Blog #3 Kalessy Keyes- FORMATING FIXED
The film Eighth Grade, focuses on an eighth grader named Kayla who is going through the difficult task of navigating the transition from eighth grade to high school, in a world where social media plays a forefront role in the lives of the majority of people her age. This relates directly to Nancy Baym's Theoretical perspective of social construction of technology. In the reading titled New forms of personal communication and Making New Media make sense because Baym discusses the diversity seen amongst online communication mediums such as the mobile phones which can be used for a plethora of things ranging in interactivity levels from voice recording to texting, taking photos and video exchanges (Baym,7) .As well as YouTube Instagram and instant messaging (Baym, 7). She discusses the topic of social interactivity which revolves in how individuals are able to use this medium to interact with one another. Baym discusses that unlike television, digital media allows you to talk back and interact with (Baym, 7) . The key point she uses to sum up online social media use by states “ People have the power” (Baym, 24). Baym discusses that when it comes to interactive platforms the power is in the hands of the users because all of these technology platforms are competing for attention therefore the more interactive the platform is the more likely it is for users to spend time on it. This is evident in the movie eighth grade as Kayla is consistently on her phone at all hours of the day. She is constantly texting, posting photos, and Snapchatting. All these platforms are interactive and are becoming dictating because they constantly send notifications to request her attention. Kayla uses her social media to define herself and shows how the social construction of technology is used to ruin people's lives due to the competition between platforms to fight for users' attention.
“Eighth Grade.” IMDb, IMDb.com, 3 Aug. 2018, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7014006/. Accessed 24 Oct. 2022.
Baym, Nancy. “‘New Forms of Personal Connection’ and ‘Making New Media Make Sense.’” Personal Connections in the Digital Age, pp. 1–30.
Hey Kalessy ! I totally agree with your perspective I feel as if you put all the blame of pressure on the technology itself would be incorrect. The power is with the users and how society chooses the purpose of the technology. This is a very interesting concept to me since we are wired to blame something other than ourselves but we need to start being held responsible for our actions online and personal additions into the fakeness of social media. People appreciate authenticity because it is a rare occurence online. This is why we need to look at how society functions rather than blame applications like Facetune and Instagram that help people add to their false online realities.
ReplyDeleteHi, great post! Looking at the character of Kayla in the movie eighth grade, I feel as though the reason why she spent most of her time on social media and other applications on her mobile device was that she had a hard time getting out of her shell to make new friends. She had a lot of anxiety and was very self-conscious about herself. When she was making videos on YouTube for her fans and viewers and giving out advice, it was because it was the only time of day when she felt some type of confidence, but in person, her confidence wasn’t the same, and she never followed her advice. In this movie, I don’t believe that this is the case of social media defining her. I believe that she showed bits and parts of her personality on social media, but she was too afraid to let people see the real her in person because she never really showed those attributes of her personality.
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