Instant Messaging in Teen Life
`
`Rebecca E. Grinter
`Palo Alto Research Center (PARC)
`3333 Coyote Hill Road
`Palo Alto, CA 94304
`beki@parc.com
`AIM: beki70
`
`Leysia Palen
`Department of Computer Science
`University of Colorado, Boulder
`Boulder, CO 80309
`palen@cs.colorado.edu
`+1 (303) 492 3902
`
`ABSTRACT
`Instant Messaging (IM) is being widely adopted by
`teenagers. In a study of 16 teenage IM users, we explore
`IM as an emerging feature of teen life, focusing our
`questions on its support of interpersonal communication
`and its role and salience in everyday life. We qualitatively
`describe the teens’ IM use interpersonally, as well as its
`place in the domestic ecology. We also identify technology
`adoption conditions and discuss behaviors around privacy
`management. In this initial investigation, we found
`differences in the nature of use between high school and
`college teens, differences we propose are accounted for by
`teens’ degree of autonomy as a function of domestic and
`scholastic obligations, the development of independent
`work practices, Internet connectivity access, and even
`transportation access. Moreover, while teen IM use is in
`part characterized as an optimizing choice between
`multiple communications media, practice is also tied to
`concerns around peer pressure, peer group membership and
`creating additional opportunities to socialize.
`Keywords
`Instant Messaging, Teenagers, Chat, Communications,
`Domestic information technology, CSCW, HCI, qualitative
`user study
`INTRODUCTION
`Teenagers’ use of Instant Messaging (IM) is on rapid rise,
`and has been a recent object of media attention. Indeed, the
`popularity of IM indicates that synchronous (or near-
`synchronous) text messaging and presence awareness has a
`place in teenage communications, despite an array of
`competing media available to them [21]. However, little is
`empirically known about how and why teens use IM. To
`that end, this paper reports findings from a qualitative study
`of IM use within this population.
`The objective of our investigation was to explore the space
`of issues pertaining to IM’s place and salience in teen life
`and, by so doing, inform the growing area of CSCW
`
`Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for
`personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are
`not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that
`copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy
`otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists,
`requires prior specific permission and/or a fee.
`CSCW’02, November 16–20, 2002, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA.
`Copyright 2002 ACM 1-58113-560-2/02/0011…$5.00.
`
`research in domestic environments. We sought to identify
`the major features of IM use, and describe our findings in
`terms of teen IM adoption paths, the nature and purpose of
`IM social congregation, and the place of IM in the domestic
`ecology. We then turn to an analysis of privacy regulation
`concerns and practices for IM communications, as well as
`privacy regulatory mechanisms that support IM use within
`the home. Finally, we propose that the role and salience of
`IM in teen life shift as teens age and acquire greater
`autonomy.
`INSTANT MESSAGING
`Operational Overview
`IM systems support Internet-based synchronous text chat,
`with point-to-point communication between users on the
`same system. A window is dedicated to the conversation,
`with messages scrolling upward and eventually out of view
`as the conversation ensues. IM also supports group chat,
`with users inviting others to join them in a specified
`“room.” Some systems, such as AIM and ICQ, make some
`chat rooms public. In some IM systems, pictures and URLs
`can be included in the messaging. Colors and fonts are
`personalizable.
`“Buddy” lists display information about IM cohorts.
`Buddies’ on-line handles (usernames) are displayed, along
`with indicators of activity (usually as a function of input
`device use) and availability (as inferred by activity and as
`stated explicitly by user-specified settings). Buddies can be
`sorted into user-defined categories such as “friends,”
`“family,” “co-workers” and so forth.
`From IRC to IM: Text Chat Past and Present
`Instant Messaging is the newest and most popular
`incarnation of near-synchronous text chat technologies.
`UNIX “talk” and “write” have supported one-on-one
`conversation for over
`twenty and fifteen years,
`respectively. Multi User Dungeons (MUDs) and Internet
`Relay Chat have supported multi-way real-time text chat
`for over a decade. Zephyr is another multi-way real-time
`text chat facility first developed at MIT in the late 1980s
`and subsequently adopted at a number of academic
`institutions [1].
