all, a very interesting read, but not a light one. It stirs the imagination and hints at many further questions, rather than trying to serve up answers on a platter.