ABSTRACT
The Internet is often presented as a place where one can explore alternative identities. The sense that it is a virtual space, with relative anonymity, has furthered the notion that one can choose to be someone or something different online than one who is offline. The definitions of acceptable behaviour are so fixed in terms of the dominant understandings of what is appropriate or acceptable that any challenge to these views are often summarily dismissed. Articulating a view that asserts the autonomy rights of children or young people is to those people who see children as 'innocent and vulnerable', as danah boyd observes, 'often activist in nature, even if heretical to some'. While recasting one's age seems to be the obvious example of a child reconstructing themselves as an older child or young person, there are other examples of the way in which social media enables children to change their roles.