`MUD and IRC systems tend to be used for supporting
`communications between strangers or, more accurately,
`people who do not know each other in real space. These
`technologies enable people to congregate around topics or
`
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`activities of common interest, from gaming to discussions
`of research [22], although off-topic conversation might
`ensue once initial contacts are made. Like IRC and MUDs,
`Zephyr communications are often
`topic-centered
`(organized around “instances”) with a large but constrained
`population of users (university students). Research on
`these systems has focused on the opportunities and
`difficulties that these virtual user communities experience
`in the context of public chat (see for example [1, 4, 20,
`22]). Today IM offers analogous public chat rooms
`organized around such topics as “Britney Spears” and the
`television show, “Sex and the City.”
`However, IM distinguishes itself from previous text
`messaging technologies by users’ predominant messaging
`with known others. One-on-one and small group chat
`characterizes use in the workplace, where IM is considered
`a valuable component of coordination in some places.
`Existing empirical studies of IM examine mostly workplace
`use [2, 9, 10, 15, 24, 27], with findings sharing common
`features. In particular, the informal communicative nature
`of IM supports much workplace activity. The ability to ask
`and respond to questions without overt interruption, possess
`general awareness of co-workers’ availability, participate in
`social banter and so forth, support the conduct of work and
`reinforce the social “glue” that ties people together.
`Although IM is gaining popularity in the workplace, the
`institutional imperatives of research lab and high-tech
`environments where much of this research has taken place
`[2, 15, 24, 27] tend to support the activities associated with
`informal chat. The work of Herbsleb et al. cautions that
`challenges for the adoption of IM systems can still be found
`in some workplaces where “informal chatting” of any kind
`needs explanation and justification to be understood and
`valued [9].
`Teenage IM Adoption Wave
`Empirical study of IM in the workplace has illuminated
`adoption factors and use characteristics among adults. We
`draw on these observations and findings to explore the
`concurrent adoption wave among teenagers, an area rife
`with interesting and open research questions (see for
`example [12, 21]).
`Within the context of CSCW research, we believe that
`teenage IM adoption offers three potential insights. Firstly,
`teenage IM adoption marks a significant entry of
`collaborative information technologies into the home.
`Studying teenagers’ use of collaborative technology in the
`home offers new insight about its role in the domestic
`ecology. Secondly, since most teenagers have little
`previous experience with technologies that convey presence
`between remote peers, they must learn what it means to be
`simultaneously private and public people. Finally,
`teenagers are
`the workforce of
`the future, and
`communication habits they develop now may indicate what
`we can expect from them as adults.
`THE STUDY
`Method
`The objective of the study was to understand and identify
`the most salient attributes of teenage IM use. The intention
`
`was to take a grounded, bottom-up approach to the
`investigation, allowing the most common and significant
`issues to emerge from the inquiry, with few initial
`expectations. To that end, we restricted the study to IM
`users only, studying non-use only from their perspective,
`albeit acknowledging that the study of non-users should
`figure into future investigation. We note that one
`participant was 20 years old, and therefore slightly outside
`the teenage demographic. However, he shared much in
`common with the 19 year olds in college, and we chose to
`include his data in this paper after finding that IM usage
`characteristics among young people appears to be
`correlated to increasing autonomy in part as function of
`student status.
`With a set of 16 teenage IM users (whose descriptions
`follow) the first author conducted in-depth interviews [14]
`lasting from 1/2 to 3 hours each. Interviews with P1-4 took
`place in the United Kingdom and P5-16 in the United
`States. Following the interviews and with participant
`permission, the first author added participants’ usernames
`to her buddy list to make general observations about
`participants’ on-line activity and to verify participant
`estimates of time spent on-line.
