Adolescent Interview...the more the merrier

It seems that I am always in the presence of teens.  My lunch break, prep time time, and 9^th periods have become a mini hangout for a mix of students who are bored with a study hall or who are escaping the drama of the cafeteria. Asking one student for an interview found everyone else in the room wanting to participate, so my questions elicited several responses that I am generalizing in my reporting. 

My 5 interviewees are each 16 years old females, 2 freshman and 3 10^th graders, who prefer not to be in the culture of the crowded cafeteria. They do not know one another from common classes or common out of school interests. I am making some generalizations here, but I would say that each of them comes from a fairly stable family, they are bright and are scholastically B-ish  students. Two students are white, three are latino. They are an open-minded group of kids. None of them belong to a clique or particular group per se.They are not art majors, but definitely like to noodle around with materials, ideas and are in general a lighthearted group. I mention all of this, as I do not think my interviewees represent the most general population of adolescent high school students.

I started the interview with the basic questions…What devices do you use? How much time do you spend each day electronically connected? Do you use your phone in school? How do you use the internet as a tool in your schoolwork? Multiple devices, definitely phones, too much time, yes to phone use in school, Google search, wickipedia and maybe a data base  or jstor for info. They generally preferred video and reading as primary ways to learn school content. Not instead of a teacher, but to enhance learning…they all agreed that the visual stimulation of a video kept them engaged. Pretty uneventful responses.

Then I asked about social media, free time, and personal interests and the discussion livened up .I found the conversation really informative, as I don’t use social media very often. The uses and nuance of each site seems quite specific. Facebook, Tumbler, Twitter and Snapchat were the most widely used social media sites. The first thing they did agree on, was that they preferred to talk with friends face to face because it was easier to communicate with facial gestures, actual expression and there isn’t a weird response time lapse. And rather then phone calls, they use group chats to hang out together from different locations. 

 Facebook is used to for contacting friends and family.

 “It’s not a space to express yourself or to really communicate. You can’t have an opinion without lots of drama. People believe everything on Facebook to be true. It’s uptight.”

 They thought identity creation on Facebook was, “pretty bogus and suspect”. Facebook is generally considered old school and is pretty public.

 “You don’t “really” expose anything about yourself, and people who comment on your stuff aren’t really “friends”, sometimes they don’t know you at all. And then there’s the drama with people saying stuff second hand.”

Snapchat was regarded as a venue for creating a diary style communication with a few friends. “You take pictures of dumb, random things and send them to people. Jokes or maybe what you ate for breakfast. It’s usually just to goof around, just for fun.” 

Twitter communications happened between acquaintances or with people they know. Didn’t seem that there was much activity happening there, but they did immediately mention it as a 3^rd media site.

When they got to Tumbler…OMG…I almost had to ask them to raise their hands, so I could hear them.

So what is it about Tumbler?!

 There was a momentary deep silence, some giggling…and then, ”Tumbler was created to get away from Facebook. Its everything you can imagine! It’s a different environment, you can follow whoever. It’s just a bunch of people, its less uptight, there’s a playful mood. It’s a place that you can be less self-conscious, kind of stream of consciousness. It has a peculiar sense of humor. It’s a collection of oddball odds and ends. There’s some of everyone’s interests.” 

What kinds of stuff? I need a little more direction here.

 “It’s artsy, political, sexual and funny. You can be Tumbler Famous…(I’m thinking of Andy Warhol’s prophetic statement, “ In the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes.”)  “We photoshop memes…like the D_O_G_E meme”.(They spell it because they agree that none of them knows the real pronunciation). “We change stuff and share it. Sometimes you post spam- you know, useless creative videos of yourself or to u-tube.  When I first went on Tumbler, I felt like an outsider at first. The sense of humor was too weird…I didn’t get it. Then you go on for a while and you do it too”.  “There are blogs for social justice and women’s rights. It connects you to the whole world of what people are thinking about.”  

Have you made any friends from other places through Tumbler, people you personally contact?

 “I communicate with a girl from France about our common interests in movies and books, and 2 girls from England, we like the same music and  we talk about how different things are here and there.” “Sometimes you follow someone for a while and then not for a while”.

 How do you go from blogging to becoming friends?

“You can check out who they are through say, Facebook and send a message, it can become a chat and then you can agree to skype”.

Do ever feel your privacy is at risk, or you are ever in danger of anything?

“ No, you have the option of blocking people, you can report or delete strangers. And then there’s Rule #1, Never talk to anyone you don’t know on social media.” 

Where did you learn that?

 “I don’t remember, ever since we were little you always hear that.”

 Okay, last question. What do you consider a drawback of social media? Do you find it distracting?

“All we do is stay on our phones watching u-tube videos.” “ Ever since I found the computer, I never go outside.” “I know I could be more productive, I need to get a hold of time management.” “ I feel addicted to Tumbler. Its never the same, its always changing”.  “If I have 3 hours at night, I spend most of my time on social media or the computer, and then I have to rush through my homework. If  I try to do homework first, I rush through it to get onto my phone”. “I can’t cut myself off. There is a program on my tablet. It reminds you of your time spent. You can set it up to cut you off.”

Do you use it? “No, not yet,……. but I guess I should think about it.”  

Now I'm curious to see one of their tumbler accounts. My grown up friends' sites don't seem quite so "funny" .

 It would be interesting to really get an inside view of what is tweaking the interests of these adolescents, from the fly on the wall perspective...only for a moment of course.We don't really want to know the all of it.