For this week’s assignment we were asked to conduct an
interview with an adolescent about their use of digital technology and social
media. I chose to interview my neighbor Sarah who is 18 years old and is a
senior in high school. As an 18YO, she is at the end of her “adolescent years”
and being much more mature than the average 18YO that I have had in some of my
classes, in my mind she doesn’t really classify well as an adolescent, she is definitely
a young adult. However, I decided to conduct my interview with her anyways
because I know she uses technology a lot, is friends with a generation of
digital natives, and has a bit of a digital immigrant experience in that she
did not have high speed internet access at her house until four years ago. In addition,
I know her parents have instilled a strong sense of right and wrong in their
whole family, including Sarah’s older brother and older sister. I believe, and
is shown to be true in the interview, that this not only makes her conscious
about her own use but she is aware of the “normal” or “abnormal” behaviors of
her peers and could shed some light on interesting questions.
You can listen to the interview by going to my Soundcloud account at this link and click the play button.. However, I wanted to
highlight some of the things she said that I find most interesting.
SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT – I asked her a few questions about
whether digital technology has affected her ability to engage socially with
people in a traditional sense, such as having conversations with people either
in person or on the phone. As I suspected, she was confident that she and her
family (parents and siblings) make an effort to actually ignore their
technology and try to engage with each other at the dinner table, on trips, and
other times when family connection is appropriate. However, she did give
examples of other people she knew that definitely had a “problem” with being
able to put the cell phone away when it wasn’t appropriate to use it. We also
talked about “phone phobia” where people prefer to text message instead of call
somebody because of the unknown elements of the conversation and being afraid
of not knowing what to say. What surprised me was that she agreed that is
described her, that she actually had a sense of phone phobia for that exact
reason. I was also surprised by a comment that she made regarding other
students in her school that had such poor conversational skills and such a lack
of confidence that they would avoid going to talk to their teachers in school
even when it was a critical issue. This really caused me to step back and think
about my students and advisees at the college. It seems every year I have less
and less students coming to see me outside of class, during office hours, etc.,
to get help with problems they are having. Yet, I see continuous declines in
test scores, homework performance, getting into the right classes at
scheduling, no direction of career goals, etc. Is this because they “don’t care”
as I and many of my colleagues have been speculating? Or, do they really not
know how to talk to me? Maybe setting up that twitter account isn’t a bad idea
after all. Maybe I should create a Facebook page separate from my personal page
and dedicate it strictly to advising. Maybe having “virtual office hours’ in Second
Life will make a difference.
EDUCATION – We discussed a couple different things related
to the use of digital media in schools and education. There were two highlights
of her answers I feel are worth mentioning here. She mentioned in a couple
different answers how important it was for her to have access to the internet
to do her homework. In fact, she said that she will sometimes look up
information on subjects or answers to questions when she knows all of the
information is in her textbook. She finds it easier to look it up online than
to try and find it in the textbook. We also talked about teachers and schools
with rules against using or even bringing cell phones to class and her insight
was extremely interesting. She essentially believes that when a teacher has a
flexible policy where they let students bring them and use them in a controlled
manner that isn’t abusive or distracting to other students, the students
typically respect the rule without any issues. However, when teachers set
strict rules against the use, students have a sense of rebellion in them that
makes them want to use them anyway and try to break the rules. In our department
back at the college, we have had numerous discussions about creating a department
wide policy against cell phone use in classes and labs. I personally have never
really liked this idea because I have always been one of the more flexible
teachers in the program. I never make an issue about it with students, I never
let it distract me, and I have never typed rules against it in my syllabus. Therein
lies the problem with my department, because other teachers feel that they can’t
effectively create a rule and enforce it if the rest of the teachers (me) don’t
go along with it and join them. Until I heard Sarah’s insight on this, I never
had a good reason for not going along with my colleagues in my department. I
guess I just wrote it off to being “scared” to enforce it, not being comfortable
with confrontation, not knowing what to do if I tell a student “turn it off”
and he responds with “No. Why? What are you going to do if I don’t?” Now I feel
like I actually have a good reason not to make a rule against it. I believe my
students have the maturity to respect my flexibility and not abuse it, and I
feel that if we try too get strict with it, we will be creating a rebellious
environment which becomes a distraction in itself.
BULLYING – This was a small part of our conversation and for
the most part Sarah only confirmed what most of us already knew. Cyberbullying does
take place, it does happen in the real world, even in small communities, and it
can get really bad and be extremely hateful. Furthermore, she also confirmed
that she felt it was easier for somebody to cyberbully another person instead
of doing it face to face because without the face to face contact, you don’t
have to worry about how they will react, at least not in a direct instantaneous
way. However, she did mention something a term that, not having a twitter
account or being a tweeter, I had never heard of. It’s called “subtweeting.”
Believe it or not, it is quite common knowledge among twitter users and I
looked it up in the “Urban Dictionary” http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Subtweet.
It is a form of Cyberbullying where somebody will tweet negative comments about
somebody else without using their name or Twitter username.
PRIVACY – This was also a small part of the interview where I
asked Sarah how she felt about people digging into her private life through
social media and whether she felt a sense of loss of privacy as a result. She
first indicated that she was conscious of this potential and therefore was very
careful to never post something that revealed anything she wanted to remain
private. At the same time she was aware that colleges and businesses often
looked at social media sites of students during application processes to make
decisions and therefore she was conscious to never post anything negative, but
did feel that there was a sense of privacy invasion, and that colleges and
businesses didn’t really have a right to dig in to your personal life like
that.
In summary it was a great conversation and I learned a lot
by doing this assignment. It has actually helped me piece together a number of
things we have covered in this class, and other topics from the other classes I
am taking. I have struggled to see how some of these things fit and can be
applied in my environment, and I am still not 100% clear on everything, but
doing this assignment has really helped me move forward. Thank you Sarah!
