Making new media make sense_Technological determinism

In the second chapter of Personal Connections in the Digital Age titled “Making New Media Make Sense,” author Nancy Baym writes about the relationship between technology and the social and social anxieties that go along with it. To discuss the anxiety about how the interactivity of new digital media is evidenced in the article about Katherine Pommerening titled “13, right now,” I will be taking a technological deterministic perspective.

Technological determinism is the theory that technology changes society. Baym writes, “…the technology is conceptualized as an external agent that acts upon and changes society,” (27). Examples of this can be found throughout the article about Pommerening. More specifically, Katherine says that she doesn’t feel like a kid anymore and attributes that to the fact that everything is at her fingertips. Baym cites an essay written by Nick Carr in which Carr says that he was passive to “someone, or something” changing him. Katherine, too, was changed by the technology she began using after sixth grade.

Further, Baym notes earlier in the chapter that interactivity gives rise to “issues of authenticity and well-being of people, interactions, and relationships that use new media,” (24). Katherine Pommerening is a 13-year-old girl who worries about how many likes she’ll get, how people will perceive her based on her number of snaps and if people will think she’s “nice and pretty.” These anxieties come out of issues that probably didn’t exist for Katherine before she began using apps like Snapchat, Instagram and Twitter.

Most important though, is Baym’s point about how technology is dumbing us down. Since Socrates, she says, people have been concerned that the use of new technologies will affect our intelligence (29-30). She cites one study in which people’s attention spans were being reduced because they were not engaging their brains when using Twitter, for example (29-30). In Pommerening’s case I think this could be true as well. The author of the article often makes note of what Katherine is doing: “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.” The author has clearly illustrated Katherine's inability to focus on either a conversation, because she didn't respond to a question, or a single app on her phone. 

Unfortunately, Katherine's case isn't unique. While writing this post I opened a new tab on my computer probably a dozen times to check Instagram or Facebook without even realizing I was doing it.