[Introduction music]
MEGAN: Hi, I’m Megan
VICTORIA: I’m Victoria
BRIANNA: I’m Bri
MEGAN: And we’ve been in the same classes for the past three years, but haven’t talked to each other until this class.
[laughter]
BRIANNA: I think it’s really interesting how we haven’t talked to each other in all the time that we’ve known each other. I’ve seen you guys sit across the room, we’ve made eye contact, and we’ve just never spoken to each other.
MEGAN: I’ve like read so many of your stories, Bri, and like I just like critiqued so much of it, but like I’ve never actually like spoke to you about it. I just sort of wrote it down and gave it to you and that was the most of our interactions.
VICTORIA: You can also tell like by the way that you participate in class, I feel like I like know your personality, [laughter] but I don’t because I’ve never actually talked to you until now.
MEGAN: Yeah and you were in my Aesthetics class, right?
VICTORIA: Yes.
MEGAN: And that was like a mess.
[laughter]
VICTORIA: Yes, it was a mess.
BRIANNA: Well I mean, you were in my Writing and Thinking class and, honestly, I didn’t know anyone in that room.
VICTORIA: No.
BRIANNA: I think we were all just like in this state of limbo.
VICTORIA: We were also scared because it was our first semester here too.
BRIANNA: Yeah. Wow, it’s hard to think that was first semester.
VICTORIA: Yeah.
BRIANNA: Oh my God.
MEGAN: I know.
VICTORIA: We’ve come so far.
[laughter]
MEGAN: We’ve been through a lot like all three of us and we ended up here in this class together.
VICTORIA: Making the same podcast.
MEGAN: Yeah.
BRIANNA: Hosting the same episode.
MEGAN: Right?
VICTORIA: Yes.
[Transition music]
MEGAN: Some say social media has killed the socializing industry. No one wants to play outside or talk to their friends in person anymore. But, is this really the case?
BRIANNA: The lost art of social interaction simply explores a thought that social media has expanded our social circles instead of destroying them.
VICTORIA: Welcome to Me/Us/U
[Transition music]
VICTORIA: Junior year of high school, I was called a bitch because I didn’t have an over-the-top reaction when my best friend asked me to prom. Videos appeared on multiple friends’ snapchats of me bluntly saying “Why not?” when I got asked. I didn’t think anything of my reaction at first. I always knew I didn’t react well as I constantly bottle up every single emotion. Despite my confidence and happiness about being asked to prom, words quickly started spreading around my small high school. Why wasn’t she excited to be asked to prom? Does she not want to go with him? My date even later admitted to me that he felt bad after he asked me because he didn’t think I wanted to go with him.
The truth is, I was ecstatic to be asked, especially by my best friend. I never had a date to school dance before, so thinking about matching my dress with his tuxedo and having our parents take a million photos before the event was new and exciting. But, it was also overwhelming. I remember when I started to catch hints that my friend was going to ask me to prom, I worked out every second of the interaction in my head beforehand. I thought of exactly what to say and when to say it to make sure that I had the perfect reaction. But, the moment finally came and I blanked. Simply having that attention on me, made me overwhelmed and anxious.
The aftermath of the event when many people thought I was rude because of the way I reacted, got to me. What was wrong with me that I couldn’t do something as simple as reacting to my best friend asking me to prom correctly? This turned out to be a common theme throughout the next few years. My friends from high school and I are very different. The majority of them are extroverts and I’m an introvert.
[transition music]
VICTORIA: My name is Victoria. I’m 21 years old and a junior in college. I’m shy, timid, and reserved. In other words, I’m an introvert. I sit in the back of the classroom and observe the discussions rather than participating in them, the best part of my day is when I’m alone in my room, and my parents are constantly urging me to be more friendly towards acquaintances.
In high school, pretty much all of my friends were extroverts. They were known by the whole school as being fun and outgoing. Teachers and parents loved how charismatic they were and they would talk to anyone about anything without hesitation. I always knew that I was a little bit different than my friends. I would awkwardly linger as they rambled to random people that we would run into while getting ice cream and I would nudge them to hurry up when they made small talk with the cashier at Target. Despite our obvious differences, it wasn’t anything that I really thought about until I got to college and I became friends with people who were actually more introverted than I was. See for me, coming to college meant shifting from being the most introverted member of my high school friend group to being the most extroverted member of my college friend group.
