digital Literacy narrative
Connecting with people. To me, that’s what social media is about. It grants us the ability to reach out, follow, or friend-request people that we may not talk to or see on a regular basis. At least that is how I view it, and that’s how I viewed it the day I first came into contact with social media.
I remember it vividly. It was August 2009 and my best friend and I had just come home from her beach house at Long Beach Island. We had spent late nights on the beach and met some cute boys who happened to be her neighbors. Each night there we would manage to sneak out (which wasn’t difficult because her grandma was upstairs and severely hard of hearing), and once we were out we met the boys on the beach to hang-out until the wee hours of the morning. |
“C’mon let’s just go, my grandma will never wake up, what else do we have to do. It’s summer time!” I can hear my best friend Becca whispering to me as we lay in our beds at night. I thought, ok, what could it hurt. She’s right. We don’t have anything else to do, or school to wake up for in the morning. We did this every night until it was time to go back home to start the new school year. I remember feeling so sad to go home because that would mean our late night beach adventures would come to an end, and I wouldn’t see the new friends we made until next summer. Inevitably we began our drive home. Of course me being the boy crazy pre-teen that I was, I couldn’t stop pondering of ways to keep in contact with the boys we had met. Yeah, we all had these lame (at the time were super cool) flip phones that we got 200 something texts a month on, but that wouldn’t be enough.
Eventually we pulled up to Becca’s drive-way and dragged our sluggish bodies out of the car. Becca lives up the street from me, so I was in no hurry to lug my bag down the street to my house. I wanted to enjoy my last day of freedom, or summer with my bestfriend. We walked down to Becca’s basement to find her older sister Mel in the computer room.
“Hey Mel, what’s up?” Becca said.
“Nothing much, just rearranging my top 8. How was the beach?”
“Top 8? What’s that!" I peeped walking into the room.
“First of all, you two aren’t old enough to have one, but it’s something you can do on your MySpace profile. Kind of like your best friends, but they’re on your profile so everyone can see who they are.” Mel said.
“Oh! I’ve heard of it. Let’s create one so we can see if the neighbors have profiles!” I said like I had just struck gold.
“No, mom would not be happy if I made one, and neither would yours Lindsey.” Becca said.
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Me being the rebel I always have been I went ahead and created a site. I was so fascinated just by looking at Mel’s site. There seemed to be so much you could do on a MySpace site, but my priority at the time was to get in contact with the cute LBI boys. It seems so silly when I think about it now because I wanted to create the site for such a miniscule reason, but now it has opened up the doors for all of the future social media sites and my journey with digital literacy that my life is so revolved around today. |
Becca and I sat there as we watched Mel navigate her MySpace. There was so much more than just a profile with friends. It allowed users to change the background/theme of your site, add theme songs that friends could hear when they viewed the site, pictures, videos, comments, and statuses. It was like we had dove into a whole other digital world that our flip phones couldn’t bring us to.
“Does Mom even know you have one Mel?” Becca asked condescendingly already knowing her answer.
“Does Mom even know you have one Mel?” Becca asked condescendingly already knowing her answer.
Becca insisted that we just go back upstairs and watch some tv. I heard Mel come upstairs and leave to hangout with her friend down the block, so this was our opportunity. I eventually convinced Becca to create a site with me, (now looking back, wow was I such a good friend resulting to peer pressure), but it was too exciting not to. We basically just discovered a whole new world. We crept downstairs and quietly shut the computer room door. I created mine first, and I remember the excitement about personalizing it was overwhelming. Even though it was a site for connecting with others, it also allowed myself and others to express themselves. For example, it allowed me to set a theme song, have a personalized theme page, photos, and of course my top 8 besties. I eventually found the neighbors with the help of Becca after she decided to create a page. Myspace also had a tool that allowed us to message the boys and talk without having to worry about running out of messages for the month on our flip phones.
“Wow this is pretty cool!” Becca said playing around with all the different features.
“I know! Make sure I’m number one on your top eight” I said.
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I was not aware of it back then, but Myspace opened up my social media door, and it has not been shut since. Social media plays such a huge role in mine and many other’s lives on a day to day basis it is kind of crazy. It connects people that may have never been connected, keeps families and friends in touch, and has become a huge social norm in today’s society.
When I interviewed one of the boys we had met in LBI who I am still good friends with I asked him some questions about his experience with social media back then, and today. I asked "Can you tell me when you first started using social media, and how important to your everyday life was it?" He answered, "I started using social media in 6th grade with Myspace. It wasn't crucial to my day to day life, but it was something cool and new." I followed by asking "What kind of impact does social media have on your life today? And how often do you use it?" He answered, "Social media has a huge impact on my life today. I use it daily to keep in contact with friends, relatives, and people I haven't seen in a while or even years."
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Just like when I first created my Myspace account to keep in touch with him after the summer had ended, he and millions of other people use all kinds of social media daily to keep in contact with others. Social media has only developed and become more advanced, deepening its role in my digital literacy experience today. |