By Anindita Basu
Sweet16 is exactly what I expected it to be from its URL. Take
your basic teen magazine, like Seventeen, Teen or YM,
divide it into colorful web pages and just add bulletin boards and
chat rooms, and there you have Sweet16. The site lists its
policies for participation and behavior in chat rooms with all sorts
of euphemisms such as "party bouncers" to describe monitors.
Sweet16 describes itself as "the freshest place to party
on the web, and the safest place to party on the web too."
As with most teen magazines (which are generally consumed by preteens,
I didn't know a single seventeen year-old who would be caught dead
reading seventeen as opposed to the voracious twelve year-olds), Sweet16
is geared towards girls. All of the cartoon teenagers on the site
are girls of various ethnicities, wearing different styles of funky,
"cool" clothing. The site has an advice section where one
can get advice from two real boys (in college!), a fashion consultant
and even a therapist. The message boards range in topic from love
and dating to music to style. There are e-cards featuring pop icons
like Nsync, Britney and David Boreanz (Angel). Girls can answer polls
ranging from choosing the worst make-out spot to what they think about
interracial dating. Sweet16 also allows a certain amount of
personalization. One can create an account (under thirteen requires
parental permission) in which they can maintain a calendar, address
book and photo album.
Sweet16 is a basically trendy site for pre-teens and adolescents,
similar to magazines, but with more of an opportunity to interact
through the chat rooms. It is a heterosexist site and although it
tries to portray an array of ethnically diverse girls, I would argue
that the content is predominantly geared towards white and middle
to upper class. The site, while well-designed and cute, only extends
the teen magazine. But to their credit, Sweet16 does not pretend
to do otherwise.