One of my best friends since 6th grade , Anna, is everything that I’m not. She’s loud, expressive, social, and an extrovert. Although we are extremely different, we make it work. She picks up my weaknesses and I pick up hers. This creates a sense of teamwork that we wouldn’t have if we had the same personalities.
I decided to ask Anna a few questions about her perspective of our personalities to see if she felt the same way that I did. Since I’m not an extrovert, it’s hard for me to truly understand what it’s like to be one. Therefore, I thought it was fitting to have her explain what it’s like to be an extrovert on a day to day basis.
ANNA: On a day to day basis? Um I have a lot of interactions *laughter* um and a lot of different types of interactions. Uh there are lots of people that I will just say hi to and make small talk with and we both go on with our day it’s just kind of in passing. Then I want to know who they are and what their major is and get to know them, even if it’s just that day. I- I guess I’m just constantly talking to people. Um and I’m okay with alone time like I like my alone time. But, if I’m out and about, I want to be talking to people. I don’t typically keep to myself.
VICTORIA: I then asked Anna what she thought about our friendship since we have such different personalities. Is it a restriction on our friendship or is it something that goes unnoticed?
ANNA: I would say you and I interact pretty differently. Um I’ll just go up to anybody and start talking to them whether it’s like I don’t know, the chef in the dining hall who’s making my dinner, I’ll ask him about how his day is going or um I don’t know just passing someone in the store like I always say hi to people, that’s just kind of my personality type. I think you are like very social in the sense of like with your friends, like you have a lot of friends and you’re very comfortable with them and you’re very social in that aspect, but if you were just like I don’t know, waiting in line in Starbucks, I don’t think you would talk to the person in front of you or behind you. Whereas, I if I like heard them say something that I agreed with, I would come right out. So, you, I don’t know I feel like sometimes you see me like interacting with these total strangers and you’re like “Oh, there she goes again.” But, um yeah I don’t know I think overall like we’re the same way around our close friends, it’s just going out into the world and into the public I don’t know I’m definitely more outgoing [laughter].
[transition music]
VICTORIA: Introverts and extroverts are two personality types that are commonly known in our culture. Almost everyone has a sense on if they are introverted or extroverted just based on basic qualities about themselves. Even BuzzFeed can tell you if you’re an introvert or extrovert based on the outfit that you pick out or the pizza you make. Despite the basic knowledge of these two prevalent words in our society. Not everyone fully understands what they mean. There is a lot more to introverted people than just being shy and there is a lot more to extroverted people than just being outgoing.
According to the Huffington Post, for introverts, being in social situations drains their energy and they will eventually need to be alone to recharge. Most of the time, introverts are reserved and prefer being in small groups rather than large crowds. On the other hand, extroverts gain energy from being with others. They are known for being outgoing and enjoying large groups.
Since these personality types are pretty well-known, there are going to be some misconceptions about them. I decided to sit down with Megan Smale who has a Psychology minor at Susquehanna University to ask her about the common misconceptions about Introverts and Extroverts.
VICTORIA: So how would you compare and contrast introverts and extroverts?
MEGAN: Um I think they’re both very different, but I think people can be both of them at the same time. Um obviously extroverts are known for being more outspoken and maybe having more like an easier time saying how they feel than introverts do. But, I think that depends with who you’re around um whether or not you’re an extrovert or introvert. I think a lot of it is influenced by your childhood and your parents and just sort of how you’re raised. It’s just sort of kind of is a natural thing whether or not you feel more expressive or more internal about your emotions. Um yeah, I definitely think you can be both.
VICTORIA: And then, what are some misconceptions about the general knowledge of introverts and extroverts?
MEGAN: I think definitely that extroverts can have more friends or be um more comfortable in social situations than introverts um have fewer friends or are just not verbal about their um emotions. But, I think that, going back to what I said before, um you can even be an extrovert like on the outside, but on the inside you might kind of be freaking out in an introvert kind of way. Um I think that happens to a lot of people and I think that the misconception could be that extroverts are extroverts all the time and introverts are introverts all the time. Um yeah and just that you can have both in your personality.
