My Interview with Sarah

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!