Social Shaping of Technology

Social shaping of technology is a theory that is based on the combination of the way technology is influenced and formed, and the way that people use these technologies (Baym, 51). This social shaping aids in the creation of social structure within a network as it is created for one use, but often deviates and is developed according to the users.  New applications such as Snapchat and Instagram develop a new kind of social interaction for their users where users feel the need to feel included every waking moment of the day.

Snapchat was invented so that people could send quick photos of their daily life without having to take up precious space in a users phone.  However users have found multiple other ways to use the app. People communicate using the on screen text feature by typing and handwriting messages so much that it influenced how the app runs. Now, people like Katherine can use the in-app messaging system to chat with friends by sending messages that will disappear if not saved.  This way Katherines dad cannot check her phone records to see who she has been texting, and at what time. Users like Katherine and her friends also influenced the creation of Snapchat stories, as this newer feature allows friends to share a short video or picture to their general friend list. It can be inferred that this particular group would use it to show off what exciting activity they are participating in, or what cool new clothes they got. 

Snapchat is just one application where anxieties are formed by young teens.A user’s score is available to users’ friends, which gamifies the interaction for people like Katherine Pommerening. The article, 13, right now: This is what it's like to grow up in the age of likes, lols and longing, explains that people will use the app to send more snaps only to get a higher score. Katherine once spent her day sending and receiving approximately 1000 snaps to elevate the stress of having a low score. Society has enticed young people to use Snapchat in a new way, as well as Snapchat has enticed young people to communicate using short, quick messages for a score. This idea of a score also comes into play with stories, that a user can see how many people have clicked on their activity. Usually, the more people that click through, the more interesting it is. Thus the app helps to shape how, and what we take photos and videos of.

I personally believe that social shaping of technology would be best to describe the interaction between technology and the social mentioned in the above article as that is what social shaping is; the combination of the two. Social construction doesn’t look enough at how technology is involved in the process, and technological determinism looks too much at the technical side, and not enough at the social situations.