[transition music]
VICTORIA: After hearing Megan talk about how people can be an introvert with extrovert qualities and vice versa, I started thinking about myself and my personality. It’s not uncommon for people to think that I’m an extrovert. But, if I mentioned to my classmates that there are people who think I’m an extrovert, I doubt they would believe me, even for a second. For me, it really comes down to who I’m with and how comfortable I am in a given situation. Getting asked to prom was an extremely over-stimulating event that made me want to crawl into a ball in my bed and avoid all interaction for a week. Meanwhile, simply working at my part-time job with my close friends brings out the outgoing and sociable side of me that never gets tired of interacting with others.
So, at the end of the day, YES there are people who are extreme introverts and extreme extroverts. However, there are a TON of people in the middle. It’s not fair to limit someone’s social ability on whether they are an introvert or extrovert. These two words help us get a better sense of how we interact, but being an introvert or an extrovert doesn’t define you. It took me a long time to learn that it’s okay to break barriers and have a day where I am super social followed by a day where I don’t leave my room. Everyone is different and therefore, everyone interacts differently.
Going to prom with my best friend was definitely a night where I was introverted. He talked through the whole night with our peers while I stayed behind with my close friends. People were probably commenting on how I looked miserable and how I didn’t want to be with my date, but, little do they know, I still had a great, unforgettable time. I guess not everyone understands what it’s like to be an introvert and I certainly don’t understand what it’s like to be an extrovert. Let’s all agree that everyone interacts differently and just leave it at that.
[transition music]
MEGAN: I’m Megan and I’m not going to lie, I grew up on romance novels. Young Adult novels in which the person that you meet when you’re 18, is the same person that you end up with forever, all happily ever after and all of that. I was raised on the idea of the importance of meeting the one that you’re supposed to be with forever and always. I thought a lot about running into the quarterback of the high school football team or maybe being partnered with that cute guy in my science class or the boy who I met at 16 in gym class when he asked me to be his partner. Coincidentally, my parents meeting went along with the narrative that I believed in. They grew up in the same town, little old Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania. They went to the same elementary school, same middle school and same high school and in the eighth grade, my father asked my mother out. My mother said yes, and then shortly after that broke up with him for a high school boy. They both went to separate colleges. My Dad going somewhere in New York, my mother going to Penn State. After graduating, they met up at a bar and hit it off. Pretty soon, they ended up getting married, moving out of Bloomsburg for a couple of years before having me and moving right back. I will also mention that both pairs of my grandparents met in Bloomsburg through mutual high schools, the same ones that my parents went to, the same one that I went to and live either in Bloomsburg or the town over. This segment isn’t about Bloomsburg, but it keeps coming back to Bloomsburg because it’s where my parents and grandparents met and this segment is about meeting people.
[transition music]
MEGAN: So even before my parents met, they were aware of each other. Bloomsburg is a small enough town that you pretty much know everyone and their families and the relationships they’re in. And after that breakup, in the eighth grade, my mom and dad still remained friends. The places where people tend to meet have more of an effect on the relationships that are about to develop than most people think. Why? First, knowing the history of someone or having any previous knowledge of a person immediately makes someone create judgment on them. Whether that’s intentional or not. My parents knew of each other beforehand. They had classes that had talked to each other and had mutual friends. In this, there was a comfortableness that they believed that they knew who the other person was without actually getting to know them on a deeper level, and this happens all the time. You go to school with a bunch of the same people long enough, you work with them for a few months, even if you don’t ever talk or have any interactions, you know of them. Sometimes we don’t even consider these types of people as strangers, but more of acquaintances. Therefore, these interactions when they occur are unique and different. When we talk to someone we know of, there’s a sort of reassurance that we have about them, that we know them better than we know the common stranger. This can create a more comfortable interaction between the people and it also allows for more topics of conversation in which can be shared between the two parties.
