Initially when reading the assignment I was not sure what I was going to ask the student, lets call her for the sake of privacy, "Mary." I asked Mary if she would mind answering a few questions for me about social media and technology. She immediately asked if she could use her phone and show me her pages. Mary is a 7th grade girl, who has a cellphone with unlimited text messaging and data. I had a list of questions that I wanted to ask Mary and she led the conversation which was really interesting:
1. What types of social media do you use on a daily basis?
-Mary immediately responded: snapchat, twitter, facebook, instagram.
2. Which app is your favorite to use?
-Snapchat, cause I get to send my friends pictures and a glimpse of what I am doing.
3. Why does it matter to your friends what you are doing?
-Well, I think that it matters for social rankings. The use and ability to send eachother pictures just shows that we are doing something cool, or who we are hanging out with, there is no phone call, people use it to brag to eachother about what they have and who they are with.
4. Do you parents and your friends parents take away or limit your use on your cellphone?
-My parents make me give my phone up at 9pm, some of my friends get to keep their phones all night and its just their responsibility, they have no restrictions.
5. Do you feel that having a particular type of phone or brand of phone makes you stand out?
-Mary said that when group chats are going and if you dont have an iphone people get mad, because then your response comes as a different text message, its kinda annoying, and girls get really frustrated with this.
6. I asked Mary to put aside social media and describe herself to me. Who did she feel she was, and what did she think that she stood for?
-When asked this Mary made me repeat the question 3 times before she would respond. Her response was will Ms. Gallagher, I really dont know who I am. How am I suppose to know in 7th grade who I am or what I stand for.
7. Mary had offered to show me her pages, so I asked to look at them. She immediately showed me and was really excited that I was interested.
-When I was scrolling through her instagram, facebook, and twitter I began to ask Mary about herself. I said well Mary it appears that you really like dogs. The majority of your likes are on dog pictures. Mary said well Ms. Gallagher that is just a, "basic white girl for you." We all pretend that we love starbucks, wear uggs, love animals, and shop at victoria secret.
At this point in the interview, I knew there was something wrong with our society. I was just baffled by Mary's response but yet it made sense to me. I immediately thought of the connection with the readings this week. "When I asked students how they thought their pages represented their identities, most of them deflected the question by saying they did not think about such issues when composing their pages" (Lankshear, 2013, p.299). When really society is telling these students what they should like, what they should not like. This is just CRAZY, how can we expect our students to be individuals when they have no sense of identity because they are just the "basic white girl."
I know social media was an issue however, I was unaware that it would be such an issue in the lives of our young children.
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