ergophobe - 2:49 pm on Oct 22, 2008 (gmt 0)

A twelve year-old is probably also on the verge of becoming a Facebook devotee. The teenagers I know would never expect their friends to check into a website for news and pics that could be posted on Facebook.

In fact, my nephew, at 23 (and finishing a computer engineering degree, so pretty techy), reports that he feels there's already a generational gap between him and his sister and younger cousins (all 19 and younger). He feels that's the breakpoint between those who communicate primarly 1-to-1 (chat, email) and those who communcate via Facebook and social networking portals.

Don't know whether that's true, but it does raise the question of what a teenager wants with a personal site. As you suggest, though, your own website would allow you a much greater range of creativity than Facebook.

Both of my sisters have refused to sign up for Facebook because they want to give their daughters independence, but their daughters actually encourage them to sign up and have in fact "friended" a number of my sisters' friends. Maybe that's rare or maybe it's true that this generation really does have a different feeling about privacy than we did.