In 1961, the mass-media scholars Wilbur Schramm, Jack Lyle, and Edward Parker productively posed the question “Are schools doing everything possible to connect television to the intellectual growth of children?” (p. 184). Rather than suggesting that television should be viewed only outside of school or encouraging unregulated access to television at school, Schramm, Lyle, and Parker made this poignant and balanced suggestion:
Schools can be of enormous help, it seems to us. … Anything to which children devote one-sixth of their waking hours has obvious importance for schools. If children are helped to know good books from poor ones, good music from poor music, good art from bad art, there is no reason why they should not be helped to develop some standards for television. How to read the newspaper (borrowing Edgar Dale’s title) is a subject treated increasingly in school; ‘how to view television’ is just as important. Furthermore, television is a real resource for examples, assignments, and what the teachers call ‘enrichment.’ It seems to us all to the good to bring television into the real-life process of learning, to break down the barrier between passive fantasy experience and active use. (pp. 184–185, emphasis added)
The similarities between the cultural anxieties about television in the 1960s and the concerns we are facing today with mobile media allow us to look back and learn a few lessons from history. As with television (in the past and today), students spend a lot of time with mobile media; thus it is hard to argue that schools do not have a responsibility to help students manage media. In the 1960s, the average American child spent approximately one-sixth of his or her waking hours “using” television (Schramm, Lyle, and Parker 1961). Depending on where you look, screen time accounts for an estimated average of 7½ to 9 hours a day for the average American teen (Ahuja 2013; Common Sense Census 2015; Kaiser Family Foundation 2010). Similarly, the Pew Research Center found that 24 percent of American teens are online “almost constantly” and more than half go online several times a day (Lenhart 2015); these numbers are not dissimilar from statistics about adults, who also spend, on average, between 8 and 11 hours a day with media (Karaian 2015; Turrill 2014). Since teens spend at least as much time with media as they spend sleeping, in school, or with their parents, it is important that we consider what role media ought to play at school. According to the cultural anthropologist Michael Wesch (2009), “we [teachers] use social media in the classroom not because our students use it, but because we are afraid that social media might be using them—they are using social media blindly, without recognition of the new challenges and opportunities in might create.”
I can entertain the argument that school ought to be one place in which teens are able to get away from the distractions and pressures to engage with mobile and social media, perhaps school should offer a reprieve from the pressures of media. Yet when students were asked if their phones caused them stress, the most frequent response was “Like when it doesn’t work?” For students in this study, stress was related to technical limitations of their phones, especially for students with outdated phones. It was only when we explicitly asked about social pressures of always being connected, that students would think to tell those stories. None of the participants felt their phone or the constant availability was a negative thing or expressed much stress or anxiety about it. For the most part, the consensus was that if you could not reply or talk, you should at least send a short text saying that you’ll get back to the person later. This practice was an acceptable and agreed-upon social norm that students utilized with peers and with their parents. They did not say that this caused them stress; they simply considered it socially polite. Other students said that their phones could be annoying, but overall they felt they were managing mobile communication without much difficulty. Jada (16 years old, black) explained:
Jada:
Yes, my phone does get annoying at times. Because it’s, like, rude not to answer, and people will get the hint that you’re not answering purposely.
Q:
Really, so are you expected to answer when your friends text you or call? Do you feel a pressure to respond?
Jada:
Maybe sometimes, because maybe one of my friends they had the comment “Gah, what’s the point of having a phone [if you don’t answer]?” And I’m the wrong person to do that, I call back and stuff, so don’t do that. Just on my own time. Am I pressured? I don’t think so, but I know just to get [it] outta the way, just to get it [it] outta the way, yes, I’ll respond. I don’t know if you would call that pressure or not.
Q:
Just to expect it.
Jada:
Yes, because sometimes it’s irritating and I’m doing something, [and they will ask] “Oh, can I have this?” It just messes up my whole aura. When somebody calls, you think they’re going to call about something important, you answer and it’s something stupid. A question, you just don’t want to do but you don’t want to sound rude. But I don’t really care sometimes because I won’t answer if I don’t want to. And I know it’s seen as rude and they know that too, but, like, stop calling all the time.
Q:
So is it perceived rude to ignore people’s calls?
Jada:
Some people would consider it rude, but it’s just if you keep calling to ask favors and stuff, you’ll burn me out. Because I like doing it on my own terms, Hey, I’ll do it for you, when it’s mutual. But when it’s too much, I can’t work well with that.
