American forums StudentCenter and Vteen

The site StudentCenter (SC) is part of a network that offers a number of diferent services to its members, mostly American secondary school and college students. Among these services it offers a section titled Quizzes/Polls/Tests which features several questionnaires on sexuality, to be completed on line, and a certain number of forums intended for the 12-20 year olds. I have mostly followed the conversations on the following forums: “Dating & Relationship”, “Puberty”, “Gay/Les/bi”, “Puberty”, “Sex and Sexuality”. As on Goveen, the young members are invited to ask all sorts of questions and to initiate surveys, even on topics already explored many times previously. However, as there is no forum reserved for boys, it is not uncommon for the preamble of the questionnaire to specify which sex the topic addresses.

The site Vteen (VT), from the point of view of structure, is in no way different from the two previous sites, placing before its members, who fall within the same age group (12 - 20 years old) a wide panoply of services and activities: a news summary, games, blogs, chat rooms, advice and forums, these last grouped under three main categories: “Communities”, “Puberty”, and “Help and Advice”. I have regularly monitored the messages posted on the forums “Boys Puberty”, “Alternate Sexuality” et “Love and Dating”. In contrast with the previous two sites, the forums are moderated (unlike the surveys, which are anonymous) and the overall number of posts is markedly less. Thus redundancy is avoided, but form of censorship takes away from the spontaneity of the postings. On the 10th of April, 2007, the site claimed 9,011 members and 629,414 posts.