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Theories of Cybersociety 63
This mobility is highly evident in the phenomenon of the widening
generation gap between adults and adolescents (see Holmes and Russell,
1999). The empowerment which adolescents experience by way of CMC
immersion is intensified by the fact that it dramatically exaggerates the
generation gap between them and pre-CMC generations. This gap rests
on both the widening differentials in technical competence and the fact that
many parents and teachers find CMC alien in the ways in which it pro-
motes individual forms of adolescent self-construction. In addition, broad-
band interface technologies such as the Internet lead to rapid identifications
with global concepts of citizenship. The cultural mores which emerge
from the interface of adolescent and technology subsume the narrow
rigidity which previously characterized family norms and conventional
forms of discipline and pedagogy which exist within the classroom.
The new sense of the personal which emerges through CMC immer-
sion establishes itself in differing ways. On the one hand, the investment
of an adolescent’s identity in avatars attenuates embodied or face-to-face
relationships, whilst, on the other, it enhances the personal qualities of
being an autonomous information consumer. Here the status of adoles-
cents as by far the strongest take-up group of CITs becomes particularly
heightened in the age of virtual communities.

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been a feature of the take-up of CMC and CITs in general highlights an
aspect of this perspective which has so far been overlooked. Whilst it is
interesting to examine how the technical mediums of CMC may, to varying
degrees, directly affect the forms of community and identity which operate
within them, the outer contexts of CMC also need to be assessed. A promi-
nent exponent of this view is Nancy Baym, who argues in her essay ‘The
Emergence of Community in Computer-Mediated Communication’ (1995)
that ‘[t]oo much work on CMC assumes that the computer is the sole influ-
ence of communicative outcomes’ (139). This assumption is exemplified by
what is called the ‘cues filtered-out approach’, which, she says, has come to
dominate the understanding of computer-mediated communication:
Because computer-mediated interactants are unable to see, hear, and feel
one another they cannot use the usual contextualization cues conveyed by
the appearance, nonverbal signals, and features of the physical context.
With these cues to social context removed, the discourse is left in a social
vacuum quite different from face-to-face interaction. (139–40)
Baym identifies five different sources of impact on CMC: external con-
texts in which the use of CMC is set; the temporal structure of the group;
the infrastructure of the computer system; the purposes for which the
CMC is used; and the characteristics of the group and its members (141).
With regard to the first source, Baym argues that ‘[a]ll interac-
tion, including CMC, is simultaneously situated in multiple external