The Digital Edge. S. Craig Watkins
personal satisfaction they gained from building their own personal profiles. Through their engagement with MySpace their notion of what a computer could be used for was greatly expanded. Significantly greater numbers of black, Latino, and low-income teens began using the Internet to communicate, connect, and create content that resonated with their own sense of self and view of the world. In short, playing around with the design of a social media profile or cutting and pasting HTML code dramatically transformed their notion of computers, the Internet, and life in the digital age.
Importantly, black and Latino teens did not simply follow larger social media adoption trends; they became trendsetters. When much of the media was asking why teens were not using Twitter, the percentage of black and Latino teens adopting the platform was steadily rising.34 Between 2010 and 2012 the percentage of Americans using Twitter doubled. African Americans led the user growth of the micro blogging service among teens.35 Since at least 2009, African American teen Internet users have been more likely to use Twitter compared with their white counterparts.36
During our fieldwork at Freeway we came across repeated references to Twitter. The use of Twitter among Freeway students was primarily driven by peer and pop culture. They used Twitter to experiment with their social identities and new modes of creative expression. Some Freeway students posted song lyrics that reflected their mood. Some posted lines from poems that they or someone else wrote. Twitter was also a way for teens to share their daily thoughts, emotions, and experiences. When we asked Amina how she used Twitter, she noted that she “updates good news, bad news, what I’m doing, and a song lyric [that] gets in my head.” Gabriella stated that Twitter was entertaining, a likely reference to the fact that Twitter has also become a tool used by celebrities to broadcast their lives off-screen. Gabriella went so far as to acknowledge, “I’m addicted to Twitter. I can’t stop checking it.”
No population in the United States was more poised for the rise of mobile-based social media than young African Americans and Latinos. For a variety of social and economic reasons, practically all of their social media use was via a handheld device. Consequently, black and Latino teens became, in the words of Everett M. Rogers, “early adopters” of mobile social media in the United States.37 This development, of course, ran counter to the dominant digital divide narrative and long-standing early adopter trends in the tech consumer economy. African American teens were among the first group of American youth to adopt the mobile Internet at scale, a development that has made them extraordinarily influential in the evolution of social media. The rise of Black Twitter, a form of social media engagement that has become a pop culture and political force, is a notable illustration.38 Black Twitter has become a place to perform blackness, drive pop culture and social media trends, and mobilize political sensibilities that reflect a new era of black youth agency and cultural production.
Social Media and Family Life
Many of the students in our study were members of families that were in constant transit. Consequently, social media was an effective way to keep in touch with distant friends and family. For instance, Marcus used social media to keep up with friends that he left behind in his family’s move to an Austin suburb. Michelle used social media to keep up with her family that lived outside the Austin metro area, including her mother, who was divorced from her father. Inara and Carlos used Facebook to stay connected to family members who lived in Mexico.
About 11 percent of the Freeway student population was English language learners, many of them from immigrant households. For these and other students from immigrant families, social media was a way to stay connected to faraway relatives. Some of the students had vague memories of life in Mexico, for example, and social media allowed them to maintain important familial connections through the sharing of pictures and updates posted on Facebook. One of the benefits of social media is that “out of sight” no longer has to mean “out of mind” due to the ambient awareness aspects of social media.39 In situations like these, Freeway students also served as brokers who helped their parents and guardians navigate the functions of networked technologies to stay connected to family in distant places.
It is common for children to take on a lead role when it comes to the use of new technologies in the home. Researchers have long referred to children as the “technological gurus” in the home. However, children in immigrant households may be called on to display those skills for more family-critical purposes. Latino teens are much more likely than their elders to use the Internet, smartphones, and social media.40 As a result, children in immigrant households emerge as prime candidates for technology-driven forms of engagement with the outside world. For example, their tech expertise can help Spanish-speaking parents navigate English-only online documents or searches for work and social services.41 Also, their tech expertise often compels them to serve as the primary bridge in the efforts of teachers to communicate with parents about their academic progress. In other words, children who broker in the context of immigrant families are doing more than playing the role of the typical household tech guru. They are also functioning as intermediaries between their (Spanish language dominant) household and (English language dominant) local institutions.
There is often substantial diversity—social, educational, language—within immigrant households. For example, not all children experience their family’s immigrant status the same way. Moreover, not all children develop the same kinds of brokering skills or even the need to take on the brokering role. Older siblings are more likely than younger siblings to assist the family in navigating its relationship with outside social institutions, social media, and correspondence with distant relatives.42 Many of the students in our study were older teens. Moreover, their exposure to teen and digital media culture meant that they were more likely than their younger siblings to take on the role of brokering in the household.
Our field observations consistently support the data that suggest that black and Latino youths are active in digital media culture. If we had conducted this study in, say 2000, in a school composed of similar students and households, most of them would not have been regular users of the Internet. Despite the many labels—“disadvantaged,” “at risk,” “low performers,” and “English language learners”—Freeway students maintained a robust and diverse repertoire of social, digital, and mobile media activities that illuminate the shifting contours of the digital divide. Further, our research suggests that teens from resource-constrained environments navigate a world in which access to hardware (a computer or smartphone) has improved, but access to the forms of capital (social and cultural) that support more diverse and sustained forms of participation in the digital world remains elusive. Moreover, even as access to technology continues to expand and new modes of participation emerge to shape digital media culture, significant social and economic inequalities persist.
Black, Latino, and lower income teens use social media more than their white or affluent counterparts. On any given day: they spend more time on social media and also post more content on social media.43 These trends point to a series of enigmas that researchers, including our team, have not fully explored. What are the unintended consequences of black and Latinos teens’ valiant efforts to bridge the digital divide? More specifically, what are the perils and the possibilities associated with their greater participation in a digital world that Facebook once described as “more open and more connected?”
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The Mobile Paradox
Understanding the Mobile Lives of Latino and Black Youth
S. Craig Watkins
Our very first round of interviews with Freeway students occurred one afternoon shortly after they had been released from school. It was a focus group with about seven students from various backgrounds. Amina was a senior whose family had arrived in Austin via New York and before that via Ethiopia. She was bright and articulate, and had a serious side that reflected the serious circumstances that characterized her turbulent home life. Sergio joined us too. Early in our fieldwork we learned that he was generally ambivalent about school but incredibly engaged, active, and driven in the after-school world Freeway offered.
Selena also attended the session. Throughout the school year Selena swayed back and forth, unsure whether she should continue at Freeway and graduate. Many of her friends had dropped out of school, and she had skipped so many classes