Identity: Why Do Teens Seem Strange Online & Privacy: Why Do Youth Share So Publicly? (Chapter 1 & 2)
This article stuck out to meet because of the presence/concept of cultural & contextual collapse that happens in the digital age, as well as this idea of having too little/too much privacy in this age of social media. The article talks about how something the changing ways in which students communicate. When students are in person and are having a conversation, it is easy to show that whomever they are talking to are the intended audience. However, now with a social media presence/digital image, it is much harder to decipher who is suppose to be responding to and who is the intended audience. When a student posts/tweets/grams anything now, they need to begin considering who the message/picture is intended for but also what other constituencies are going to possible see it. If this is not taken into consideration, it is difficult and sometimes confusing for those who see something that may not be what they were expecting to see.
Using the example from the text, the young black man who was applying to South Central - LA discussed getting out of the gang environment that was so present in his current situation. But when the college admissions officers looked at his social media, many of the things they saw were gang related. Their thoughts were that this potential student had lied about not wanting to be involved in a gang, but an outside source had them consider the possibility that it was his tool of survival.
I think that social media is extremely important in this day and age. This is how all of our students communicate with each other, with companies, and with family members. As student affairs educators, we need to be abel to educate them on the proper use of social media and helping them craft a positive/professional digital image. This can happen through programming from an Office of Student Life, from a Career Center, or a collaborative effort between the two to help students market their experiences and show the digital world a good representation of themselves.
I also am interested in this public-by-default, private-by-effort mentality that students have now. They understand that what they post is now part of the public knowledge. The information only becomes private if they make an intentional effort to make them private. It is actually shocking to me working in Greek Life the number of events/violations that are caught because people post photos of them/tweet about them/snapchat them... Nothing is private once it has been put out there. However, many students with this mentality still have trouble discerning the context in which some people that are not intended to see certain posts/images still do see them. I think back to my undergraduate experience and some of the awful things that I posted in my social media, however, I think at some point I realized what my social media image was and what I wanted it to be so that I was seen in a positive light by future graduate schools/employers. I had decided at that point to be a public person and realized that anything that I would put out in social media needs to be examined and brushed with a fine-tooth comb to ensure that my digital image is not tarnished.
