11.23.2016

Teen Social Media Use By the Numbers

On this blog, I've written a lot about teenage social media use, so naturally I click on every study I see that tries to put numbers to teenage screen-time. Below are the numbers I've seen most recently.

In 2016, researchers at Common Sense Media found that teens spend almost 9 hours (8:56) a day not including school or homework consuming media.

In a study as far back as 2010 the Kaiser Family Foundation reported that teens (8-18 years old) are spending approximately 7:38 a day consuming media. The study ranks "total media exposure" for the 11-14 demographic at 11:53, and for the 15-18 demographic at 11:23. Those numbers take into account multitasking, which will often double media exposure through multiple screens. Speaking of multi-tasking, according to Common Sense Media (2016), teens reported that they multitasked at high rates when doing homework: 51% watch TV, 50% use social media, and 60% text. Every scientific study related to multitasking has proven it's inefficient. But teens either 1) don't know how bad it is for performance or 2) don't care enough to stop or 3) can't stop.

In a 2015 researchers at Pew reported that 24% of teens (13-17) admit that they go online "almost constantly." That number increases for the next age group (18-29) where 29% say they go online almost constantly. Additionally, fully 91% of teens access the web daily via a mobile device, which proves the breadth of internet use amongst teens. And 71% of teens are accessing more than one social media site on a consistent basis, which shows the depth of internet use amongst teens.

Clearly the numbers for screen-time and media consumption uncovered by these organizations only seem to be increasing amongst teens--not to mention how that change is affecting their ability to complete homework, sleep, and associate with their family, just to name a few of the major implications of this change in our teens. But as an educator, I'm most interested by these numbers because they prove the importance of both teaching teens how to use their screen-time productively and teaching teens how to be informed consumers of media. Unfortunately, I don't think we're doing a great job with this, and I don't know where this fits into our current curriculum. So it often seems like teens are living in a fundamentally different reality than we (educators) lived in when we were there age. And we're not using our power as mentors and teachers to help them navigate this new world of media and screen ubiquity.

I've advocated previously that we need to create new classes to help students manage their screen time and be informed consumers of media (here and here). But even if schools won't add classes to their current curriculum, perhaps we can spend more time addressing these trends in teen culture in the following disciplines:
English/History: Research, consumption patterns, media literacy, and digital citizenship
Art: creating, posting, and curating online media
Psychology: The brain and computer use, addiction, multitasking & the social psychology behind exporting an image of yourself online.
Health: Heathy habits for screen-time and how to create a healthy online image
Technology: This could serve as a catch-all for a lot of the above. It can also help them use their screen time efficiently.

Check out the essay I published on my medium page for advice on teaching teenagers how to use social media responsibly, professionally and to enhance learning.  


Sources:
Teens Social Media and Technology Overview 2015 - Pew
Common Sense Media 2015: Executive Summary - CSM
Common Sense Media 2016: Executive Summary - CSM
Technology Addiction: Concern, Controversy, and Finding Balance - CSM
The Common Sense Census: Media Use by Tweens and Teens - CSM
Generation M2 Media in the Lives of 8-18 year olds: A Kaiser Family Foundation Study (2010) - KFF

11.01.2016

OESIS 2016 Talk: New Media and Digital Identity

I presented a "course of the future" at the annual OESIS conference in Boston a few weeks ago and fielded a handful of great questions from educators interested in implementing passion-based learning and personalized learning at their schools. I left the conference very encouraged that educators genuinely want to include more inquiry-based/passion-based instruction in their classes. Most importantly, most of those present seemed to agree that social media is an effective way to do so, which is how I've been teaching my courses for a number of years (both New Media and Digital Identity and my history courses). A majority of the questions I answered were about tactics of implementation. So, I'm posting a recording of this talk so that those who weren't there can still use some of my ideas about injecting passion based learning through social media into our schools. If you're interested in hearing the questions at the end of the talk, there's a link to it at the end of the video. Enjoy!


