Blog Post #2

In the article about Katherine, we learn that her phone is a technology that she uses constantly throughout the day. The anxiety about the interactivity of the new digital media is something that Katherine faces in the article. We see this anxiety when Katherine talks about her Instagram and how she will delete pictures where the lighting wasn't good enough or she will delete photos that didn't get enough likes and comments. She is so concerned with how other people view her social media presence that it affects the way she lives her everyday life. 

Through a technological determinist perspective, we can see how Katherine’s phone has the ability to create social structures, relationships, and cultural beliefs. These social relations are created through technologies and apps such as Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram and iMessage that help us form relationships with others online. Katherine talks about how getting a certain amount of likes on a photo can be positive or negative. If an individual’s post gets a lot of likes they are seen by their peers as a person who knows the ins and outs of social media. If a photo does not get enough likes it is often deleted because the picture is seen as not good enough. This aspect of getting a certain number of likes on a photo has created a form of values. This is because people start to believe that if a photo does not get as many likes as anticipated it is not worth keeping on ones Instagram, possibly resulting in anxiety. Getting likes on a post is about receiving approval, the more likes a person gets the more accepted they are.Through the technological determinist perspective, we can see that phones themselves can help us learn and communicate. Katherine uses her phone to communicate with friends, but she still wants to get better at her phone. She wants to learn to know what’s appropriate to post and when, what to like, comment and how caption photos (Contrera, 2016). She thinks that if she learns how to use her phone properly it might help diminish the anxiety about the interactivity of the new digital media. 
I chose the technological determinist perspective because I think it is important we understand that new technologies create new values, beliefs and, relationships. Technological determinism also highlights the fact that devices have changed the way we learn and communicate. Katherine is trying to learn, communicate, form relationships and new values through her device which is why I thought the technological determinist perspective was an appropriate perspective to discuss. 


Contrera, Jessica. “This Is What It's like to Grow up in the Age of Likes, Lols and Longing.” The Washington Post, WP Company, www.washingtonpost.com/sf/style/2016/05/25/13-right-now-this-is-what-its-like-to-grow-up-in-the-age-of-likes-lols-and-longing/?utm_term=.f08640736a75.

Comments

  1. Monique GirodatOctober 3, 2018 at 12:09 PM

    Hi Lauren!

    Your blog post was very detailed, touching on the aspects of social acceptance and how our ideals of this acceptance have been altered based on emerging applications and new technologies. I found it interesting how you touched on the point that Katherine wants to get "better" at using her phone to diminish this anxiety, but how does one use their phone correctly or incorrectly? Is it truly based on the amount of likes and comments she is receiving online, or is it about balancing her social life offline and using her phone at appropriate times during the day? I think that the only solution Katherine can think of, being that she is a 13-year-old girl, is that she must change her behavioural patterns online. The reality is, she must identify what validation and acceptance actually mean in the society she lives in on her own, rather than having these terms be dictated for her through the realm of technology, or it can become detrimental to her well-being in the future.

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