Blog#2 Social Shaping of Technology

The article “13, Right Now” discusses what it is like to be growing up as a teenager in the new age of technology by using the example of Katherine Pommerening; a 13-year-old who appears to be addicted to social media. This article demonstrates the heavy reliance on technology in our every day lives. It shapes everything we do and how we go about it. This change in technology can definitely be both positive and negative given the fact that it has allowed interconnectedness within our world that was never possible before. Yet, this dependence has created new anxieties that were also never present in the past as well. Unfortunately, like the youth of this era the case of Katherine Pommerening is not any different from what is seen everyday.

More specifically, within the text Baym discusses how “social media platforms engineer particular kinds of sociality even as their users develop norms around their use”(51); this is evident in the example of 13-year-old Katherine. An individual enters a different world when using the internet and it generates its own norms different from what is evident in reality. Katherine gets into the car and doesn’t even notice the other person in the car with her since she has already entered her own technological world. Instagram was one example of a social media platform that creates anxiety but another example of this could be seen through the use of Snapchat. The social media app, Snapchat, allows people to live their lives through short videos and pictures that are shared with other followers. This creates a sociality through the app that has become a norm around its use. For instance, when someone goes to a special/big event you would see more than half of the experience through their Snapchat. As opposed to living in the moment, pulling out your phone and video taping it has a become a norm in our society today. Our anxieties towards social media stem from our frequent use of it. Users start to get insecure when not enough people are liking their Instagram photos, viewing their Snapchat stories, or even retweeting their tweets. Again this is seen through Katherine given that she only has 25 Instagram photos because she deletes that ones that don't have "good lighting" or don't have enough likes. We become so caught up in this alternate technological reality that is normalized the more it is used.  

I related to this framework the most because social media sometimes pushes me into trying to be something I am not based off of what is posted by people I do or do not know. Posting on social media has become normalized even for someone like myself who wasn’t always a fan of it. With that being said, I became more conscious of what I post and subconsciously started caring about what other people thought about it as well. 

Social Construction of Technology

The social construction of technology perspective focuses on how technologies (i.e. Katherine’s cell phone) arise from social processes. SCOT emphasizes a wide range of social forces influence how people take up technology as they adopt to them. Katherine’s mother’s health condition influenced how she used her cell phone when she first got it in grade 5.

Her phone was initially intended to be used only incase there was a health emergency with her mom. Instead, Katherine downloaded multiple social media applications and stopped inviting friends to the house. Her obsession with receiving likes, comments, and followers developed immediately. This exemplifies that people no longer crave face-to-face human connection but instead we crave digital connection – sometimes with people we have never even met. Any normal 5^th grade girl would love hanging out with friends at the mall after school before the invention of cell phones. Now, 5^th grade girls socialize over their cell phones instead of face-to-face.

SCOT also shows how attitudes toward behaviors are shaped by the attitudes of peers. For example when Katherine’s dad, Dave, was 13 years old his parents taught him it was normal to ride his bike to friends houses, to play outside all day, as to make it home by dinnertime. Contrastingly, Katherine’s parents taught her it is normal to be on her phone all the time, to never invite friends over to play. The way Dave connected with peers during childhood was normal to him and the way Katherine connects with her peers are normal to her even though they are completely different from each other.

In sum, the reality that cell phones have come to replace face-to-face interaction and the reality that people like Katherine depend on their devices to feel accepted are a couple of the many consequences of social factors (i.e. how a child is raised). Furthermore, it is not the actual technology that triggered Katherine’s obsession with receiving likes, comments, and followers – rather – it was mainly due to her parents’ decision to buy her a cell phone at such a young age.

The Domestication of Technology

Nancy Baym identifies four perspectives that explain the consequences of digital media in respect to the blame being laid entirely on the individual, the medium or a mixture of both. The domestication of technology, argues that technology has become so integrated into our everyday lives that we no longer realize its effects, as it has become likened to brushing your teeth in the morning or drinking a cup of coffee. According to the domestication of technology the consequences associated with such a heavy reliance on digital media can be blamed in part by the way the medium has been set up and the social importance relayed on it by the user.

The article “The Screen Age” chronicles the life of a 13-year-old girl by the name of Katherine Pommerening who is so immersed by social media that she fails to notice her surroundings and is described as someone who “lives on her phone”. She strives to reach a certain number of "likes" on her Instagram photos and measures personal success within digital media over how many views and comments she receives on a given post.

At the young age of 13, Katherine Pommerening is incredibly impressionable and is already showing signs of relying on social media to make her feel better about herself. In regards to her photos on Instagram she is quoted “Over 100 likes is good, for me. And comments”. Her self worth is now innately tied to the number of “likes” she receives on a single photo. Instead of measuring ourselves by our academic achievements or the self-pride in what we enjoy to do, the act of posting a photo is enough self-credence needed to tell a young girl that she is appreciated and liked by her peers.   

Tied to this is the anxiety to create the perfect photo, teens become obsessed with what outfits they wear, how skinny they look and the physical position they are in when the photo is being taken. As a result a photo is no longer simply a photo, but what the media has told you is the best representation of the self. This type of pressure on teens to create a perfect photo can create unrealistic body images that lead to mental and physical health issues.

According to the domestication of technology the medium Instagram can be blamed for the consequences of the digital medium as the site is set up to reward users for having followers by making this a viewable part of the app. This is what allows teens to make it a social competition in which users can compare their “likes” and followers. In addition to this the perspective realizes that the consequences of the media are only caused when they are socially given the importance. 

I chose to analyze this perspective because I feel it most effectively manages to outline how the consequences of media are both in part to the media itself and how society chooses to give superiority to each specific medium. I also found the idea of media being domesticated to be interesting as within my own life I can see how technology has become second hand to my daily routine in that I feel anxiety when my phone is not on me. 

Social Shaping of Technology

The article’s discussion of Katherine’s smartphone use can be meaningfully unpacked using the social shaping of technology approach. Smartphones present an interesting case for the social shaping perspective. Smartphones give users a wide variety of affordances with associated consequences and effects.

The article refrains from explicitly labeling Katherine’s smartphone use, but clearly communicates some weariness toward smartphones. In the segment describing Katherine’s use during a car ride, the article clearly is structured to convey that Katherine is rapidly shifting through applications and tabs, thus suggesting that her attention constantly needs to be grabbed by new stimuli. This description conforms to a more a technological determinism model in which the technology is affecting human behavior (her attention span). However, the article does not necessarily place the blame on the technology. The technology may afford Katherine the ability to shift through these applications, but the choice to do so is her own. Thus, the affordance given by the phone allowed her to develop this pattern of interaction.

The article goes on to describe an instance in which her behavior is shaped by social factors through an affordance of technology. The article details how her integral behavior is shaped by the input of her peers through the level of validation she receives through likes.  The article makes special note of how she deletes most of her photos as a result of this social pressure. Several key fixtures of Instagram are mentioned, including the follower system and liking system, which suggest that the application’s features are involved in Katherine’s behavior. By allowing users to interact with the feature of Instagram, such users are free to establish their own social structures with this technology. The technology may allow such users to adjust their interaction to fit said technology, but the exact configuration of this social change lies with the culture that is adapting to the technology. As a result of the validation-based system, users such as Katherine, experience a sort of social anxiety over obtaining more likes because of the pressure from their peers.

I chose to analyze the article using the social shaping of technology framework because as I was reading the article, it became clear that the author neither took a stance firmly toward tehnology affecting users or people affecting the technology. Thus, it was clear that one had to look at the article as communicating in a manner that addressed the interplay between technology and social factors without explicitly placing a cause-effect relationship on one of the two.