[transition music]
MEGAN: Before I had come to Susquehanna, I knew of a boy on the swim team here because he had gone to my rival school and against my team. Because of this history, I felt as if he could relate to me and the only way that I knew, our shared hometown. Yeah, it was kind of awkward at first trying to talk to him and others on the team, because I was a first-year and I wasn’t used to being surrounded by complete strangers all the time, but eventually I got the courage to ask him if he remembered swimming against me. This was the topic of our very first interaction and before I knew it, we become close friends. My other close friends here at SU were complete strangers before I had met them. Even my roommate in which the only interaction we had before moving in our dorm room together was me asking her if I should bring my mini fridge with someone I hadn’t known. She never answered my texts about the mini fridge, but we still ended up being best friends freshman year and still are to this day. My other close friends came from being on the swim team and there were some of the quickest relationships I’ve ever formed, mostly because we were all together, all the time, doing the same exact things, so I had best friends who had been strangers a year ago and people for years who were my friends that were now strangers. Turns out that some of your friends are only your friends because you go to the same high school and that’s totally okay. Transitioning from high school to college and maintaining friendships that have created dependent a lot on technology and even then the distance was hard to avoid. I could FaceTime my best friends once a week and it still wasn’t the same as all of us hanging out together at sleepovers that we had every weekend when we were in high school and as time went on, the distance between all of us got larger and larger. Don’t get me wrong, my hometown friends are still my hometown friends and we still talk, but it’s not a daily thing. Over the summers are when we catch up the most because we’re all back in good old Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania
[transition music]
MEGAN: For romantic relationships. I’m more of a meeting face to face kind of person. However, I wanted to get a perspective from someone who met their significant other through technology or in this case, Tinder.
[transition music]
MEGAN: Picture this, you’re at your best friend’s apartment. She’s eating soup on a chair, wrapped in a fuzzy white blanket. Her Dog, Baxter, is sitting on your lap. Her roommate, Lyssa, is on the couch next to her. You’re about to question her about her relationship, the relationship that she found through the app Tinder. Meet Jenn and she happens to be the one person I know with the successful Tinder story. This is it.
JENN: My boyfriend and I had been dating for almost two years. It’ll be two years in December. Um, he goes to Penn State. I go here and uh we met on Tinder
MEGAN: When I asked Jenn why she had turned to Tinder to try and find a romantic relationship, she gave me an interesting answer.
JENN: Um, I actually didn’t have Tinder to find a romantic interest. Um, I like broke up with my high school boyfriend my freshman year and I just downloaded Tinder like to have fun and like chill or whatever. So I wasn’t like, my bio is like literally if he’s from ]Tinder, it’s not that serious. It’s like I was not expecting to find like a boyfriend on Tinder.
MEGAN: So Jenn wasn’t on the app to form a serious relationship, but she ended up finding one anyways. They met through this technology. What would she think would have happened if they met in person?
JENN: Um, I think we probably would have like honestly like liked each other more at the beginning because like it’s hard like I’m in like a very like vibe oriented person. So like the first few times we hung out it was like weird because like we only talked on the Internet so it was like, it’s like awkward to like find your Vibe, you know what I mean? Like when you like have that much communication that’s like not physical, it’s like kind of awkward to like meet for the first time.
MEGAN: How did you meet for the first time?
JENN: He came down like for a night like he drove from Penn State
MEGAN: Was it awkward.
JENN: Yeah, it was really awkward um we didn’t know what to do, like we watched a movie or whatever, but it was like weird for the first six hours that he was there and then like the next day it was fine because like we’d slept in the same bed. So it kind of had to be. But like, I dunno, it was like, it was just a super, like awkward.
MEGAN: The concept of the app itself is awkward. Meeting people through an online space and judging them on their 180 character bios and pictures that they provide themselves. Yet these apps are written very popular throughout all ages. Why have they remained this popular?
JENN: I think it’s like an easy way to like meet people, like the pressure’s kind of off, but um, because it’s like easy. It’s as easy as like downloading something, uploading pictures and like you can be anyone you want on the Internet too. So it’s like the pressure to be like, like the first date pressures, like not there because you’re just swiping right on people. So it’s like you just talk and if you don’t like them, just unmatch them, it doesn’t matter, you know like commitment.