9.02.2016

Teenage Social Norms on Social Media

It's hard to teach in the age of social media; I can only imagine how hard it is to parent in the age of social media. Last week, I was giving a talk to parents on how to talk to your teen about technology. After one of the sessions, a parent came up to me and asked about a story I told about a teenager who removed a post on Instagram because it didn't garner enough likes. She said, "I wish I knew more of those rules my children have on social media. It's hard to help them if I don't understand why they're doing what they're doing." That felt like the making of a blog post, so here goes nothin':

Teenage social norms on social media by application:

GENERAL
  • If a new acquaintance follows you, you're supposed to follow back--otherwise, that acquaintance can't blossom into a friendship. 
  • If a friend messages you on any of the below mediums, you're supposed to write back. If you don't, it makes for a rocky interaction the next time you see that "friend."
  • If anyone tags you on a social media site, you have to like and comment. 
    • And if someone plays an inside joke and you know it, you have to interact with that post somehow (like as a minimum). 
  • The bottom line is, it's all about the interactions! On many of these apps, a certain amount of likes are necessary for the post to be considered worth it. As I mentioned above, sometimes on Instagram, if a teenager doesn't feel he/she received enough likes on a photo, he/she will remove it.  
  • You can only change your profile picture every so often. You don't want to make it look like you're too into yourself, but you also do have to change your profile from time-to-time to really make a statement about who you are. I've also heard that a teenager is supposed to collect more likes on each subsequent profile picture or risk losing hurting his/her status on social media. 
  • Birthdays--this is so interesting it should have its own blog post. Allow me to be brief... Because these apps want data on our teens, they all ask for birthday. Many--most notably Facebook--then display a user's birthday to his/her following. Depending on your relationship with the user, you're expected to respond in a certain way. For example, if it's a friend, you can comment on Facebook. If it's a good friend, you should text. And if it's one of your besties, you send a flattering photo collage to Instagram (and Facebook) to show off your friendship with the birthday boy/girl.  
INSTAGRAM
  • Likes are EVERYTHING. As I mentioned above, the amount of likes may determine whether the post lives or dies on this platform. The goal is triple digits!
    • In the words of one student, "If you have 199 likes you may feel stressed or irritated until you see 200 on your screen."
    • Many teens meticulously schedule when they're going to post an image to maximize likes.
  • On Instagram, unlike snapchat, you limit your posts. You don't want to "spam" your followers and you want to make sure each time you post, your followers are ready to hit like! 
  • Instagram Aesthetic--your aesthetic is essentially your theme. Teens pick something to focus on and only post photos that fit within that theme. That can be the content of the image, the filter, the style of photo, etc. What teens are going for is a pretty landing page when friends or potential friends click on their profile. If you need an example, look at King Kylie. This means that on Instagram, teens are frequently clicking on each other's profiles and evaluating a body of work, not just perusing photos.
  • Filters matter. You don't want your photos to look too edited, but you also want them to look good to get likes. It's a challenge, but it's worth all the time and effort if you get likes! Sometimes you get respect by going with #nofilter.
INSTAGRAM #2 (Fake Instagram or "finsta." Note: this is different than your Real Instagram or "rinsta")
  • Teens literally create a second Instagram account so that they can break all the rules above. 
  • You don't use your real name for this, and you keep the account locked; it's just for close friends and likes don't matter.
  • The pictures tend to be less than flattering and sometimes downright inappropriate.
  • When I asked a student about "finstas" she responded, "you want people to see what your real life is like, right?" This quotation proves that on "rinsta" your posts are not supposed to reflect your actual life. 
  • Nevertheless, teenagers use their "finsta" to like their "rinsta" posts to boost their likes on their real Instagram account.
  • I know one girl who made a "finsta" with the sole purpose of posting things that poked fun at her mother.
SNAPCHAT
  • Streaks are EVERYTHING. In the words of a student, "the higher the streak, the cooler. [Teens] exchange meaningless pictures... in order to keep the streak going." When I ask students what they're doing on their phone at 8 AM, they tell me they're keeping their streaks. Many teens wake up in the morning and send snaps to keep streaks going. 
  • Teens usually don't even view the snaps they receive for the full amount of time they have. That's because they have too many to get through. If someone sends a snap to keep a streak alive, great, you click through to the next one.