Jada’s explanation points to the context of the call, specifically if someone continues to call instead of recognizing that she is deliberately not answering. She also gets frustrated when people ask favors of her that she does not want to do (a topic that came up several times in other contexts). However, she also noted this is a more frequent occurrence at home in the evenings or on the weekends, and not at school, since her friends are also at school and unavailable during that time. We must interpret Jada’s comments in the context of her current subject position, one that may not articulate the pressures associated with constant contact, but we also must validate her own explanations of her experiences. Adults can help young people balance pressures and reflect on feelings of anxiety.
There is evidence to suggest that the constant availability and contact that mobile phones afford can cause young people stress or anxiety, but for the most part students in this book noted that was not often the case at school. In fact, “parents” was one of the most common answers about who they texted from school. Students frequently texted their parents to arrange transportation, sibling care, or to let them know about changes in after school plans. In the context of school, students expressed more frustration that mobile media were banned than about stress or pressure to always be connected. The common theme was that students wished their teachers would more actively incorporate media into education and the rhythm of the school day by allowing them opportunities to use their phones in productive ways (as will be further discussed later in this chapter.
Setting Healthy Boundaries
Concerns about anxiety in an “always on” world are valid to a certain extent and within particular contexts, but we should scrutinize a language of addiction that pathologizes young people’s practices and experiences. For one thing, pathologizing language exoticizes young people’s practices, which contributes to harm-driven expectations that neglect to take into consideration agency, motivations, and actual experiences. Yet, pathological language seeps into popular discourse on a regular basis. For example, “Screen addiction is taking a toll on children,” a 2015 post by Jane Brody on the New York Times’ Well blog, describes children as “heavy users of electronics” and refers to texting as “the next national epidemic.” Dramatized language is far too common within discourse about young people’s media practices. “The language of addiction,” boyd writes (2014, p. 78), “sensationalizes teens’ engagement with technology and suggests that mere participation leads to pathology.” This approach presumes that what young people are experiencing is an “illness” that
needs to be “remedied” (Reagle 2015). The media scholar John Jones (2015) is critical of language that perpetuates fear and harm around media, both within popular culture and scholarship. In a response to a Washington Post op-ed piece written by a teacher who regretted incorporating the iPad into her classroom (Hall 2015), Jones wrote:
The intellectual support for this movement [banning media at school] has recently been provided by the questionable research of MIT professor Sherry Turkle, who provides concerning anecdotes that support the fears of anyone who has begun to suspect that our screens are having noxious effects on the human need to [fill in the blank]. … The basic problem with research like Turkle’s is that it magnifies anecdotes from this time of social upheaval of media creation and consumption into universal truths about technology, and it is not yet clear how our technology is actually changing us. Put differently, the unique social impact(s) of these technologies is hard to parse because they are not yet held in check by cultural expectations.
His opinion, like those of many other media scholars (Jenkins, Ito, and boyd 2016), iterates a point I made earlier in this section: When media are initially adapted into society, they are disruptive, but over time society develops cultural norms that help manage disruptions, maximize benefits, and minimize harms. It is risky to respond to new disruptive technologies before we have had a chance to develop cultural expectations and social norms that will regulate practices in more responsible ways. Lessig (2006) reminds us that there are many modes of regulation other than laws and rules. Technology can and should be regulated via agreed-upon social norms that establish etiquette and boundaries. This necessitates patience, time, and a trust that collective norms will balance the risks and opportunities of mobile media practices.8
Instead of overly focusing on the risk of addiction, we should focus on expectations of healthy boundaries. S. Craig Watkins argues that digital media have become such necessary and integral aspects of our daily lives that we incorporate technology—and check our phones—out of habit, more so than out of a compulsive harmful behavior. “Addiction,” he writes (2009, p. 134), implies something altogether different [than a digital lifestyle] and far more serious—a mental disorder that makes self-destructive behavior nearly impossible to stop.” Although addiction may accurately describe a small percentage of the population, such a rhetoric implies that young people lack agency or ability to change their behaviors, or to form healthier habits. More so, it feeds into harm-driven expectations that are used to exercise control over the already surveilled and controlled lives of young people. According to boyd (2014, p. 96), “as teens seek out new spaces where they have agency, adults invent new blockades to restrict the power of the young. The rhetoric of addiction is one example, a cultural device used to undermine teens’ efforts to reclaim a space. Restrictive adults act on their anxiety as well as their desire to protect young people, but in doing so, they perpetuate myths that produce the fears that prompt adults to place restrictions on teens in the first place.” This is evident in school policies that aim to overly regulate and restrict students’ access to mobile and social media at school. Banning mobile media aims to create a superficial environment of control and misses a powerful opportunity to help young people manage risk—including stress and pressure to always be connected—and instead attempts to eliminate the temptation and challenges altogether.