MEGAN: Yeah. What do you think these apps have to offer that you find beneficial?
JENN: Um, I think it’s like easy to meet people. Um, I don’t think they’re that beneficial for finding like actual connections. But like if you’re just trying to like, find somebody to hang out with are like chill with, it’s like a good way to do that if especially if you’re like an introverted person.
MEGAN: This app seemed to work pretty well with Jenn’s relationship. But I wondered if she had any bad experiences previously with it.
JENN: Again, like you can be anyone you want on the Internet, so like if your vibe is like not what you’re putting out on Tinder or whatever, like there’s no way for that person to know that and then if they get deeply invested in you, like over the Internet it’s like it’s like harder to like turn it down a person, you know what I mean? So it’s like you don’t actually like get to know the person like, and their vibe like face to face. You kind of have to guess what it is.
MEGAN: Yeah. Have you had any bad experiences through tinder?
JENN: Tinder is um, am I allowed to curse?
MEGAN: Yeah.
JENN: Tinder was a shit show for me. [laughter] I don’t know. I got like disrespect a few times and then I talked to before I started dating my boyfriend I talked to um, a couple of kids that go here and like hanging out with them was just weird because like I just like, like I said, I’m like a very vibe oriented person.
MEGAN: Yeah.
JENN: So I don’t know, it’s just awkward to like meet someone online and you like are like flirting or whatever and then you get in person with them and they’re like the most awkward person in real life. Also, people get like really attached to people on Tinder. Like I know like if I had I matched a guy and he would message me and I wouldn’t message them back like most guys would call it or something because like I guess that’s what they do to be Happy. I guess
MEGAN: I asked Jen how she portrayed herself online versus real life to see if she did it any differently or if she noticed something different when creating her tinder bio.
JENN: I don’t know. I don’t think it’s that different. I mean I’m definitely like a very emotionally guarded person so I feel like I’m like very shy at first and I’m a lot like funnier on the Internet like off the bat. So it’s like it’s kind of better for me to like meet people on the Internet because then like it’s like less of like pressure, like put this light guard up so it’s like kinda chiller
MEGAN: Meeting someone online tends to portray a certain stigma and I wondered what were the reactions that Jenn typically got when she told people how her and her boyfriend met.
JENN: Well, we don’t tell like his parents or anything. Like I don’t tell my parents they think we met through mutual friends, but like we tell people our age. People just think it’s funny, kind of wild, which was.
MEGAN: Why don’t you tell your parents?
JENN: Can you imagine telling like a 60-year-old woman that. [laughter] “Hi, I met him on Tinder” and then you have to like explain what Tinder is and then because you can’t even say it’s a dating app like people just go in there to hook up and like that’s Michael and I were both doing when we had Tinder. So it’s like weird to have to like tell somebody that’s like because they don’t get it. It’s like a generational thing.
MEGAN: I asked Jenn whether she thought technology was detrimental to society or bettering society.
JENN: I mean I think it goes both ways. I think like it could help or it can hurt because like I said, like for like a shy person, meeting people on the Internet is probably better because you can open up to them or like with like without the pressure but also like you can be like fake on the internet and nobody’s really ever going to know until you like meet, if you ever meet.
MEGAN: Yeah.
JENN: You can have Internet friends you never meet and then you never know if they’re like horrible people
MEGAN: And after talking with Jen about tinder and her boyfriend, I got inspired. I downloaded Tinder, matched with half of the guys I went to high school with, matched with the other half of the guys that went to this school who I don’t think I’ll ever be able to face ever. And then proceeded to delete the app after four days. Maybe I should just stick to meeting people in person, but don’t get me wrong. Tinder was quite the experience
I said this segment was about meeting people and it is, it’s about meeting your best friends, meeting their significant others, and leading them through this technology that we didn’t have before, but also meeting them in person. So here’s what the relationships that change our daily lives.
