For many writers, the internet has created a culture of short attention spans, poor memories, loneliness, and disposable emotions. Critically discuss whether such changes in society are the product of the affordances of the internet or long term historical processes .

 

After some critical reading and analysis I believe that changes in society such as short attention spans ,poor memories ,loneliness and disposable emotions are not just affordances of the internet but of the long term historical process of media becoming more and more invasive in our lives .In my research for this essay I have critically read and analysed two pieces of text “Joshua Meyrowitz ,The Adultlike Child and the Childlike Adult :Socialization in an Electronic Age” and “Nancy Baym ,Socially Mediated Publicness An Introduction “ .I will be discussing both of these texts in this essay in relation to this essay topic .

 

In the last thirty years or so the once distinct lines between adulthood and childhood have been significantly blurred. Childhood was a time of innocence and isolation for children in the first half of the twentieth century. Topics like crime, sex, money, and death were hidden from children and the strict, age-grading system in school supported that .Adulthood was a time of responsibility ,constant work and had no room for “childish” things like fun .It was a time to be serious about pretty much everything .However ,now it seems as if the concepts of adulthood and childhood are constantly evolving and becoming more difficult to distinguish .One example of this is clothing .The lines between adult and child clothing has been practically erased with many adults wearing jeans ,dungarees and tops with cartoons on them and children are getting piercings and wearing makeup at younger ages .Another example is that general behaviour is more similar for example , adults playing videos games and having teddys . Also education was once segregated to childhood but now many adults attend courses in college and regularly have career changes .Children were once told fairy tales about storks when they asked about how they got here but now they are generally told at least some version of the truth by their parents .This is an example of how people raise their children is being effected by the blurred lines of childhood and adulthood .There is more democracy in the home as parents and children are getting closer to becoming equals .In this essay I will be discussing how media is the cause of all these things and not just the medium of the internet but media invented long before that .

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Childhood and adulthood are different in each culture and historical period. One of the huge elements of social status is access to social information. “Socialization can be thought of as a process of gradual exposure to social information. Children are slowly walked up the staircase of adult information “(Joshua Meyrowitz, The Adultlike Child and the Childlike Adult). Changes in media environments may affect the structure of the socialization process. The family home has traditionally been portrayed as a protective and nurturing environment, but it can also be seen as a restrictive “prison” as feminist writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman writes. Before, any information the child got was filtered through the parents which created this exciting experience of the outside visitor for the child, but that guest still had to be allowed by the parent. The television being brought into the home created many “uninvited guests” that the child could get unlimited information from without consent from a parent. Television was now speaking directly to the child. This progression of media created a huge shift in the amount of control a parent had over what their child knew. They could choose to not have a television set in their house, but they could not stop other kids from watching it and sharing what they saw with their child.

 

Access to a book and access to television are two very different things .You have to learn to read to access information in books which excludes young children from them .Print is the only place where adults can privately communicate with each other away from children .The varying complexity of print also allows for certain information to be kept from children according to their age .Watching television doesn’t require having to learn anything and doesn’t have the same ability to divide its audience into different age groups or keep certain information hidden like books .Meyrowitz  writes about how even though there are shows aimed at children there is no such thing as children’s television because once there is a television in the home the child has access to “adult” information .Unless you are watching your child 24/7 parents can not control this .Although young children may not fully understand adult programs its still accessible to them .In books and cartoons children are presented with idealized versions of the world but in television news and many programs shows young children images of adults who lie ,cheat ,drink ,murder and adults who are afraid or weak .Television allows children to be present in adult situations that they are isolated from in the real world. Parents now face the task of constantly monitoring what their child is watching. They are stuck between wanting their child to learn as much as possible and protecting them from knowing too much too young. An example of this is when reading a family of different age groups can all be sitting in the same room but divided into different

informational worlds but that isn’t possible with television .You can have multiple televisions in different rooms but then the family isn’t together .Television reveals a “backstage “ of adulthood to children showing two versions of adults ,what they’re like around other adults and what they’re like around kids .This is very damaging to the traditional adult role .It creates children who are more suspicious of they’re parents and stops them from believing everything their parents say to be the truth .

 

Various studies of childhood throughout history show many fluctuations in society’s attitude towards children. There was a major shift in how children were viewed in the 16th century, the same century where literacy and printing became more widespread. Philippe Aries wrote that “childhood simply didn’t exist before the 16th century “. Before the 16th century Children would have worked alongside adults, went to war, gambled etc. The few schools that did exist were not segregated into classrooms of people the same age. Children were often neglected and ignored by parents and sent to work as soon as possible. Children were seen as almost equals to adults which meant they were not given special treatment or attention.

 

At the beginning of the 16th century the concept of “childhood” began .Children were for the first time seen as innocent and in need of protection and constant care .Schools slowly evolved into the strict age grading system we know today .A child’s age became more important and determined what a child should know ,where they could go and what they could do .The social conception of children as a socially segregated class was because of ” innocence“ is directly linked to the lack of literacy and print, with it brings knowledge and access to the adult world .Gender ,class and religion also have a part to play in this as middle and upper class kids were “given a childhood” earlier then lower class ,illiterate  kids who had to continue to work .Boys were also thought of as children a lot sooner then girls because they had the right to an education while girls had stay at home and carry out domestic work .It took until the late 18th and 19th century for most children to get a childhood as that’s when education became accessible to everyone .Literacy is also responsible for making adults less childlike .Fairy tales and games became uninteresting to them .

