Friday, September 19, 2008

Chilean Youth Express Themselves via Photosharing Site

Last week there was an article in the New York times called In a Tangle of Young Lips, a Sex Rebellion in Chile. The article outlines how Chile, previously one of "Latin America's most sexually conservative countries," has recently become a hot bed of sweaty teens that dance and grind and make out publicly--- a lot. There seems to be a cluster of reasons for the so called sexual explosion: the coming of democracy after Pinochet's reign, lack of proper sex education and fotolog.com. Apparently, teens arrange large scale parties on this site and then post pictures of their escapades. I don't know... metaphorically speaking it seems that sites like fotolog.com are the hammers that built the house and you can't very well blame the tool for junky architecture.
What is really interesting to me about the article to me were Dr. Arias comments:
Dr. Arias did a study of the Fotolog phenomenon, scrutinizing the kinds of photos teenagers are posting, even the angles and distances of the pictures — all of which are part of an “identifiable” language, he said. “The kids of today are expressing their sexuality in erotic ways for the whole world to see.”
It seems really intriguing to think of the images that kids post as a common language. It could be really interesting to see how norms are set, defined and then followed. I'm not advocating teenage public promiscuity for research purposes, but I am interested in how kids think about sex and talk about it with each other.

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