[transition music]
BRIANNA: [with a brief hint of sarcasm] Hi, I’m Brianna, a twenty-year-old college student who definitely knows a lot about social media. Or, at least that’s what everyone assumes. And they’re right, to a degree. I’ve fallen off the Facebook bandwagon, Twitter actually vexes me to no end, and LinkedIn sends me emails I never intend to open. Of course, I do use Snapchat, Instagram, and Tumblr, you know, what the hip kids are using these days.
The main point I’m getting at is: I like to interact, and the internet allows me to talk with my friends and family when they’re near, far, or any place in between. But I’m not as tech-savvy as most people, older generations especially, might think of someone from my generation. I do partake in the old-fashioned interaction of talking face to face, I’m not a total recluse from modern day society. . .yet. I love going out with friends, talking to new people, and generally frolicking in the sun. But nothing beats curling up in my bed, watching YouTube, all while the world rests solely in the palm of my head in a little metal rectangle.
So, I have a foot in both worlds, I suppose. But that’s true for a lot of people these days, no one is solely dependent on one form. Which is really interesting to me, I was born into a generation where technology started to bloom when we were young and develop throughout our lives, we grew up on landlines only for them to become smartphones.
Even my mom and dad aren’t solely dependent on parchment paper and quills. Just a joke, but believe it or not my mom was the one who threw out our landline when it got too much of a hassle with telemarketers calling day and night. I remember her looking at me as she unplugged it from the wall and saying something along the lines of Why do I need this useless thing if I have a cell phone that people can call me on?
It seems now like everything has changed, even from things like paperback books to tablets, or road atlases to GPS. I remember sitting in the back seat, my brother to my left, as we drove to Georgia on vacation. My mom was holding the atlas and I thought, what is that? Now, my mom simply puts her phone on the dash and calls up Google Maps to get where we need to go.
Interactions between friends versus family, the age-old topic of the cafeteria table. Everyone’s parents are different, some kids have parents who let them run off the rails, others have parents who wash their mouths out with soap if they so much as hear them say a curse word. And if you were smart, you would make sure your parents and your friends never interacted for fear of your friends ratting you out for your different behavior around them. Thus, the Venn diagram of early childhood interaction was born, well, in my head it was born.
Parents and family on one side, friends on the other, only the slightest overlap in both saved for sleepovers and birthday parties. Order and clarity, and you get to keep cursing behind your parents’ backs. Which I didn’t but the thought is still there, they might see the hooligan I used to be.
My point is, we interact very differently with these two different sides of our lives and technology serves this recognized need to keep the two separate (for most people, shout out to the kids that had parents who let their mouths run wild). I myself, as I said before, have a different relationship with my friends and family over social media. Facebook, the holy land of family news, drama, and mayhem, is where I mainly do my interactions with family instead of friends. And I have to be careful of what I post because my inbox might get flooded with aunts, uncles, and cousins asking me about it.
For example, I have a running joke going on with my friends, a completely harmless thing that we all laugh about, about one of my friends being very attractive. And, of course, going against all instinct I made a short and to the point Facebook status update to make them laugh that said, “[My friend] is a snack. That’s just a fact.” This didn’t seem like much until my uncle, who uses Facebook avidly, reacted to the post and then proceeded to text me and ask, “Cupid stick you with an arrow to the heart.” I was mortified and showed the friend I had posted about and he laughed. “What did you expect?” he said. And he was right, what was I thinking, posting something like that? The real kicker is that my uncle didn’t believe me and asked who this boy “I wanted to snack on was” which only added onto my horror. I said he was just a friend and it was an inside joke.
I stepped into unknown territory of the Venn diagram and was mortified by the reaction. But this shows the different relationships I have with these people. I joke about attractiveness and quote-unquote inappropriate humor with friends and stay off Facebook so I avoid talking to family about weird things. I also use very different styles of speaking, like using phrases like ‘snack’ with my friends, while being more formal with family members.
Though, with face to face interaction, my interactions with my friends and my mother are very similar because she likes my humor, even though sometimes she is disappointed. Just recently my humor around her got crasser, finally, the curse word gods have descended on me and made me into a cursing monster. She bemoans it but it makes her laugh so why would I stop? Also, I’m twenty now, she can’t control me anymore.