`Participants
`All 16 participants were IM users employing at least one of
`the four most popular IM systems: AOL’s Instant
`Messenger (AIM), ICQ, MSN Messenger (MSN) and
`Yahoo! Messenger. Four teens resided in the UK with the
`remaining in United States1. Three participants lived in
`dorms at their universities, while the others lived at home
`with their families.
`All participants lived in regions where the local economies
`centered on computing and telecommunications. Our
`assumption was that this population of people leads others
`in technology adoption, and that examination of such a
`group forecasts future practice of wider and more diverse
`populations.
`Table 1 summarizes select demographics and IM
`characteristics.
`INSTANT MESSAGING IN TEEN LIFE
`In this section, we describe our findings about teenage use
`of Instant Messaging in detail. We organize the discussion
`in terms of IM use frequency patterns, IM adoption factors
`and trajectories, IM cohorts, the nature of IM-based social
`congregation, and the relationship between IM technology
`and domestic environments in which it resides.
`Use Frequency & Connectivity Profiles
`IM use is generally characterized by two different patterns:
`discrete or continuous connectivity. Discrete connectivity
`generally describes a user with a dial-up Internet access
`using a modem and/or a shared computer. These
`
`
`
`1 We found that after analysis of this data, as well as the
`first author’s experience from empirical study of UK teen
`use of short text messaging, differences between US and
`UK teens were minimal along the dimensions we discuss
`in this paper.
`
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`Among our participants, IM communications are mostly
`restricted to one’s “real space friends”—people who first
`met face-to-face in physical space settings such as school
`or summer camp. Technology adoption is best described as
`group-wise, similar to the discretionary, bottom-up pattern
`found with shared calendaring systems [9, 19]. A group of
`friends settles on a particular IM system while others in the
`social group are encouraged to join in, using the same
`system. P4, for instance, used one IM system with his
`college friends and a different IM system with his high
`school friends. He and his high school friends had
`collectively decided on one IM system, but when he arrived
`at college, another system was already dominant. Only P16
`had found a technical solution to the problem of having
`friends that used different IM systems. He used Jabber, an
`interoperable IM client for MSN, Yahoo! and ICQ.
`Our participants experienced high and sustained IM use
`because of a desire to conform to and increase socializing
`opportunities with their peers. For example as P6
`explained, it was a matter of “be on or be out.” Another,
`P5, offered that she started using it “because all my friends
`were talking, and I didn’t want to miss out.” Peer pressure
`helped to achieve a critical mass of users within a social
`group, which in turn sustained long-term use [13]. Over
`time, claiming membership in a particular social group
`rested in part on the ability to participate in IM
`communications. IM use was also sustained by the desire
`to socialize and keep abreast of social event planning, as
`was similarly found in the case of SMS [8].
`Participants reported being annoyed by IM non-users and
`complained of the inconvenience and additional work
`required to contact them. Moreover, non-users’ lack of IM
`presence rendered them even somewhat invisible, or at
`least missing-in-action: one participant (P6) complained
`about not feeling like she knew where her friends were.
`Indeed, some participants felt that maintaining relationships
`with IM non-users was more difficult than with IM users.
`Price performance also figured into adoption success for
`this population. Their IM clients were free. Moreover, the
`hardware and connection set up costs were absorbed by the
`“domestic infrastructure”—either the parents who bought
`the machines and paid for the Internet connection and/or a
`university that provides Internet connectivity in dorm
`rooms.
`Limited financial resources coupled with a great desire to
`socialize meant that participants were sensitive to the
`relative costs of all technologies they used or could use.
`They also actively sought solutions that maximized their
`communication opportunities while conserving money.
