CS 371-Social Media and Social Life

Fall 2016

Collaborative Class Blog Post Assignment #2

In Personal Connections in the Digital Age (page 24), Nancy Baym takes the position that the widespread diffusion of digital media forms and practices throughout our everyday lives is often the source of individual and collective “anxiety”.  More specifically, she argues (page 24) that:

Most anxieties around both digital media and their historical precursors stem from the fact that these media are interactive. Especially in combination with sparse social cues, interactivity raises issues about authenticity and well-being of people, interactions, and relationships that use new media.

Earlier this year, the Washington Post published a fascinating series of articles on the social media lives of young North American teens called “The Screen Age”. One of the featured articles focused on the everyday social media experience of a Washington, DC area girl named Katherine Pommerening who is on the cusp of her fourteenth birthday (http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/style/2016/05/25/13-right-now-this-is-what-its-like-to-grow-up-in-the-age-of-likes-lols-and-longing/) .  

The article opens with the following vignette of Katherine’s quotidian life in “screen age”:

She slides into the car, and even before she buckles her seat belt, her phone is alight in her hands. A 13-year-old girl after a day of eighth grade. She says hello. Her au pair asks, “Ready to go?”

She doesn’t respond, her thumb on Instagram. A Barbara Walters meme is on the screen. She scrolls, and another meme appears. Then another meme, and she closes the app. She opens BuzzFeed. There’s a story about Florida Gov. Rick Scott, which she scrolls past to get to a story about Janet Jackson, then “28 Things You’ll Understand If You’re Both British and American.” She closes it. She opens Instagram. She opens the NBA app. She shuts the screen off. She turns it back on. She opens Spotify. Opens Fitbit. She has 7,427 steps. Opens Instagram again. Opens Snapchat. She watches a sparkly rainbow flow from her friend’s mouth. She watches a YouTube star make pouty faces at the camera. She watches a tutorial on nail art. She feels the bump of the driveway and looks up. They’re home. Twelve minutes have passed.

Katherine Pommerening’s iPhone is the place where all of her friends are always hanging out. So it’s the place where she is, too. She’s on it after it rings to wake her up in the mornings. She’s on it at school, when she can sneak it. She’s on it while her 8-year-old sister, Lila, is building crafts out of beads. She sets it down to play basketball, to skateboard, to watch PG-13 comedies and sometimes to eat dinner, but when she picks it back up, she might have 64 unread messages.

Now she’s on it in the living room of her big house in McLean, Va., while she explains what it’s like to be a 13-year-old today.

“Over 100 likes is good, for me. And comments. You just comment to make a joke or tag someone.” The best thing is the little notification box, which means someone liked, tagged or followed her on Instagram. She has 604 followers. There are only 25 photos on her page because she deletes most of what she posts. The ones that don’t get enough likes, don’t have good enough lighting or don’t show the coolest moments in her life must be deleted.

In the second chapter of Personal Connections in the Digital Age, Baym discusses four theoretical perspectives on the causal relationship between technology and the social: technological determinism; social construction of technology;  social shaping of technology; and domestication of technology. In your post, chose one of these perspectives to discuss how the anxiety about the interactivity of new digital media is evidenced in the article about Katherine Pommerening. What kind of anxieties associated with new media are provoked when a girl like Katherine "wants to get better at her phone. To be one of the girls who knows what to post, how to caption it, when to like, what to comment".  In your post, please also briefly state why you chose the theoretical framework that you did.

The due dates for this assignment are NOW Monday, October 3rd, 6 PM for your original posts and Friday, October 7, 6 PM for your responses

P.S. The link to this article “13, right now: This is what it's like to grow up in the age of likes, lols and longing” can also be found on the MLS site for the course under “Resources for Unit I”