Below is a video that summarizes a few of dana boyd's thoughts on American Teens and Social Media. I did not make this video but, I think it's a great look at an educational theorist I have a tremendous amount of respect for.

Digital Youth and Boyd Reading Analysis

Picture
This document is one of the more successful collaborative projects that I was involved in during my studies at Sonoma State University.

Aurora Valentine


Picture

Context and Content
written by Aurora Valentine

Picture

When Danah Boyd asks “What can you see that you couldn't before? How does this make you feel? And what are you going to do about it?” she tackles some of the more difficult and important issues that have been illuminated by social media sites. Danah talks about many of the valid concerns that the public should have as social media sites become more a more part of everyday life.

Boyd first tackles the idea of
who your friends really are on social media sites and how you may have collected them in the first place. She also talks about how we share our thoughts with the people who we have agreed to be friends with and how this ‘audience’ is nothing more than the people who we like to watch. This type of audience built on social agreement can make for a narrowing view of the world as those that enjoy the same socioeconomic status, color of skin and politics etc. spend more and more time only interacting with each other.

Boyd points out that we have more access to and can easily view other people’s lives on social media sites but she is quick to say that, “we can see the experiences of people who are different than us. But are we even looking?”  She gives three examples of why it’s not only important to look at these social media sites but she also includes why it’s important to understand the context of what we are looking at. In one example she talks about a young man who is trying to escape gang life and how he writes about it for his college entrance essay. The college looked at his MySpace page, found gang symbols and didn’t understand why there was a disconnect with his essay and his Myspace page. For this young man survival in his neighborhood meant projecting an image of gang involvement publicly. Boyd is pointing out the slippery nature of truth online. The admissions officer believed that they had found proof of something but the reality was much more complicated.

No matter what our beliefs or values it’s important to understand the digital world that teens live in and it’s important not to project our own world view onto a population that may use social media sites very differently. As educators we need to take the time and steps to reflect upon our own perceptions of our students, education, new media and the world around us.

Key ideas

Online visibility “We have the ability to see into the lives of so many people who are different than us. But only when we choose to look. So who is looking? Why are they looking? And in what context are they interpreting what they see?”

Your ‘audience’ on Social Media sites is really made up of the people you watch.

Danah Boyd Quotes

“Your sense of what people do with social media is highly dependent on what you consume, how you consume it, and why you're there in the first place. “

“All too often we interpret content we see completely out of context, thinking that our expectations of how the world should be apply to others.”

“Just because we have the ability to see does not mean that we're actually looking. “

“I would argue that we should be informed so that we can make change that we want to see in this world.”

“I do this in order to habitually look at worlds that are different than my own. As a researcher and a scholar, this is an essential technique”

Links to Course
Danah Boyd reminds us that it is not only important to engage with youth in a meaningful way but to understand the context that students live in and what motivates their online personas. This class has been a kind reminder that tools are only as good as their use and that students interact in new and exciting ways but are only seeking out the same social rewards and interactions that generations before them have also done. The need for students to be able to exist as good citizens in an environment that enjoys the luxury of technology tools and the immediacy of media consumption and creation is more prevalent than ever before.

Boyd, Danah. 2009. "Do you See What I See?: Visibility of Practices through Social Media." Supernova and Le Web. San Francisco and Paris, 1 and 10 December 2009.

Ito, et all. 2008. Living and Learning with New Media: Summary of Findings From the Digital Youth Project. p. 13-20


-Aurora Valentine