For my final project I conducted three interviews to ask my students about social media and technology. I interviewed one grade 12 student, four grade 9 students and finally two more grade 12 students. It would have been interesting to gather the male perspective, but I have been working at an all girls school this past year, so I decided to focus on sampling different ages. One grade 12 student identifies as transgender and the other identifies as being bisexual. I mention this not to label them as “different”, but because their identities are connected to how technology has helped them by offering communal spaces as well a non-binary role models. Two of the older students also mention having two accounts (interestingly, just like me) in order to present two personas.
A question that connects all three interviews is the following: Is there something that adults don’t understand about social media and technology? Answers: This is how we connect now! Social media and technology aren’t always a bad thing! We use tutorials and complete class work and group work with tech! This is a part of our lives; it is how we communicate…
In Part 1, we discuss:
- Using Instagram for two accounts/two personas
- Discord and Snapchat used for bullying
- Snapchat being favoured for its erasable messages
- Concerns about friendship streaks (the amount of days you connect with one person in particular) and how this creates a social hierarchy
- Difficulty of face to face connection for the younger generation and the subdivides within Gen Z
In Part 2, we discuss:
- Why students use and don’t use Social Media
- The never ending scroll
- Addiction, depression, anxiety, mental health
- Parents being aware of the dangers
- The movie “The Social Dilemma”
- Is YouTube a type of social media?
In Part 3, we discuss:
- Body image and beauty filters
- Cancel culture and its connection to social media
- How the LGTBQ+ connect
Important Vocabulary:
Memes – a funny image or piece of text copied and often altered, spread online
DM’s – direct messages, similar to text messages, delivered through social media
Snapchat – an app that shares photos and videos temporarily (as they then “expire” to servers)
Instagram – an app that shares photos and videos both permanently and temporarily (as the reels “expire”)
Bot – a computer algorithm capable of creating dialogue (although quite unnaturally)
Screen Time – an application that displays how many hours people spend on their phones by breaking the time down per app used