  • Everyone agrees screenshotting is really uncool, but everyone does it. I once asked a room full of 11th graders how many of them had received a screenshot of someone else's social media post in the last week. More than half of their hands went up.
  • What goes on your story has to be carefully crafted and you can't put too many pictures up in a day or your followers will get annoyed. Nevertheless, you can post way more frequently on Snapchat than you can on Instagram. It's feast or famine on Snapchat. If you don't have anything going on, you don't post much to snapchat. If you're doing something cool, you post as much as you can without annoying your followers. But rest assured, even when you're posting a lot, you're also viewing a lot. Teens don't miss a thing on snapchat.  
  • If you send someone a photo that you're going to post to your story, it's practically an insult to the person you sent it to. That's because you have to assume that everyone who is on Snapchat is looking at your story!
  • There's a feature on snapchat where you can check who is viewing your stories, teens use it... frequently.
  • Finally, teens seem to be okay with the fact that when school events occur, they all snapchat each other the same thing.
TWITTER
  • I've already written my own opinion on how teens use this app. See here, here and here.
  • Twitter Ratio - Teens think they need to have more accounts following them than accounts that they follow. In other words, more people have to care about your tweets than other people's tweets that you care about. 
  • For most teens, the point of posting a tweet is to garner favorites. One student said that she felt like "the goal of Twitter for [her] was trying to be funny or clever, and favorites just determined if that goal was met." Favorites are important because they deliver validation, but that makes Retweets even more desirable and affirming. A Retweet is when someone moves your tweet to all of his/her followers too. This validation drives teens to shoot for RTs more so than favorites. Needless to say, when shooting for RTs, teens aren't posting things that would make their parents and teachers proud. 
  • In fact, if teenagers used Twitter the way adults do--to share interests and to network--they would stand out. I know one student who uses his Twitter this way and his friends tease him by calling it his "business twitter."
  • Because Twitter's stream moves so quickly, it's harder to get lots of RTs and favorites in this medium; and as a result, teens are leaving Twitter in big numbers... but they're still holding on to "Private Twitter"  
TWITTER #2 (Private Twitter or "PT")
  • Yes, teens also make two Twitter accounts. The goal of the Private Twitter is much like the "finsta" I mentioned above. You lock your account and only let in a small group of friends (approx. 20-40). In this space, you can tweet anything. 
  • Often this space is used for inappropriate comments; you say things here that you can't say on other social media accounts or even things you can't say in real life. These are your unedited opinions. I've heard students say that this is the space where you're "supposed to" argue with your followers. Others derive entertainment just by watching people clash on Private Twitter.
  • In fact, Private Twitter accounts are becoming more common amongst teenagers than public twitter accounts. As I mentioned above, I think Twitter is losing its appeal to teenagers, but Private Twitter is not; and--in my opinion--it's bad for their relationships.
FACEBOOK
  • Frankly, Facebook is going out of style with teenagers, mostly because their parents are taking over that space. They're running to Instagram and Snapchat. Because of this fact, I'll just leave this category with one bullet: a direct quote from a former student, "I know two people who posted on Facebook what college they decided to go to and didn't even tell their parents because they thought they would have just seen their post."
TEXT
  • Believe it or not, text is going out of style with our teenagers too. I've already written about group text--which is not going out of style. You can read that here. Allow me to conclude this category with a quotation from a former student as well: "People are on their social media often enough that you don't have to go ahead and text them... they will see it."
A parting thought: one of the fascinating, fun things about social media is that it's free-flowing and fast-moving. However, every interaction on these applications exists indefinitely. Friends can screenshot posts, they can go back and see old posts, and the applications themselves store every post. Teenagers admit that they "stalk" each other on these networks--poring through old photos and posts to judge/evaluate a peer. That's a scary thought when you think about the norms discussed above and the fact that over the years the norms will change, and the users will continue posting to keep up. That means hundreds (if not thousands) of posts that can be uncovered at any time by friends--old and new--for the rest of a teenager's life.

