13, Right Now - Social Shaping of Technology- Blog Post #2

The article “13, right now “ depicts a young girl, Katherine Pommerening as a teenager who is “addicted” to social media. The reading expresses her anxiety due to social media and what is seen as good or bad / popular or not. The article starts off describing how within a 12 minute drive she is capable of checking all her social media platforms, and still having time to watch YouTube tutorials until arriving at home from school. It is expressed how important it is to Katherine to be validated through social media with likes and comments, even if the attention must be reciprocated through a “to be honest” post from the poster to the liker.

From our readings, Baym discusses four theoretical perspectives, and while I think that most if not all could be applied, the one that specifically stands out to me in relation to this article is the social shaping of technology perspective.  On page 51, Baym defines this as “the consequences of technologies arise from a mix of “affordances” – the capabilities of configurations of technological qualities enable – and the unexpected and emergent ways that people make use of those affordances”. In other terms, this perspective is seen as the way in which social media users give applications and programs meaning that they were not originally based upon.  Specifically, for Katherine, her anxiety comes from Instagram and the amount of comments and likes she feels is necessary to obtain in order to leave her post on her feed. If her post fails to get at least 100 likes it is deleted.  In the article Katherine says “the best part about posting is the notifications”, but if your post has been live for 3 minutes and you fail to get any likes, it is known to give more people severe anxiety and they will instantly delete the post and try again at a later time. In today’s society, I know that many users of social media take time into consideration when posting on their profiles. Specific times of day, such as first thing in the morning, lunch and the evening, are times to maximize the amounts of likes. I personally, do not really care for the amount of likes my photos get – I will not delete a post based on the amount of attention it receives or fails to receive. However, I do know that this does happen with many user, specifically those of a younger age as they feel they have a “reputation” to maintain, and the more likes = the more popular. One thing that was not mentioned in the reading was whether or not Katherine had an open profile. Those who have open profiles are subject to more likes because even those who aren’t following you can double tap or comment on your photo, which would help with the social anxiety and increase likes. Though, then your content is open to the public. In order for a girl like Katherine to get “better at her phone” she must be super involved. If she comments and likes all of her followers posts they are most likely to comment and like back. There is a social stigma built around Instagram and likes, similar to Facebook and likes, as well as twitter and favourites and our social status (or at least the feeling of our social status) is being controlled by the amount of attention of social posts obtain from our “friends” or followers.

I chose this framework because I can personally relate. I don’t really care about the amount of likes my photos get, yet I still make a conscious effort to post my photos at the times when the majority of my followers are most likely to see it, despite if they like or comment or not. My younger sister on the other hand is very obsessed with likes, and just like Katherine, will delete photos if they do not obtain the amount of attention that was expected. As a society, I believe that we all want validation of ourselves on society media, even at an older age, my mom still wants to obtain at least 11 likes (so it says 11 likes, rather than list the likers names).