The Friends, Friends With Benefits and the Benefits of the Local Mall: "Many teenagers spend a lot of time hanging out in mixed-gender groups (at the mall, at one another's houses), and when they can't hang out in person, they hang out online, asking the questions they might not dare to in real life. "
While danah was fascinated with the part of this article that focused on teenage girls calling the shots in an interaction with the opposite sex, I was more attracted to the line quoted above.
While I won't argue whether females calling the shots is a change (I don't believe it is), the fact that teenagers are hanging out more in gender-mixed groups IS a change. Most of the teen-sociology and psych literature has talked about the prevalence of same sex relationships and how important these were. However, the advent of the Internet has changed something interesting. Not only do teens hang out more with opposite sex, they also talk more frankly about topics they used to only whisper in corners about. It could be they use the IM medium as a way to get pass the discomfort of frank topics. A similar thing is happening in Europe with SMS... now THIS is a very interesting development :).
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