 

Different media of communication foster different conceptions of childhood and adulthood. Television undermines the “staging of adulthood” that was fostered by print. You can no longer assume that a child does not know much if it can’t read. The old, strict distinctions in the roles of people of different ages can be maintained any longer. Clear differences in social status often rely on a lack of knowledge of each other, If the mystery and distance disappear, so do many formal behaviours .In the shared environment of television children and adults know a lot about one another’s behaviour and social knowledge, too much for them to play out the traditional roles of childhood and adulthood.

 

Now I will discuss socially mediated publicness and how it has affected society.

Social media blurs lines between private and public ,presence and absence ,control and freedom ,time and space , virtual and real .For example it is common to “leave someone on open” when talking to someone through the internet on social media but if someone spoke to you in real life and you just stood there ,didn’t reply and then just walked away that wouldn’t be socially acceptable behaviour .Social media complicate ,magnify and mirror aspects of our daily life’s which has negative and positive outcomes .Media and publicness have always been intertwined .Newspapers spread across geographical barriers allowing people to feel apart of larger communities ,example nations .Today with everyone having smartphones and an internet connection ,it creates an unprecedented level of widespread publicness which is creating a big shift to public life .People use the public qualities of social media to create safe spaces for themselves to freely express their opinions and identities .It doesn’t matter who you are or what your passions in life are ,with the internet and social media you can find people just like you to connect with .This is an absolute lifeline to many people who ,for example ,don’t have a family who accepts or understands them .Unfortunately there is a very dangerous side to this as hateful ,violent people can also find people just like them so they can think its acceptable to commit awful crimes .

 

Social mediated publicness questions our understanding of the relationship between public and private, audiences and publics. Social media heightens the potential for visibility and social engagement yet somehow also makes people feel alienated .Audiences used to be seen as more private and less important then publics which were seen as less emotional and biased .The boundaries between audiences and publics has been blurred as a result of the interactivity and direct attention social media demands .Example ,Prior to mass communication audiences were only visible to musicians ,dancers, performers when they were physically at concerts ,shows etc .Now through socially mediated publicness audiences and fans are much more visible to their idols .Nancy Baym writes about how it also creates the idea of “imagined audiences” where when someone is posting something they imagine the kinds of people and their reaction to what they are sharing instead of it being a face to face interaction .This leads to collapsed contexts and audiences .Navigation of different social and cultural worlds on one social page presents many challenges as most of us have very different relationships with our friends vs our family vs our boss .People with certain jobs have to self censor themselves because actions on social media could have a very negative effect on their jobs .Most people have to make a decision between censoring themselves and not really being who they want online to keep bosses and family happy or have separate accounts or stories for different social contexts .Newspaper obituaries and funerals makes death public and now things like Facebook memorial pages , where anyone can leave any comment are increasing how public death is and this raises the question of what is appropriate and what goes too far .

 

The difference between mass media and networked media is that networked media allows each individual to be the speaker ,to have people listening to them and to being the centre of a group of people attention .This creates new social dynamics where people have to figure out how to manage collapsed contexts ,invisible audiences and the blurring between private and public .Site policies such as requiring proof of person ,confirmation emails etc ,site analytics and the ability to report inappropriate content are affordances that shape socially mediated publics .Another important aspect can be who owns the site and what is done with your personal information. This may affect what a person may be comfortable sharing online. For example, Facebook and WhatsApp’s new update which uses its users bank information, this has annoyed many people and resulted in lots of people deleting these apps.

“offline contexts permeate online activities and online activities bleed endlessly back to reshape what happens offline “(Nancy Baym). Some examples of this are heteronormativity, sexism, and the patriarchal society we live in play out just the same on social media reinforcing rape culture. Issues of identity and gender in public online gaming culture have risen in the conflict between a dominant male public and a female counter public. An example of this is a rapist creature in a game portrayed in a humorous way and when women made complaints they were laughed at and ignored. As social media mirrors in real life society it can also magnify problem within it such as exclusion and oppression of marginalized voices. “Socially mediated publicness may be a source of support and empowerment while simultaneously posing conflict and risk “(Nancy Baym). Socially mediated publicness is constantly changing. Everyone is different in how they deal with this and many must deal with the consequences of their mistakes.

 

In conclusion ,the major emotional and behavioural changes that have occurred in society in the last few decades are a result of a variety of media .The first big change being in the 16th century when print became a widely used medium .The second big change being when the television became a medium used in the home and lastly when the internet and social media became part of our daily lives .With each of these steps came a shift in society ,each creating more change within us then the last .The internet and social media is the newest innovation in media that society is immersed in using .Therefore ,it makes sense that it has been the most influential form of media invented so far .It has resulted in a society that is highly connected and informed but has also resulted in extreme levels of depression and anxiety .However ,in writing this essay I have learned that the internet has not been the sole cause of these changes in society but another step in the constantly evolving world of media .

 

Bibliography

-Joshua Meyrowitz, The Adultlike Child and the Childlike Adult: Socialization in an Electronic Age, Daedalus, Vol113, No.3, Anticipations (Summer,1984), pg 19-48

-Nancy Baym, Socially Mediated Publicness an Introduction