`This was made especially clear by those participants who
`used a dial-up connection to IM. Participants knew that for
`the cost of a local call to an Internet service provider, they
`could communicate with several of their long-distance as
`well as local friends via IM. Choosing IM over the
`telephone, then, is not just determined by its conversational
`affordances, as media richness theory [6] would predict
`[11]. Rather, constraints faced by its users, including price
`performance concerns, limited social congregation
`opportunities and a desire to create private conversational
`
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`/Sessionβ
`IM Buddies
`Reported #
`
`(Hours)αα
`use /day
`Reported IM
`
`Personal
`Own
`Share or
`
`Technology
`Access
`Internet
`
`Residence
`
`Use
`Years of IM
`
`Age
`
`Sex
`
`Participant
`
`P1
`15
`F
`P2 M 16
`P3 M 16
`P4 M 19
`P5
`F
`14
`P6
`F
`14
`P7
`F
`15
`P8 M 17
`P9 M 17
`P10 M 17
`P11 M 17
`P12 M 17
`P13 M 17
`P14
`F
`17
`P15
`19
`
`F
`
`P16 M 20
`
`3
`3
`3
`6
`3
`2
`2
`3
`5
`2
`6
`5
`5
`7
`7
`
`3
`
`Family
`Family
`Family
`Dorm
`Family
`Family
`Family
`Family
`Family
`Family
`Family
`Family
`Family
`Family
`Dorm
`
`Modem
`Modem
`Modem
`Ethernet
`Modem
`Modem
`Modem
`Modem
`DSL
`DSL
`DSL
`DSL
`DSL
`Modem
`Ethernet
`
`Share
`Own
`Share
`Own
`Share
`Share
`Own
`Share
`Own
`Own
`Own
`Own
`Own
`Own
`Own
`
`Dorm
`
`Ethernet
`
`Own
`
`2-4
`<=2
`2-4
`24
`2-4
`<=2
`<=2
`2-4
`<=2
`<=2
`<=2
`<=2
`24
`<=2
`24
`
`24
`
`6-8
`6-8
`8+
`6-8
`5-8
`4-6
`6-8
`1-2
`1-2
`1-2
`3-5
`3-5
`3-5
`3-5
`3-5
`
`6-8
`
`Table 1: Teenagers’ IM Demographics
`α Reported IM use per day refers to total length of IM sessions, and does
`not reflect whether the teenagers engaged in IM exclusively or switched
`between IM and other activities. Those who left IM on continuously are
`noted as reporting 24 hours per day.
` Reported number of IM buddies is a self-report estimate of how many
`buddies are IM-ed during any one on-line session.
`
` β
`
`
`
`conditions make it impossible for teenagers to stay on
`continuously. Their IM use can be characterized as
`intensive and focused, with other concurrent Internet
`activity. Participants who shared this profile reported IM
`sessions lasting no more than 3 hours.
`Continuous IM connectivity is possible when users have a
`dedicated DSL or Ethernet connection and a personal
`machine. All college students had such conditions, as well
`as high school teens P9-13. This usage is typified by
`sporadic IM use intermingled with other computer and non-
`computer activities. IM windows might remain open over a
`period of days with bits of conversation added across the
`day. Sessions might only be terminated when a reboot is
`required. However, we note that even when conditions
`make “always-on” use possible, some participants (P9-12)
`reported their use to be much more like discrete users.
`Technology Choice & Adoption
`teen
`into
`its way
`Instant messaging
`is finding
`communications despite a lack of system interoperability,
`which would intuitively seem to be a major obstacle to
`adoption. After all, other text communications technologies
`like e-mail and SMS benefit from being interoperable. For
`teenagers, peer pressure is a major catalyst in IM adoption,
`and helps overcome the problems that a lack of
`interoperability initially presents.
`
`

`

`spaces, (which we discuss later in the paper), figured in to
`the decision to use IM.
`Email was reported as serving different purposes than IM,
`consistent with other experiences around IM media choice
`[15, 21]. All participants had email accounts they checked
`regularly. In fact, email was often used to coordinate IM
`sessions with others, but did not replace IM. Participants
`described email as having more “formal” purposes, such as
`college application submissions and communications with
`teachers. Among this population, email was used for
`communications that require careful thought and time to
`compose and spell-check, even over the course of multiple
`days.
`In addition to IM and email, the British participants used
`Short Message System (SMS), a nearly instant text
`messaging service for mobile phones. (Only half of the US
`teens owned a mobile phone and none of them used SMS).
