“In other words, when participating in networked publics, many participants embrace a widespread public by default, private through effort mentality.” – (boyd 62)

I think this quote sums up the unofficial “terms of agreement” teens subconsciously accept when participating in social media. In the chapter, boyd argues that the amount of effort required to constantly monitor and have control over privacy settings is simply not worth it. I see this constantly when I scroll through Facebook, and it does to some extent irritate me when I see posts such as “hmu I’m bored” because I feel as though it’s “clogging” my feed. However, it is important to remember that when friending or following people, you consent to having their content appear in your feed, whether it be something you desire to see or not.

I think the issue that arises from this “public-by-default” mentality is not so much that privacy becomes suspicious, but rather that teens are unaware of all the smaller agreements involved when posting something to the “public”. For example, many teens feel frustrated if they have to manually unfriend someone, or clear their posts from years past in a tedious fashion, but they are forgetting that they are the ones who posted it in the first place. Admittedly, it is sometimes embarrassing to come across something you posted because at the time you believed it to be funny or quirky, but now just appears immature. However, I feel that that can serve as a valuable learning moment. While Shamika hiding her posts may save her drama or make it more difficult for antagonists to find evidence, she is losing out on a lesson that most teens must endure, which is learning by experience, in this case the experience being forced to reanalyze content you posted online in the past. Doing so will not only help teens filter their posts more cautiously in the future, but will also allow them to understand how they’ve matured or changed.