Teens, Technology, and Education: Parallels throughout the ages
Teens, Technology, & Education: Parallels throughout the ages
After reading through some chapters in It's Complicated, Boyd's seminal work concerning teens and their relationship with technology, I naturally thought back to my own Gen Y teenage years in high school. I drew personal parallels and anecdotes to those used by Boyd to explain and exemplify the trials, successes, counter-cultures, and issues that mixing teens and technology create. While pinging and ponging my own experiences with those in the book, I came across a reference to Pump Up the Volume (1990) and decided to watch a few clips. The film, which was about as Gen X as you can get, is about as early 90s as you can get, too... and there is no question, that even though only 0.001% of teens had mobile phones and/or internet during the time of this movie, they were doing the same things teens do today - They were hacking, chatting, flirting, protesting, gaming, cheating, socializing, and living their lives surrounded by devices.
One particular scene in Pump Up the Volume that gave me the impetus for this blog was that of two kids and a ghetto blaster in a convenience store. The two high-schoolers are walking through the aisles with the stereo on. Hunching over and gawking at the stereo, they enthusiastically listen to a pirated-radio show. Blaring out is an iconoclastic monologue about how to channel suicidal thoughts into partying. I couldn't help but compare it to kids walking through a supermarket in 2019 staring at a Snapchat clip purporting similar messages. These two images stuck in my head; the 1990s ghetto blaster on pirate radio, and the 2019 iPhone on a Snapchat clip of a house party. They were so similar. Are teens really that different these days?
Though the technology has changed, it was/is used in the same way. The big difference now is in its power as a tool and the ability for third parties to influence their design and use. In other words, teens are essentially using their iPhones like they did a Polaroid Camera to take pictures, its just a heck of a lot easier to do it with the iPhone. Teens are still getting hooked on video games like they did in 80s arcades, but now the games are developed with such powerfully addictive and convenient tools, the severity of addiction is much higher. To quote a line in the documentary Our Mobile Lives, "At every level we advance with the technology, then suddenly, we can't imagine what it was like when we didn't have it."
With that in mind, I decided to extend the analogy and see if I could draw any other parallels of the teenage brain channeling their hopes, desires, wants, and needs through technology. Here's a few that I found:
The Mixtape & the Walkman
The Walkman not only allowed people to listen to music anytime and any place but it allowed people to listen to their own music. And just like thieving using illegal downloads, teenager culture was all about pirating copies of copywritten text. A sign of true romance was making a mix tape for your love. Having to choose songs from different physical records, then record them in real time, meant that a lovers playlist took time and thought - compare this to the Spotify algorithm you might flick on during a romantic dinner. The mix-tape has had a resurgence in recent years due to this very reason. It shows that time, thoughtfulness, and a respect for past technology is valued. How could the Walkman be used in today's classroom? Would the analog process lead to less distraction and more sustained focus?
Pirate Radio
Pirate radio has so many parallels to today's social media websites, it's shocking. It's goal is to get followers and reach a maximum audience, say whatever ideas you want, play whatever music you want, subvert the mainstream, and other counter-culture ideas. Think of how people today use their music and social media platforms. The major difference here is that pirate radio was exclusive - you needed to have some expensive (and possibly illegal) technology to use it. It was also synchronous - that is, for your message to be heard, it had to be broadcast real time, with both parties being present. Finally, pirate radio was generally one way. There was no/little feedback from the listeners. Think of how far we've come with today's devices!
Pagers
"143" - If you saw these numbers back in the day, it meant someone was sending you the message "I love you". "1" designated the "I", "4" the four letters in the word "love", and "3" meaning "you". Pagers were a great example of the bridge between mobile asynchronous communication and fixed synchronous communication. You could send very basic text messages using numbers only as code, or you could get to a pay phone and follow up your ping. With emojis, predictive text, facetime, and other high tech features, things have dramatically changed. Consider how much more distracting, how much more privacy-risk, and how much more prevalent today's texts are. Is this good or bad for our students?
Message in a bottle
How about this for online dating - put your profile and some pictures in a bottle, chuck it off the wharf, then hope you find a response message in a bottle lapping up on the shore at some time in the future. The one parallel we might make here is that when going online, we have no clue who might pick up and respond to our message. It could be our soul mate, or it could be a swashbuckling pirate. Our students work/photos/records are sometimes metaphorically adrift in in a bottle. What recourse might this have if everything online was fit to throw into a bottle asea?
The Polaroid
It's not uncommon for a teenager to admit to taking 100 selfies in a day. As with the mix tape, the sheer volume of photos taken with a Polaroid as compared to those with a phone is probably along the lines of 100000:1. On CBCs Here and Now episode on photography and the smartphone, they state that we now take an estimated 1.2 trillion photos per year globally. Imagine having 1 200 000 000 000 Polaroid pics in your attic! So once again, does the ease and power of the smartphone allow us to devalue each picture? Do students do the same with other digital items, such as a PDF they might have to read and work with?
By analyzing the evolution of technology and applying it to educational technology, we can see how issues can arise. Namely, the ability for almost every student to access what seems like an infinitive amount of knowledge, and manipulate it in an infinite amount of ways is astounding. How can we step back and understand this monumental shift and how it is affecting our education system.