I propose that we approach feelings of stress and anxiety as indicative of a need to help young people manage their time, their social lives, and their media practices. In other words, as is true of non-mediated aspects of their lives, students need help identifying and maintaining healthy boundaries. This is true emotionally, socially, and physically in many areas of life—for example, developing healthy friendships, having a healthy physical lifestyle, and managing one’s time. Young people (and adults too) need guidance in the use of media. Schools offer a unique opportunity, or perhaps even have a responsibility and an obligation, to help students negotiate healthy boundaries by supporting the development and practice of new habits.
Students’ Expectations: Discourses of Trust and Negotiation
As is often the case in highly regimented spaces, students at Freeway High found ways to circumvent policies. The majority of participants did not passively accept the regulations and restrictions enacted via institutional policies, but rather they played active roles in subverting restrictive constraints. Michel de Certeau (1984) would describe these instances as tactical practices that allowed students to subvert the rules from within without transforming the strategic structures of the classroom. Some students actively sought ways to undermine barriers and filters; others relied on peer networks to help them bypass restrictions; others did not demonstrate a desire to bypass barriers. This section highlights some of the ways students resisted institutional constraints and barriers that attempted to limit their access to and their use of mobile and digital media.
Instead of framing students’ actions as merely mischievous or devious, I draw from work by Morgan O’Brien (2009), who considers how students enact their own agency even within highly regulated educational environments. O’Brien demonstrates “how young people’s use of the mobile phone represents the adoption of particular ‘tactics’ to assert their agency within the ‘strategic’ context of a specific power structure, in this case, school” (p. 30). As other studies have also found (Green 2003; Ito 2005; Taylor 2005), students at Freeway High have developed ways to covertly use mobile and social media during school hours—for example, by texting under their desks, hiding earbuds under hoods, by using proxy servers to bypass technical filters, and by negotiating leniency with particular teachers. Alex Taylor describes these acts as “locally assembled resistance against an established set of social structures or ‘rules’” (2005, p. 163). Drawing from de Certeau’s concept of resistive tactics, O’Brien argues that disciplined subjects subvert power with whatever possibilities at hand, but he is careful to point out that tactics only allow subjects to “escape without leaving the dominant order” (2009, p. 34). In other words, students work within institutional discipline without completely overruling it. It is also worth noting that students’ resistive tactics reflected both the aforementioned interest-driven and friendship-driven practices (Ito et al. 2010).9 O’Brien’s framework is useful for discussing other modes of student resistance with relation to media use, such as bypassing institutional barriers that restrict access to content at school. Although teens’ tactics may seem inconsequential, these practices, O’Brien writes (2009, p. 38), “are a part of the way through which everyday life is rendered livable for young people.” It is in this vein that I consider the resistive tactics participants exercised in order to cope with constraints of control that the school aimed to enact.
Participants had many motivations for breaking the rules—motivations which are significant because they make visible students’ broader expectations about school, technology, and formal education. By examining students’ motivations for breaking the rules about media, we can see how students expect to be able to stay in contact with peers (and family members), expect to have access to content they deem valuable, and expect that school will be boring. All three motivations for negotiating in-school media use—sociality, access, and alleviating boredom—provide insight into students’ values and expectations of school and learning.
Negotiating Sociality
Social interaction may not be a primary function of school, especially from an adult and institutional perspective, but schools are an integral part of the socialization of teens (Catalano et al. 2004; Giroux and Penna 1979). From an adult perspective, sociality may seem superfluous to or a distraction from the primary goals of formal education. However, school is a place where students learn how to develop healthy relationships, acquire social capital, and prepare to participate in social and political spheres. As with most aspects of life, peers help render the monotony and obligations of school more pleasurable. Having a strong social support network of ad
ults and peers has been linked to reduced stress (Cobb 1976), higher academic achievement (Catalano et al. 2004), and higher graduation rates (Lee and Burkam 2003). Sociality should not be dismissed as secondary to institutional goals of education; rather, students’ social life at school plays an important role in achieving the broader goals of education. It is not surprising that students frequently break the media rules and risk punishment in order to stay in contact with peers (and family members) during school hours. Ultimately this struggle is between what school values (a controlled learning environment) and what is of value to a student (social life, the support of peers, and the student’s place within the social hierarchy of the school).
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