`These teenagers felt obligated to monitor their incoming
`SMS messages all the time [8, 25], even while using IM on
`a desktop machine. This again illustrates how media
`choice is determined by several factors, including
`obligations to others to participate within a particular
`medium, a function of critical mass [11] that is in turn is a
`function of group membership assertion.
`IM Cohorts
`For most participants, their IM peer group reflected their
`real space relationships. For high schoolers, the most
`active IM social groups mirrored those at school. Some of
`the high school students also reported having contact with
`distant friends they had either met during vacations or at
`former schools. The use of IM to maintain real space
`relationships with distant friends was even more
`pronounced with college teenagers.
`College students living away from home also used IM as a
`way to maintain ties with their families, as Nardi et al. also
`found among office workers [15], and, in some cases, were
`the evangelists that encouraged their families to adopt IM.
`P15 reported making a special point of regularly IMing her
`parents and siblings to reinforce their use.
`Participants reported that they did not use the public IM
`chat rooms. A number of participants observed that the
`chat in these rooms was a “waste of time” because the
`quality of the content in public chat rooms was extremely
`poor. However, some participants did have one-on-one
`chats with strangers. P8 observed that he usually did this
`when his friends were not on-line. P4, P8, and P16 each
`reported talking with strangers but used other chat
`technologies to do so, gravitating towards systems with
`public chat organized around defined topics. Specifically,
`P4 and P16 used IRC, and P8 used Aimster, a combined
`music-sharing and IM client, to share and discuss music
`with like-minded strangers, a practice consistent with
`Brown et al’s [3] findings that people who share music on-
`line also like to talk about it with potential recipients.
`These observations suggest
`that
`IM might be
`conceptualized differently by users than preceding chat
`technologies. We hypothesize that IRC, MUDs and MOOs
`are conceptualized as “destinations,” with users knowing
`
`where to congregate with like-minded people. IM, on the
`other hand, appears to be conceptualized more neutrally as
`a general communications tool for reaching known others
`but without the constraints of keeping to particular topics,
`much like the telephone or email.
`Social Congregation: Means and Purpose
`Participants explained that IM allows them to converse
`with friends outside the places and times that socializing is
`traditionally permitted. IM also made congregating with
`multiple people in such places and times easier than
`telephones permitted, simplifying their coordination and
`planning processes.
`Study participants, particularly those in high school,
`explained that they “needed” to use IM to talk with peers
`after school, with some claiming that they had too limited
`social time during school hours. As P5 explained, the trend
`in her school district was to start and finish school early,
`with very short breaks in between. Many of the
`participants had structured activities scheduled in the
`afternoon, leaving, they felt, too little time to converse
`face-to-face.
`How did peers congregate using IM? One way was to send
`out IM system-generated invitations to join in a chat
`session. Some also reported talking about IM at school,
`making arrangements to meet on-line later. Some
`participants reported asking their friends to “IM me” after
`school. This integration of technology references into
`everyday speech was also found in studies of shared
`calendar use, where users would use a specific calendar
`software name to instruct others to “Schedule Plus me,” for
`example [18]. This language use then re-asserts technology
`use within the social group, a reciprocal process Giddens
`calls “structuration,” a concept Orlikowski in turn applies
`to information technology use phenomena [7, 17].
`Additionally, as best as the interview data could indicate, it
`appeared that the participants developed expectations for
`when they could find their friends on-line. These times
`varied, but they had enough local cultural and personal
`knowledge about their friends to make educated guesses.
`They employed cultural knowledge about events and
`activities in which their friends would be involved, such as
`watching a popular television show. Personal knowledge
`of friends’ schedules, such as extra-curricular activities and
`domestic rhythms of their homes, were also calculated into
`decisions about when to go on-line.
