Blog post 3 - Isaac Cardoso

A few weeks ago we watched the movie, Eighth Grade, in class where the main character Kayla was pretty clearly addicted to social media and in having that addiction caused some issues with anxiety. Looking at the anxiety Kayla felt through Baym’s perspective on the domestication of technology, it was clear that all of Kayla’s uses of social media had become regular and the norm without her understanding the addiction she was building to it. She had built all of her devices and social media into her daily routine and once she was without them it was clear to see her anxieties and issues. Nancy Baym describes the domestication of technology as being so woven into the fabric of everyday life that their issues of their positive and negative effects become banal and ordinary. An example of this in the movie was when Kayla was on her phone snapchatting and calling her friend who she made on the tour of the high school and she felt connected and more comfortable through her phone but when they chose to hang out at the mall she was clearly anxious and felt almost out of place having the interaction strictly in person versus what she was used to in her everyday life of having a device or social media. Another example is when she made her youtube videos and felt comfortable making them but when confronted in school and one of the students said they like her videos she immediately felt anxious and awkward. Social Media has been so normalized in her life that it became irregular for her to interact with people through real-life experiences instead of strictly something online.