A Teenagers View of the Internet
As I interviewed a 17-year-old teenage girl, Julia who loves the internet, I found myself thinking back to when I was 17 and had no idea how dangerous the internet and social media could be. I wanted to find out Julia’s view, of how the internet affects her. To start off, I got a sense that she really loves social media. I asked Julia how much she had been on her phone today, it was in the evening when we had our interview and she said, “let me check my screen time, yeah it says 4 hours”. I also asked her if she spends a lot of time on her phone which she said, “For sure, I spend a lot of time on the internet”. She was completely honest with me on her use of how much she is on her phone. I found that she has a cell phone as well as a laptop, which she uses her phone a significant amount more. That she only uses her laptop for homework assignments or other miscellanies things. Julia also uses social media while she is with friends which I found to be interesting. I’m 22 and I rarely use social media when I am with friends because I find it to be rude. I thought that it was a sign of the unhealthy impacts of social media on teenagers. That even when they are with friends, they’re still going to go on their phones which could lead down the road to phone addiction. With the intrigue of how much she uses her phone I asked her how reliant she thought she was on her phone, which she said, “very, I feel like I rely on it for most things”. I find this to be true nowadays, that everything we do is now through our phones. I don’t think its bad to use our phones but to be over-reliant could potentially be dangerous.
Social Media
I wanted to dig deeper into her love for social media and find out why she is so drawn to it and uses it so frequently. I asked Julia what are her favorite things to do online and to give some examples, which she said, “Instagram, I like to look at influencers, or funny pages, meme accounts, a lot of time on Pinterest. Gives me ideas of things I want or things to do in my free time or crafts or recipes”. I then asked her about Instagram, why does she like the app, which Julia said, “that’s hard, I just like it. I like to look into what people are doing, I guess I don’t know why I like Instagram, fun to see what everyone is up to”. I found it interesting that she found this question hard to answer, that she didn’t know why she liked the app and it took her a couple of seconds to really think deeply about this question. For myself, I know that the app is addicting, seeing everyone’s happy photos and wanting to compare yourself to others but she didn’t know why. I thought this was an unhealthy effect on how social media is blinding young users. That they don’t know why they are using the app, that because it's so widely used, so should they. I next asked Julia if she thought social media was good or bad and to explain why, she said, “I feel like it can be both like it’s good to express yourself but at the same time a lot of the internet is not real life”. I thought this was a great example of how people should view the internet that its good to explore and be yourself but at the same time be aware that some of the things you see on the internet are not as they seem. I next asked Julia to tell me how social media makes her feel overall, she said, “I like it, I don’t know, sometimes I compare my life to others, but for the most part I like it”. With her response, I could tell that she overall, really enjoys social media but the aspect of comparing herself to others came up quite a bit which makes me believe that the idyllic images she is seeing are setting her back from fully enjoying these platforms.
Personal Information and Monitorization
After learning more in-depth about what Julia’s social media interactions were, I then asked her about how she protects herself online, as well as, who and how often she is being monitored with her online interactions. I first asked her how she feels about posting personal information, which she told me she doesn’t post anything bad like her address and posting “things that people could find me that I don’t know”. Which I thought was an extremely healthy response as to online interactions. I was happy knowing she was being cautious as to what she was posting about herself. I then proceeded to ask her where she drew the line, of what to post and what not to post, which Julia say, “I just post pictures with my friends, of myself, my family, mostly just pictures”. Since she uses mostly Instagram and not much of Facebook, she rarely posts anything other than pictures. On the topic of photos I then asked her if she has seen or if she had seen any inappropriate images, who would she tell or would she tell anyone, which she said that she hasn’t seen anything inappropriate but if she did she would, “I would report things like on the app”. I was glad to hear that she would report it on the app, but I was also concerned that she wouldn’t tell an adult of any kind. I wasn’t sure if she’s just close to the age that she doesn’t see it necessary to tell an adult or that she might be restricted from her use of the internet. Being that she wouldn’t tell anyone shows signs of the dangers of how teens feel about seeing inappropriate content and who they feel safe reporting it to. Lastly, I asked Julia if her parents and if her school ever monitor her internet interactions. She told me that the schools don’t let them use their phones during class, but she uses her phone during lunch but as for her parents they don’t monitor her internet interactions. Julia said, “no they never really check, I think I would feel uncomfortable if they went through my stuff”. Being that she’s 17 I can see how she might feel uncomfortable about her parents going through her phone but on the other hand, her parents and school don’t monitor or even talk to her about the uses of technology which was shocking to me. That there are two extremes where parents are either hovering over what their child is looking at and Julia’s case where her parents don’t monitor at all and that they don’t even check in with her on her interactions. As she shows some signs of unhealthy behaviors, she also showed a lot of healthy behaviors as well which made me happy to know her interactions on the internet are for expression but to also be safe.