`Times for IM use were different for the high school- and
`college-aged teens. For high school teens, use of IM
`commenced after school, a time of reduced resource
`contention for those who shared computers or Internet
`access with other family members; later in the evening,
`computer access often had to be negotiated with family
`members. Logging on immediately after school also
`offered continuity to the day’s events, the primary topic of
`conversation. Even when high school teens owned their
`own computer and had their own connection (P9-14),
`computer time still had to be balanced against other family
`activities. The college students, all of whom had dedicated
`computers and continuous Internet connectivity, had less
`
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`predictable schedules, leading to an IM pattern of use
`where participants reported simply leaving IM windows up
`for particular friends, adding to the conversation every now
`and again.
`Three primary activities characterize teenage IM
`communications: informal talk or socializing, event
`planning, and schoolwork collaboration, any or all of which
`might occur in a single IM conversation (similar uses have
`also been reported in [12]). IM communication for both
`teens living at home and at college can be broadly
`described this way, although the nature of their engagement
`with these concerns varies with the degree to which school
`activities overlap with peers and degree of personal
`autonomy. We highlight some of these differences here,
`but explore the factors that explain the differences more
`deeply in the Discussion.
`Socializing
`Participants explained that informal conversation
`—everyday chitchat—was the primary use of IM. Unlike
`Usenet Newsgroup or even most IRC chat, the conversation
`was not dominated by specific topics. Since IM peers
`knew each other in real space, and often shared school
`experiences, the nature of their conversation was reported
`to be much like what they have in real space: reflections on
`the day’s events, gossip about others including what clothes
`were worn and who was seeing whom, and so forth.
`Another category of IM chat among this age group that has
`been reported elsewhere is “chatting up” or flirting and
`even breaking up with boyfriends and girlfriends [12, 21].
`We found differences between the college and high school
`students in the reported nature of the talk. Because the
`college teens no longer shared as many of their daily
`activities with their friends due, in part, to different class
`schedules, accounts of personal daily experiences tended to
`be shared as news updates, rather than as rapid-fire, gossipy
`exchange. It would appear that as people develop more
`autonomy, the nature of the conversation with their peers
`changes.
`Event Planning
`Social congregation enabled by IM systems also involved
`event planning, such as meeting others for shopping, seeing
`a movie, and so forth. The younger the teen, the less
`spontaneously and independently they could engage in such
`social activities, in large part because of access to
`transportation, as well as because of their own family’s
`internal rules and obligations. For this sub-population of
`teens, IM was surprisingly efficient at enabling multiple
`people to coordinate around these numerous constraints all
`at once, coordination that was once subject to multiple
`iterations of dyadic telephone conversations until
`appropriate arrangements for all could be met. As P5
`explained, making arrangements by phone “took forever to
`get it sorted out.”
`IM removed some of the complexity in many-person
`coordination. Participants described instances where
`friends proposed a plan together in a group chat session,
`sometimes accompanied by simultaneous use of the WWW
`to gather relevant information, such as film start times.
`
`After leaving the computer briefly to request parental
`permission and transportation to the meeting location, they
`described rejoining the conversation and either confirming
`or revising plans until everyone’s criteria had been met.
`The older teenagers in college did not have the same
`constraints, and this was reflected in the nature of their IM
`conversations. A much more salient use for these users
`was spontaneous event planning, similar to the informal
`planning use reported by Nardi et al [15]. Because of their
`greater autonomy, college students were able to exploit the
`immediacy of IM to issue spontaneous invitations to meet
`for coffee, for example, to friends who also had few
`constraints imposed by others.
`Schoolwork Collaboration
`All participants reported using IM for some kind of
`homework support. This use of IM seemed to increase
`with age, with the younger teenagers valuing camaraderie
`while working on homework, and older teenagers either
`actively preparing for or already in college wanting to
`coordinate with friends on-line to ultimately improve
`course grades.
`The older school teens reported using IM for a number of
`different types of school activities. P9-P14, who all
`attended the same school, described using IM to discuss
`course readings. P14 also reported using the text-based
`properties of IM to practice writing French by having
`French-only conversations with school friends.
`The growing shift from using IM as primarily a social
`medium to one that incorporates discussion of work
`activities culminated at college age for our participants.