8.26.2016

Start the School Year Differently

On Monday morning, I returned to faculty meetings to begin the school year for the 8th time in my career. With that many opening meetings, I've noticed a fascinating trend: there's legitimate excitement and energy in the room and it always disappears entirely when the first administrator comes up to talk about operating procedures like discipline, honor code, scheduling and grading policy. Upon seeing it an 8th time, I had an epiphany; this is exactly how my first class goes when I force students to go through the course syllabus together.

I have always been told and I have always taught that teachers should embrace energy and excitement and harness it for learning and retention. So why would we start our school year with something that everyone would agree is not a best practice for teaching and learning?

So this year I'm going to purposefully leave out all administrative "stuff" (rules, course content, grading policies, etc.) from the first day. Instead, I'm going to host an activity where students have to think of what they want out of the class. I'll frame the course as broadly as possible and let the students talk about what they want to learn within that broad scope.

For example, in my Contemporary World History class this year, I'm going to post a map of the world, with the US taken out, and tell them that this is your playing field for learning this year. Anything that fits within that framework fits within the course content of "Contemporary World History." Imagine that blank slate for learning. I'm excited to see what the students come up with!

Here are some other questions I'm thinking about asking on day 1:

  • 1) In general, what are you excited about for this school year? Why?
  • 2) In general, what challenges do you think you'll face this year?
  • 3) What did you learn this summer? How does that fit into the broad framework of this course?
    • 3A) How will your other interests and/or previous knowledge help you to learn in this course?
  • 4) What do you want to learn within the broad framework I provided for this course?  
  • 5) Finally, how do you think I should go about teaching this subject in a way that will 1) make it relatable 2) keep you interested and 3) benefit retention and 4) enhance future pursuits

8.05.2016

What Students Are Really Learning in High School

I had a student the other day say that the one thing he really learned in high school is how to manage five courses to get the best grades possible. What he means is that he wasn't working hard to learn, he was working hard to manage his courses to get good grades. Another student said, "Legit, my job in school is to get A's... I cry when I get B's." In other words, what students are trying to get out of school is a letter grade, not a learning experience, and that's a problem.

My students admitted this to me in the summer when I teach two new media/technology courses. Why the summer? Because my course hasn't been approved yet for the school year. In these courses, I've basically thrown the idea of "course content" out the window. Technically, I've outsourced it to the students. I teach students how to use the internet and social media as a means to learn the content of their choosing. In other words, I'm teaching passion based learning through social media. I'm empowering students to use the applications they love in ways that allow them to learn the content of their choosing.

In order to get students to embark on this journey of learning, I start with a discussion about the way that their high schools make them learn. That's where I heard the quotes with which I started this blog post. Once they admit they're tired of learning what teachers want them to, I say, "Fine. Prove to me that you can do better on your own." I believe in the curiosity of my students. And I believe that when they set their own goals they will be much more likely to meet them, not to mention they'll retain the information better when they deem it worthwhile.

Always fascinated by technology, teenagers quickly grasp the applications and social media tips and tricks that I teach. The reason I start with the applications themselves is because the moniker "digital natives" is a myth. Teenagers use a lot of applications, but they don't know how to navigate them efficiently or how to use them in the best ways to deliver networked learning. Efficiency is crucial on the web. Not only do I teach students how to use lists on twitter, but I also teach them how to use hotkeys to navigate quickly. Then it's up to the students themselves to add their interests to these applications and learn efficiently.

Next, I teach a few lessons about how the internet works and how it's changing in the 21st century. I cover a group of concepts that I call the "social internet economy." This consists of things like digital publishing, crowdsourcing, branding, SEO, data mining, and slacktivism. Essentially, I'm trying to make sure students understand the world they will inhabit when they get out of college. I'm also making sure that with their learning, they're also publishing something so as to form a digital identity. This pushes students to find a niche in a given interest that they can latch onto before they pick a major and start looking for internships. If they've been following this interest on their own since high school, they'll be so much more prepared to enter the workforce than their peers. Finally with an acute knowledge of the 21st century economy, I trust my students will be prepared to start their own brand (or even business) to help guide them through their young career.

