Intrinsicly motivated? Nah, sheer peer pressure...

While transcribing interviews with 15 year olds about their interactive media use, it struck me that they all reported to use social software, such as Hyves or Facebook, 'because all the others do so as well'. My first thought was "you're 15, you should be a non-conformist". My second thought was, referring to Brian: "You're all individuals"...

However, today a blogitem about the SXSW festival described the same issue. A girl (15 years old) reportedly told the audience during a presentation " All my friends do Photoshops, use Photoshop. So I use and learned Photoshop to impress them".

This indicates that, as far as the Net generation debate is concerned, peer-pressure is an important factor explaining the use of interactive media. A more constructive term is of course 'peer-driven participation', as defined by Ito (2008) in her report on the Digital Youth Project.