`Entirely responsible for their own schedules, commitments,
`and schoolwork, the college students reported using IM in
`ways that resemble the IM practice of office workers. For
`example, P15 explained that she used IM to schedule face-
`to-face meetings with a group of people who were working
`together on a course assignment.
`Finally, one of the college-age teenagers was using IM as a
`teaching tool. P4 worked as a teaching assistant for an
`undergraduate college class, advertising the times he would
`be available on IM to discuss programming problems with
`students. (Anecdotal reports also suggest that adult
`teachers are experimenting with IM as a medium to field
`questions from students.)
`Multitasking
`All participants reported that they regularly used IM while
`engaging in some other computer-based activity, such as
`completing schoolwork, web surfing and emailing.
`Multitasking across several applications is a common
`feature of use across populations of users, as demonstrated
`by the findings of Lenhart et al [12] and Nardi et al [15].
`Participants also reported engaging in concurrent IM
`conversations. Some participants reported that they would
`often be involved in a central group conversation while
`concurrently engaging in multiple, side one-on-one
`conversations, often with the some of the same people
`involved in the group conversation. These side
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`conversations were often spawned to make comments that
`are inappropriate for group consumption.
`Multiple conversations resulted in multiple windows for the
`user to track. Some participants felt that they had a
`personal threshold (that depended on the amount of
`attention they could devote to IM at any one time and their
`own capacity for multitasking) beyond which keeping track
`of the multiple threads was difficult, and that finding the
`right window to place an appropriate reply required careful
`attention. That all the windows look the same made
`tracking the conversational threads even harder. There is a
`design opportunity here: the windows in each thread could
`be given a different appearance, perhaps different colors, to
`make them visually distinct.
`Although the affordances of IM conversation make it
`socially, cognitively, and technically possible to participate
`in concurrent conversations, doing so is not without its
`difficulties. Managing multiple windows can go beyond
`mere inconvenience to also have significant social
`repercussions. Two participants (P1 and P5) described
`situations where they accidentally replied in the wrong IM
`window. In each case, they were gossiping about a friend
`(A) to another person (B) while concurrently carrying on a
`different IM conversation with A. Mistakenly they had
`replied to B about A into A’s window. As best, such a
`mistake risks embarrassment and requires apology, which
`was the result in these two reported cases. At worst, one
`could alienate a friend.
`IM in Domestic Ecologies
`Just as surroundings and institutional imperatives influence
`collaborative technologies in the workplace, so, too, they
`affect teenage use of IM in the home. Domestic schedules
`or rhythms [29], obligations and expectations mediate
`interaction with technology in the home [16, 26]. The
`effects of domestic ecologies become particularly apparent
`when looking at the differences between the high school
`and college participants.
`Some high school participants reported that tight school
`schedules and after-school activities limited their
`opportunities to socialize with each other face-to-face
`during the school day. For those teens living at home,
`obligations to one’s family, including expectations about
`completion of chores and participating in the family dinner,
`affected how and whether they could communicate with
`friends outside the home. In the evening, opportunities to
`use IM were influenced by outstanding homework
`commitments, the ability to negotiate use of a shared
`computer, as well as bedtimes for themselves and family
`members. These temporal rhythms and their constraints
`change on the weekend, with curfews applying but varying
`across a group of friends. In contrast, college
`teens—because their schedules differ from person to
`person, day-to-day and term-to-term—reported using IM at
`a wide variety of times during the day, and at their
`discretion.
`Indeed, IM use is highly responsive to domestic rhythms.
`Users conform to the expectations of domestic rhythms
`while simultaneously using the technology to work around
`
`these constraints. IM can even provide a window into
`peers’ domestic schedules. Participants report using the
`buddy list feature to find out whether friends are on-line, as
`other IM studies of adult populations also report [15]. In
`adult work settings, buddy list availability indicators can be
`ambiguous—people might be on-line but unavailable, or
`away from their desks altogether. For teenagers who share
`a computer at home, being on-line tells others that there are
`probably no other family-related activities underway. As
`P5 explained about contacting a friend, “I know s