I'm so proud of what my students have produced thanks to this course. They've taken this simple concept and run with it! If I could, I would never go back to teaching content the way I do during the normal year. I've had an epiphany and I hope others will see this the way I do... especially when I propose this as a semester course for next year!

8.02.2016

My Golden Age in Teaching

An open letter to young teachers about teaching in a world of social media


Frequently, I have this scary realization that my best teaching days are waning. I'm 29, entering my eighth year of teaching high school students. What I truly enjoy teaching, with every opportunity I can find, is passion-based learning (and digital citizenship) through social media. For many years, I've reached students in their digital space and helped them use it positively, for learning; but with every incoming class, I fear that I'm losing touch with my students and they're losing touch with me in that same space.

As a "young" teacher, students feel comfortable talking to me about things their parents and other teachers just don't understand. And I can astutely explain to "older" teachers (and administrators) how students use their devices and social media pages and what impact that had on their lives. That's because I grew up understanding the digital divide between these "generations."*

I feel particularly lucky that growing up, I didn't have a cell phone until 17 or a smart phone until 24. I experienced high school without social media and I experienced college with only Facebook. When new products/apps arrived, I experimented with them and thought critically about them. This unique timeline has allowed me to understand the strengths and weaknesses of new social media applications with a perspective that younger digital natives don't yet posses.** Because of this pursuit, I can transition between the technophobes and the technophiles--the young and the old, if you will. Let's call educators my age "digital frontiersman"

I think my growth learning about and using social media provides important perspective to an incredibly controversial issue in education. While administrators debate being proactive or reactive with respect to phones and social media, I built a course designed around it. As parents create long lists of things their students can't do on their phones/social media, I've used it to empower passion based learning.

These past few summers teaching my new media course, I've had a particularly enlightening experience helping my students learn online. Nevertheless, I can feel my words having less of an impact on these children. They still agree with what I say about social media and cell phone use, but they don't act the same way they used to. That's because two things are happening at the same time: I'm getting older and losing touch with each class's nuanced understanding of social media, and my students are getting younger and losing touch with life without phones and without social media. While aging is inevitable, I'm not ready to give up the lessons that a digital frontiersman can teach a digital native.

Losing the frontiersman's perspective will corrode the bridge between the digital natives and the older generation. It'll hurt dialogue between individuals and generations and it will create an intergenerational disconnect. As a result, our digital natives will struggle to adapt to the world that existed before social media.

Digital frontiersmen watched social media change the our lives. We were forced to make the connection between the social and the professional. That's why we're better equipped to understand and teach social media (and phone use in general). When digital natives run the classrooms, they'll have to contend with the same issues, but they won't have the same perspective. Without that perspective, I fear students will live in a constantly distracted world and won't adapt to the professional workforce easily.

Let me conclude this post by saying that one does not have to be a "digital frontiersman" to teach social media to teenagers. As long as a teacher establishes himself as someone knowledgeable about the space and knowledgable about how teenagers use that space, he can always teach it.

I also acknowledge that this post contains many are generalizations. Plenty of teachers my age are not using their phones and social media for learning, just like how many older teachers have figured out how teens use social media and are using it themselves for learning/professional development.

I just fear that the impact of my example and my perspective wanes with every year and every incoming class. That's what inspired this post. But it won't stop me from staying up-to-date with what my students are doing online and providing my perspective on how they can learn and understand the world they will inherit after school.

*I do not mean to imply that older means a teacher or parent will not understand tech or social media.
**I don't usually use the term "digital native" because it implies that the the younger generation is good with technology--and most aren't. I use it here to talk about an age range, not a skill set

3.15.2016

Teen Troubles with Twitter #3

In my last two installments of this three-part series, I've made a case for why teens don't use Twitter correctly and why that's a problem. In this installment, I intend to address how teens’ use of Twitter has evolved... for the worst.
Image result for fail whale
In my classroom, teenagers use the expression "subtweet me" during discussions if one member of the class has indirectly disagreed with another student. A "subtweet" is when a user writes something about another user without mentioning them by name (or handle). Inherent in every "subtweet" is an insult or disagreement. The word is invoked in class only when one student feels victimized or attacked by another. Their invocation of this word is evidence that teenagers frequently use their Twitter pages for social quips, esoteric discussions, and to enhance their social images often at another student’s expense.

