Blog Week 11 Interview with Zara, a Digital Native

I interviewed a 13 year old girl called Zara and was surprised to learn that although a Facebook member this is no longer the hot place to be.  The concern is that parents and grandparents now use Facebook so it has lost its ‘cool’ factor and no longer has the privacy it once had.  Other sites, Instagram, Twitter and one or two newer apps which I had never heard of seem to be more favorable.  However the number of friends one had on such sites seemed of vital importance.  What was important to her is that of her friends’ opinions and whether they like the latest picture she posted.  This seemed to make a difference to her social status among her friends.

Zara is a digital native and would be totally lost without her phone which goes everywhere with her unless she has to leave it in her school locker.  However, other than that it is in a pocket or always nearby.  At night it is under the pillow just in case she needs to text!  When asked if she could imagine life without a cell phone, she found that totally unimaginable – how would she communicate with her friends?

She prefers to text rather than call and will even text someone in the same room.  It appears as Sherry Turkle (2012) expressed in her interview that people prefer to text so as to have time to think about the answer.  With a phone conversation you may say something you did not want to – interestingly this was a similar thought that Zara had.  She liked the time to plan her answer as you may say something you really didn’t want to.

She has a group of friends that seem to have a constant ongoing conversation in texts throughout the day and it starts early prior to school confirming clothing choices for the day.  I personally was surprised by this but that’s because it never occurred to me as a teenager to have such concerns since I went to a school with uniforms so no discussion was needed.   Having had a son this did not seem a concern and I don’t recall that he spent much time texting early in the morning before school as it was really just get up and go. Not really sure if this is a change in text usage or based on gender but interesting to note.

Reference:

Gross, Terry (2012) (Interview with Sherry Turkle).  In Constant Digital Contact, We Feel ‘Alone Together Retrieved from: http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=163098594