Hello. My name is Lindy and I am addicted to podcasts. I listen to a ridiculous amount of podcasts from a variety of genres: education; news; politics; economy; pop culture; religion; etc. Some days I burn through so many episodes that very little sticks with me. Then there are other days when a particular episode stops me in my tracks and I cannot stop thinking about its content and I find I switch to music instead of starting the next podcast because I want to let it soak in or continue to guide me to new revelations and new questions.
As an educator and mom of a young one I think about technology and children/teens A LOT. I think about my own journey with technology and how as an older millennial I feel connected to both the narratives of Generation-X and Millennials. I long for the simple childhood I had and not the overscheduled, technology dependent children I see every day. Danah explains some of the historical contexts around technology I hadn’t thought of before. I highly suggest listening to the interview or reading the transcript. I’d love to compare thoughts and ideas regarding the points addressed and how we as educators can help bring our expertise into the digital lives of the young people around us. We are all learners!
I narrowed it down to three quotes I’d like to share.
1. “the internet mirrors, magnifies, and makes more visible the good, bad, and the ugly of everyday life,” and that also what you’re saying, that pain and prejudice offline translate into pain and prejudice online, and likewise, community and all kinds of good things [laughs] — good things offline translate into online. It’s the fullness of who we are
a. Powerful right?! I think I was aware of this but hadn’t stopped to really internalize it.
2. This one is a shout out to Joan Tracy because she and I have had many conversations about the term digital natives in the past.
The reason that I object to the digital natives frame is because it assumes that skills and learning just come down from the sky magically for people who were born at a certain time or are of a certain age. Young people spend a tremendous amount of time learning how to navigate these tools, these technologies, the people. They’re not afraid of them, so they’re willing to experiment, and their networks and friends are all willing to experiment and explore with them. But at the same time, when we use the term “digital natives,” we assume, then, that adults don’t have anything to teach young people, and that is so not true. Young people don’t know how to construct a query. They don’t understand how information is architected. They don’t necessarily understand the broader media landscape, the kinds of propaganda that go on. They don’t necessarily understand biases within the algorithms that they see. And so when we hear these messages — I hear them all the time, like “A site like Wikipedia is bad.” And then a teenager will tell me, “But my teacher told me that Google is good.” And you’re just sitting here going, “How do you think that Google comes up with the answers?” They’re like, “Well, they choose the best ones.” And you’re like, “And who does this?” And they’re like, “Oh, well, somebody that works at Google.” And you’re like, “No. [laughs] That’s not how this works.” And so there’s this moment of these — of assuming the capabilities, because they’ve learned something in the social realm, will apply to everything else related to the technology. And because we have spent so much time assuming kids to be perfectly competent because they’re using Instagram happily, we’re not actually investing in helping them become critical and intelligible users of these tools, such that they can transfer it into something that is akin to building them.”
Dang. I struggle with my mom frequently because I’m her tech support phone call and without fail every time she is struggling or something isn’t working for her she says “I just didn’t grow up using this!” Well, actually neither did I, I am just not afraid of it. I think this is our stark difference of approach. I also am lucky enough to be married to a software engineer that explains a lot of how the internet and websites work. And, I admit he’s my tech support – I think we all have to have someone right!?
3. And finally, how society has changed as the internet and technology has risen. Also, that it can be both a place for bullying and/or/both? support.
And I realized that over the last 30 years, a lot has changed about American society. We have a tremendous amount of fearmongering that emerged in light of 24/7 news, like the 1980s were filled with the introduction of all sorts of laws around curfew and anti-loitering and anti-trespassing. We created this concern that public spaces like the park were a terrible, terrible place. We were worried about latchkey kids. We were worried about school buses. We clamped down on young people, and we started, especially in middle to upper class environments, structuring every day of their lives. We increased the levels of homework. We put tremendous amounts of pressure on young people. And all they want to do is just hang out with their friends. And part of what made it so visible to me is, it wasn’t just a matter of them getting on their bike and going out and being home by dark, which was the old way. It was the fact that they need all of their other friends to be allowed to do so too. And that’s where we started to see that difficulty — because even if a parent was like, “Oh, you have flexibility,” if your friends don’t, there’s no point.
And along comes this technology. And this technology all of a sudden is like, “I know I can get to my friends and my broader peer group, even when I’m stuck at home, even when our timing is slightly off because of our structured schedules being slightly different. And I know that they’re there.” And all of a sudden, you see a social technology being able to work as a mediator in light of all of these other cultural conditions that we’ve forgotten that we created.
MS. TIPPETT: So, do we similarly — is it your sense that we similarly overemphasize the dangers involved in roaming around the internet? And also, are we in danger of over-regulating that or regulating it in a way that doesn’t make sense?
MS. BOYD: From my perspective, absolutely. And this is where, again, you start to look at the data — usually, when we talk about dangers online, we hit a couple of different areas. It’s usually conduct, contact, and content. Those are the three C’s. Conduct is where we get worried about bullying. When we untangle all of what’s going on around there, we find that young people are really struggling, writ large, with bullying, but they’re not actually seeing the internet as anything other than a support network in light of it. And of course, there are exceptions to this. And that’s part of what makes people anxious.
Also as I am going on maternity leave Friday the 25th– anyone have any other podcast recommendations for me? I may have the time to really power through a backlog this leave 😉
I already listen to from NPR: Code switch, planet money, the indicator, pop culture happy hour, It’s been a minute, How I built this. Also Good Job Brain! (a trivia podcast hosted by my friend Karen – it’s local and a blast. They haven’t recorded lately but their backlog is awesome and fun!) Freakanomics, The Daily, ID10T, Mindshift and Q’ed up (From KQED), Oprah’s master class and super soul Sunday, The RobCast, Together live, Unspoken, On Being, The Good place Podcast (if you watch the show I cannot recommend to podcast that follows the episodes enough!!!), Magic Lessons with Elizabeth Gilbert, and finally Serial. Whew…. So any other great ones I am missing?!
