Reality vs. Virtual Reality - A Technological Deterministic Take

     Using a technological deterministic approach, the way that “technology is conceptualized as an external agent that acts upon and changes society” is evident through the article, "13, right now: This is what it's like to grow up in the age of likes, lols and longing,” by the way that the cellphone has influenced the change in the way that teenagers think (Baym, 27). The anxieties that Baym talks about - authenticity and well-being, interactions, and relationships - have been brought forward due to the virtual world that it presents.

     In the article it says that, “Katherine Pommerening iPhone is the place where all of her friends are always hanging out,” (Contrera). In this context, the cyberspace is basically described as if it were a physical space, where there is a cross between Katherine’s actual self and the virtual self that she presents on Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube. Because cyberspace is an accessible area for her and her friends to communicate with each other, it is as if she prefers her virtual self, making the difference between reality and the virtual world hard to differentiate. Who is Katherine without all of her apps? Baym suggested that, “people who use [electronic media] lose their own sense of place,” which may be true in Katherine’s case (Baym, 29). Her virtual identity is taking over her real one, where she cannot even live in the moment anymore. She barely realized she was even in a moving car for 12 minutes because she was living and transfixed in the cyberworld with her friends.

     The  anxieties based on authenticity and its relationship with self-confidence in particular are huge factors when it comes to virtual identities and electronic media such as smartphones. When Katherine “wants to get better at her phone,” she wants to build up her virtual identity. She wants more Instagram likes, she wants to seem like she has an interesting and active life based on her Snapchat story, and she uses social media as tools to display a specific version of her real life. “Getting better” at her phone to gain likes, relationships and overall online popularity may involve her waiting a few extra moments to make sure the lighting in her picture is just right, turning back to redo her Snapchat because it wasn’t good enough, or perfecting her nail polish design that she replicated from YouTube. She is wasting time in real life to present a virtual identity that has been redone over and over again to gain some sort of status in the virtual world. Without her phone or virtual self, would anyone really believe that she did all of those cool things?

     I chose to look through a technological deterministic lens, because like a lot of other students in this class, it is applicable to myself. Although I was quite critical of Katherine, I can completely picture myself doing the same. I could go outside and sit on a hill watching the sunset, and I probably would think to myself, “this would be a great Instagram photo,” rather than “this is a beautiful sunset.” Electronic media make it difficult in some ways to live in our reality rather than our virtual one, and has clearly changed the way that we think.