More recently, I have heard students mention "PT" or Private Twitter, where teenagers create a new account and keep their security settings structured so only a close group of friends see their posts. Note: "close" is all relative for teens. Teens intentionally create these accounts and enter this space to speak their minds. Frankly, it's indicative of a wider trend in this country where citizens feel constrained by--and thus seek to avoid--political correctness. The way a teenager acts in school is often very different than how that teen acts on PT. Posting to a Private Twitter isn't like telling a close friend how you really feel; it's telling dozens of friends how you really feel on a platform that stores data permanently. Needless to say, "PT" has perpetuated the denigration of a space that, has tremendous power to people together to share information, which is s shame. PT has also perpetuated the denigration of the discourse between our teenagers online and in-person.

As I've written throughout this series, Twitter is powerful. Teens can use it to learn, create, discuss and inform--whether that’s a school project or a personal learning project. If you told a teacher that an application encourages teens to do just that, she'd jump for joy. But our teenagers are not deriving the educational and developmental benefit that Twitter has to offer. They're "subtweeting" one another or posting secretive confessions and insults to their Private Twitter.

Obviously we're never going to be able to do all we can for our teenagers when it comes to guiding them in their digital and social spaces. But we also can't make progress if we keep turning a blind eye to what teens do on the internet. Schools should be teaching students how to get the most out of social media, and parents should be actively involved in what their children see and post online. We shouldn't simply scold our students about the pitfalls of social media when something bad happens; we need to be proactive. Let's empower our students to use Twitter in ways that benefit rather than harm them.

3.14.2016

Teen Troubles with Twitter #2

For whatever reason, writing about teenagers and Twitter has inspired me to post on my blog (which has been largely defunct this year as I've been writing a longform essay on--you guessed it--social media and teens). This is the second part in a three-part series on how we're letting our teens down by not teaching them how to use Twitter.
Image result for fail whale
With 24-7 access to a cellphone, teens check their social media pages all the time. All. The. Time. For that reason, a teen loses social standing if he or she cannot stay up-to-date with the developments in the social (media) world. On Instagram, for example, the vast majority of teens never miss a post. Snapchat has made sharing multimedia content to dozens of friends remarkably simple and completely normal. Call it FOMO, call it narcissism, call it societal pressure, our teens strive to be up-to-date on their social world, all the time.

However, teenagers struggle to keep up with Twitter. Therefore, it has become a secondary or tertiary (or worse) social media site for teens; they're not interested because they feel like they can’t keep up, and it's a shame.

As I've written about previously, Twitter is an awesome forum for learning. We can help our teens learn, create, discuss and inform on Twitter or we can allow them to bully, flirt or troll. If we choose to do the former, we need to teach teens how to use Twitter.

Let's start by dispelling the notion that you have to keep up with your entire Twitter feed. Truthfully, you don't even need to keep up with a majority of your feed. The great thing about Twitter is its free-flowing, fast-moving nature. As long as a user’s following list conveys interesting information, he should feel perfectly content consuming a small number of a tweets at a time. 

We must empower our teenagers to create diverse feeds harnessing the power of passion-based learning. But teens won't consume informational content in a space where they're concerned they can't keep up with every update. It’s too hard to manage.

This problem is compounded by the fact that--as I wrote about in my last post--teens are too worried about their "ratio" to really click follow on things that could deliver quality information.

Finally, teens discourage one another from posting informative content on Twitter. For whatever reason, it's social suicide for most. Twitter is a place for teens to have fun, to laugh, to flirt, and to forget about whatever is happening in their physical lives. Unfortunately, this use results in little learning. Sure, teens tweet and retweet, but little of that use is original content and rarely does it link to anything worthwhile. We must encourage our teens to build a robust digital profile to encourage teens to learn about their passions, create projects and original information, and to inform one another about not just social, but informational content. But in order to do so, we need to shift teen culture on Twitter. In this series called "Teen Troubles with Twitter" I’m hoping to spread the knowledge needed to help mentor our teens on Twitter.