CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 456Literacy, Media, and EducationEducational Technology in LearningImpact of Technology on Adolescents

Informal learning and identity formation in online social networks

Greenhow, Christine, Robelia, Beth·2009·Learning, Media and Technology
DOI 10.1080/17439880902923580
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

All students today are increasingly expected to develop technological fluency, digital citizenship, and other twenty‐first century competencies despite wide variability in the quality of learning opportunities schools provide. Social network sites (SNSs) available via the internet may provide promising contexts for learning to supplement school‐based experiences. This qualitative study examines how high school students from low‐income families in the USA use the SNS, MySpace, for identity formation and informal learning. The analysis revealed that SNSs used outside of school allowed students to formulate and explore various dimensions of their identity and demonstrate twenty‐first century skills; however, students did not perceive a connection between their online activities and learning in classrooms. We discuss how learning with such technologies might be incorporated into the students’ overall learning ecology to reduce educational inequities and how current institutionalized approaches might shift to accommodate such change.

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1080/17439880902923580

Cites

65 of 65 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Claims the paper makes

We couldn’t retrieve this paper’s full text, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • Adolescents who edited their profiles, shared posts or content, and created blog entries were more likely to engage in identity exploration.

    “Four studies suggested that adolescents who edited their profiles, shared posts or content, and created blog entries were more likely to engage in identity exploration (Greenhow & Robelia, 2009; Livingstone, 2008; Manzi et al., 2018; Mazur & Kozarian, 2010).”

    From A Systematic Review of Social Media Use and Adolescent Identity Development (2025) · cites this paper as Greenhow & Robelia, 2009

  • Adolescents who presented themselves by playing with different looks, testing different roles, answering questions about who they were, and pretending to be someone else tended to explore their identities.

    “Studies suggested that adolescents presenting themselves by playing with different looks (Chittenden, 2010), testing different roles (Greenhow & Robelia, 2009) and answering questions about who they were (Farrugia et al., 2019), and pretending to be someone else (Kennedy & Lynch, 2016; Lichy et al., 2022; Schmitt et al., 2008) tended to explore their identities.”

    From A Systematic Review of Social Media Use and Adolescent Identity Development (2025) · cites this paper as Greenhow & Robelia, 2009

  • Self-presentation strategies are common among adolescents on social media, including playing with appearance to present an ideal self, impersonating others, and creating fictitious profiles, all of which can be part of identity exploration.

    “Our findings also suggest that self-presentation strategies are common among adolescents on social media. These strategies include playing with appearance to present an ideal self, impersonating others, and creating fictitious profiles, all of which can be part of one’s identity exploration (Chittenden, 2010; Greenhow & Robelia, 2009; Kennedy & Lynch, 2016; Schmitt et al., 2008)”

    From A Systematic Review of Social Media Use and Adolescent Identity Development (2025) · cites this paper as Greenhow & Robelia, 2009

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

1 of the 66 references couldn’t be matched to a known paper.

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Related

Authors
Greenhow, C., & Robelia, B.
Affiliations
University of Minnesota (US)
Corresponding author
Greenhow, Christine
ORCID
Venue
Learning, Media and Technology
Publisher
Informa UK Limited
Published
2009-06
Volume
34
Issue
2
Pages
119-140
ISSN
  • 1743-9884 (ISSN-L)
  • 1743-9892
DOI
10.1080/17439880902923580
OpenAlex
W1984192841
Cited by
456
References
66
Citations by year
2026: 3 · 2025: 12 · 2024: 25 · 2023: 19 · 2022: 19 · 2021: 20 · 2020: 27 · 2019: 47 · 2018: 19 · 2017: 21 · 2016: 34 · 2015: 60 · 2014: 40 · 2013: 47 · 2012: 25
FWCI
417.68
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Locations
Learning Media and Technology (publishedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Literature and Literary Theory › Literacy, Media, and Education
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Educational Technology in Learning
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Impact of Technology on Adolescents
Keywords
informal learning, identity construction, social network sites, MySpace, high school students, low-income households, 21st century skills, digital citizenship, technological fluency, educational inequity, school-based learning

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review