The Digital Edge. S. Craig Watkins
do you want to break from Twitter?” a member of our research team asked.
“Because it’s annoying after a while. It stops me from doing other things,” Gabriella responded.
We are not convinced that Gabriella’s constant engagement with Twitter is attributable to a social-psychological disorder—Internet addiction. Rather, the likely unstructured leisure time induces her to use mobile media to occupy time and ease the annoyance of boredom.
The racial, ethnic, and class trends in media consumption noted above are not new. Historically, social and economic factors have influenced differences in youth media consumption. High levels of entertainment media consumption tend to correspond with lower economic status.34 Although mobile devices did not create the media consumption gaps reported above, the rising rates of mobile media ownership in black and Latino households might certainly be accelerating these trends.
The broad diffusion of handheld devices among young children and teens is certainly changing their media consumption behaviors, and the implications—health, educational, social—for youth in disadvantaged households are worth noting. Compared with older forms of screen-based media, such as television, video, console-based games, and computers, mobile devices introduce new dimensions to teen media consumption. First, mobile privatizes young people’s media consumption more than ever before, making it increasingly difficult for parents, teachers, and other adults to monitor. Second, and perhaps more important, is the ability to consume media on the go and across different settings. For a number of youth in our study, the consumption of media takes place early in the morning and late in the evening, in school and out of school—in other words, anytime and anywhere.35
However, the focus on screen time obscures other substantive issues. Rather than ask, how much media do young people consume?, the more relevant question is, what kinds of media are young people consuming? The latter question shifts the focus to quality, not quantity, and considers the different repertoires of media use. In today’s environment, media can be a diverse experience, one marked by production rather than consumption, participation rather than isolation, and skill building rather than time wasting. Even as studies document the rising rates of media consumption and screen time, it is important to acknowledge that not all screen time is equal.
The data and adoption trends discussed above confirm that mobile figures prominently in the lives of many black and Latino youth. Still, we know very little about how mobile media matter in their everyday lives. In the end, the more substantive issues related to mobile are less about devices and more about practices. That is, what are Latino and black youth doing with the mobile devices that they are adopting, and how, if at all, are mobile technologies transforming life, learning, and opportunity in the digital edge? The next three sections offer more texture and context to our mapping and understanding of the mobile lives of the students that we met at Freeway.
Mobile + Learning: The In-School Perils and Possibilities
Throughout the interviews, students consistently mentioned the use of mobile devices in the classroom despite the fact that school district policy prohibited such use. In most cases students described the use of mobile technologies for texting with friends, playing games, listening to music, or browsing social media like Instagram. In some cases, students received permission to listen to music as they completed homework assignments in the classroom.
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