Blog Post #2 - Smartphones, Social Media, and Moral Panic

For this blog post, I've decided to discuss the case of Katherine Pommerening by applying Baym's (2015) social construction framework for I believe that it complements the perspective that the author of the article adopted in writing the story. However, as I will later argue, I find that the social construction of technology framework is retrogressive.

In regards to asking what sort of anxieties are provoked when Katherine wants to 'get better' at her phone, I agree with Baym's argument that many anxieties about the interactivity of new digital media can be deduced to moral panics. For instance, adults fearing that they will lose control over their children or concern surrounding sexual exploitation and cyberbullying that are purported in the news media. Indeed, within the article, Katherine's father admits that he seems distant from Katherine and admits to searching her phone for any signs of inappropriate material. Another anxiety that might emerge is a homogenization of taste or a  deterioration of individuality. For example, Katherine admits that she has a constant desire to be accepted within her social circles— to be perceived as 'cool', 'pretty', and 'a good person'.

Although these are very real issues, my sense is that we often place too much emphasis on these selective stories developed by the news media, without realizing that such transgressions are rooted in the offline/'real-life' world. This is essentially what Lee Siegel (2009) discusses in his book, Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob,  where he argues that the internet typifies modern technological woes and magnifies already existing interpersonal and societal issues.

For instance, the distanced and increasingly problematic relationship that Katherine has with her father may not be due to her smartphone/social media. Rather, as the social shaping perspective would argue, the issue might lie with the lack of meaningful interpersonal communication between Katherine and her father; or the fact that her father does not know how to adequately fill in the void left by the death of Katherine's mother. As such, this might explain why Katherine retreats to her phone— where she can find elements of interpersonal communication and validation from her peers. In this way, I find the social construction of technology framework retrogressive and the social shaping of technology (and relatedly the domestication of technology) framework to be the most appropriate and convincing when discussing the use of technology and digital media in our contemporary culture. Indeed, analyzing our relationship with technology through a syntopian perspective and looking at how technology is adopted and used discursively between people, institutions, and the technologies themselves (Baym, 2015, p. 52) may be more productive in understanding our relationship with it. Moreover, "to connect digital media to social consequences, we need to understand both features of technology and the practices that influence and emerge around technology, including the role of technological rhetorics in those practices" (Baym, 2015, p. 56). Writing through a primarily deterministic framework, the author of the Washington Post article seems to fail to consider this.

References:

Baym, N. K. (2015). Making new media make sense. In Personal Connections in the Digital Age (2nd ed., pp. 44-51). Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

Siegel, L. (2009). Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob. New York, NY: Spiegel & Grau.