Which is interesting in comparison to how I interact with my dad, you see they divorced when I was in high school. And they didn’t tell me it was official until a few months afterwards when I asked my mother and she responded nonchalantly that I was out of the loop. The point is, they split, and so did my social world with them.
Around my mom, I’m crasser, I make inappropriate jokes but around my dad I keep that under wraps, I keep my mouth shut so he won’t be disappointed in me. I know he probably wouldn’t care, and if I told him this he would say, “no, just be yourself, I could never be disappointed in you.” but I’ve seen older adults give me dirty looks when I cuss around them. Perhaps some of you have experienced the same thing, if you have, man, it sucks, right?
So, imagine, a new Venn diagram, only this one has three circles: friends, mother, and father. See social interaction is so complex I have to use three circles instead of the default two! Nevertheless, this exemplifies the way in which some people may interact with those around them.
Now the way I interact with these two sides of my family over social media is simpler than all of this, they use Facebook to speak. My mother uses it to talk to her friends and my father barely goes on it. Thus, I never go on it unless I need to send a happy birthday wish or get rid of that annoying little red notification button.
[Transition music]
BRIANNA: And I find this different use in technology between generations fascinating. So, to talk more about this topic, I talked to Dr. Apryl Williams, a sociology professor at Susquehanna University, whose focus is in social media use.
DR. WILLIAMS: So actually I did my master’s thesis on social media, so specifically Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram and one of the things that I found was almost exactly what I’m saying and this was a few years back, but essentially that people use certain platforms for different audiences, so especially younger people will tend to use Instagram for their friends and they feel like they can be less filtered on Instagram. Whereas on Twitter it’s sort of a more professional atmosphere depending on who you are. Of course, a because there are also some people who use twitter sort of as really unfiltered and they can get really political and say whatever they want. Whereas on Facebook you typically have more of family members, so you’re going to be less unfiltered on Facebook. Then you would be on Instagram or Twitter where your grandma and your mom aren’t seeing.
BRIANNA: There’s like a, there was a shift in technology mainly I think when I was a kid I grew up with like landlines and stuff. But as soon as I hit middle school it was like get a flip phone, get a slide phone or something. So do you feel like that’s part of what had happened? Like there was a boom?
DR. WILLIAMS: So there definitely was a boom in selfies. Right? So when Apple invented the front facing camera, that definitely sort of like propelled the explosion of selfies and taking pictures and made it way easier to share them because you used to have to like scan your pictures or upload them digitally from your phone and then put them on your myspace page or whatever.
BRIANNA: [Laughs]
DR. WILLIAMS: But with the front facing phone, Apple made it sort of two steps, right? You take the picture and then you upload it. So that definitely was a significant feature, sort of a significant turning point. But we were sort of already headed in that trajectory because like I said, people were already posting sort of like blogs or image blogs. But the production of the front facing phone definitely made it easier.
BRIANNA: There’s like this, not older generations, but people who don’t see the need in it as we talked about before, they see a sort of delinquency in it. Like they were like, oh, young kids always on their phones. So they don’t. They go outside.
DR. WILLIAMS: Yeah, and I think when they say that they don’t realize that when people are always on their phones it means that they’re actually pretty heavily embedded in their communities. I mean they could be playing a game or something like that that’s like pretty solitary, but for the most part, when you’re engaging in social media, you’re being social, right? Even if older people or people, in general, don’t understand sort of the way that works for young people. Being social is a critical part of identity development and so it’s sort of just part of the natural life process.
BRIANNA: I find that really interesting how the word social has changed because it used to mean go outside play with your friends from down the lane, but now it’s get on your phone and see if you can talk to your friend that’s like maybe half a half a country away from you and then you can still have those relationships and stuff. I find that like really interesting.
DR. WILLIAMS: Yeah, I think it’s really cool and definitely an advantage of modern technology.
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VICTORIA: Thank you for listening to this episode of Me/Us/U. We hope you enjoyed it. The intro and transition music is Soft Driver by Podington Bear. The background music is Night Owl by Broke for Free. You can find both of these songs at Freemusicarchive.org, so go give them a listen.
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