Growing Up Digital

I sat down to interview the child of a friend, a thirteen year old home-schooled girl. I was excited to discuss the technology uses and interests of a teen in a non-traditional school situation to see if it differed at all from the norm we generally see presented and discussed, especially within the realm of cellphone use. So I opened the discussion inquiring about her cellphone use. While she stated that she did have one, she said that she did not use it much. When asked what she used instead to communicate with her friends, she didn't miss a beat before telling me she used Skype.

Her social group outside of schooling prefers Skype and its visual as well as audible interface as they are often using it in conjunction with online games and, as she put it, Skypeing while playing allows them a 'tactical advantage' that she does not see mere phone chats allowing.

This led, of course, to a discussion about video games. At this point, my planned questions were tossed merrily to the wind and I was willing to let this conversation go where it may. She was very fond of MMORPS (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games). Her mother tried to suggest the game she was playing currently with her friends was like World of Warcraft, and that incited an affectionate bit of back and forth argument between the two on how this game was not at all like that game and her mother needed to get with the times. I am apparently behind the times as well, as the names of the games she was blithely tossing about were ones I did not recognize, but are apparently popular with her friend set. She plays about 4 hours a day, collaboratively with her friend group. The games are all of the structure where a team plans and defends one area while working to defeat other groups. She pointed out that she does go hang out with her friends in person as well. In fact, she was going to a movie with them as soon as we were done chatting.

I snuck in the second of the pre-planned questions at this point, and asked whether or not she used Facebook. And again, contrary to expectations, she said no. She then launched into a discussion on the fact that she uses Tumblr instead. She prefers the Tumblr layout and has friends there instead. She does have a Facebook, she just does not use it apart from logging on to grab pictures to then share on Tumblr.

Tumblr led to a fun discussion of the online communities she was a part of (Tumblr, various MMO's, Deviantart) the ones she was aware of (Reddit and 4Chan) and how she explained Tumblr and Deviantart worked for her because she understood how to apply the filters she needed to apply to make sure she was seeing only the things she needed or wanted to see.

She definitely utilized technology towards her interests- following fandoms on Tumblr or working with her friends towards victory on an online game. It was fun to have a conversation that felt more like a chat between two peers- two fannish folks who enjoy tinkering about on the internet with like-minded individuals- than doing a class assignment. She was delightfully enthusiastic when it came to talking about her interests, and was overjoyed when any of mine overlapped hers (Tumblr names may have been exchanged at some point in this interview).

Being in a non-traditional school environment, she does have more freedom to explore technologies, and her mother and the home school group as a whole, is encouraging when it comes to exploration of interests. The fact that she had more time for exploration, and that would skew the conversation a bit, was something her mother discussed with me when I asked if I could interview her daughter. It also made me more interested in the interview. Given a little more free rein to explore and develop her interests, she showed not only an enjoyment in her digital participation, but a degree of understanding and control that I appreciated and loved hearing her discuss. We, people my age and older, spend a lot of time talking about how 'kids these days' don't understand their digital imprint, and here was a thirteen year old explaining to me how she meticulously monitors her presence online, filters viewing content, and is aware of what is going on around her. It really may not be that they do not understand their digital imprint, but that we are limiting their understanding through limiting their participating and experimentation.