After reading through some chapters in It's Complicated, Boyd's seminal work concerning teens and their relationship with technology, I naturally thought back to my own Gen Y teenage years in high school. I drew personal parallels and anecdotes to those used by Boyd to explain and exemplify the trials, successes, counter-cultures, and issues that mixing teens and technology create. While pinging and ponging my own experiences with those in the book, I came across a reference to Pump Up the Volume (1990) and decided to watch a few clips. The film, which was about as Gen X as you can get, is about as early 90s as you can get, too... and there is no question, that even though only 0.001% of teens had mobile phones and/or internet during the time of this movie, they were doing the same things teens do today - They were hacking, chatting, flirting, protesting, gaming, cheating, socializing, and living their lives surrounded by devices.
One particular scene in Pump Up the Volume that gave me the impetus for this blog was that of two kids and a ghetto blaster in a convenience store. The two high-schoolers are walking through the aisles with the stereo on. Hunching over and gawking at the stereo, they enthusiastically listen to a pirated-radio show. Blaring out is an iconoclastic monologue about how to channel suicidal thoughts into partying. I couldn't help but compare it to kids walking through a supermarket in 2019 staring at a Snapchat clip purporting similar messages. These two images stuck in my head; the 1990s ghetto blaster on pirate radio, and the 2019 iPhone on a Snapchat clip of a house party. They were so similar. Are teens really that different these days?
Though the technology has changed, it was/is used in the same way. The big difference now is in its power as a tool and the ability for third parties to influence their design and use. In other words, teens are essentially using their iPhones like they did a Polaroid Camera to take pictures, its just a heck of a lot easier to do it with the iPhone. Teens are still getting hooked on video games like they did in 80s arcades, but now the games are developed with such powerfully addictive and convenient tools, the severity of addiction is much higher. To quote a line in the documentary Our Mobile Lives, "At every level we advance with the technology, then suddenly, we can't imagine what it was like when we didn't have it."
With that in mind, I decided to extend the analogy and see if I could draw any other parallels of the teenage brain channeling their hopes, desires, wants, and needs through technology. Here's a few that I found:
The Mixtape & the Walkman
The Walkman not only allowed people to listen to music anytime and any place but it allowed people to listen to their own music. And just like thieving using illegal downloads, teenager culture was all about pirating copies of copywritten text. A sign of true romance was making a mix tape for your love. Having to choose songs from different physical records, then record them in real time, meant that a lovers playlist took time and thought - compare this to the Spotify algorithm you might flick on during a romantic dinner. The mix-tape has had a resurgence in recent years due to this very reason. It shows that time, thoughtfulness, and a respect for past technology is valued. How could the Walkman be used in today's classroom? Would the analog process lead to less distraction and more sustained focus?
Pirate Radio
Pirate radio has so many parallels to today's social media websites, it's shocking. It's goal is to get followers and reach a maximum audience, say whatever ideas you want, play whatever music you want, subvert the mainstream, and other counter-culture ideas. Think of how people today use their music and social media platforms. The major difference here is that pirate radio was exclusive - you needed to have some expensive (and possibly illegal) technology to use it. It was also synchronous - that is, for your message to be heard, it had to be broadcast real time, with both parties being present. Finally, pirate radio was generally one way. There was no/little feedback from the listeners. Think of how far we've come with today's devices!
Pagers
"143" - If you saw these numbers back in the day, it meant someone was sending you the message "I love you". "1" designated the "I", "4" the four letters in the word "love", and "3" meaning "you". Pagers were a great example of the bridge between mobile asynchronous communication and fixed synchronous communication. You could send very basic text messages using numbers only as code, or you could get to a pay phone and follow up your ping. With emojis, predictive text, facetime, and other high tech features, things have dramatically changed. Consider how much more distracting, how much more privacy-risk, and how much more prevalent today's texts are. Is this good or bad for our students?
Message in a bottle
How about this for online dating - put your profile and some pictures in a bottle, chuck it off the wharf, then hope you find a response message in a bottle lapping up on the shore at some time in the future. The one parallel we might make here is that when going online, we have no clue who might pick up and respond to our message. It could be our soul mate, or it could be a swashbuckling pirate. Our students work/photos/records are sometimes metaphorically adrift in in a bottle. What recourse might this have if everything online was fit to throw into a bottle asea?
The Polaroid
It's not uncommon for a teenager to admit to taking 100 selfies in a day. As with the mix tape, the sheer volume of photos taken with a Polaroid as compared to those with a phone is probably along the lines of 100000:1. On CBCs Here and Now episode on photography and the smartphone, they state that we now take an estimated 1.2 trillion photos per year globally. Imagine having 1 200 000 000 000 Polaroid pics in your attic! So once again, does the ease and power of the smartphone allow us to devalue each picture? Do students do the same with other digital items, such as a PDF they might have to read and work with?
By analyzing the evolution of technology and applying it to educational technology, we can see how issues can arise. Namely, the ability for almost every student to access what seems like an infinitive amount of knowledge, and manipulate it in an infinite amount of ways is astounding. How can we step back and understand this monumental shift and how it is affecting our education system.
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