For this project, I decided to interview a friend of mine from elementary school. For this project, I will be referring to this friend as Lily. Lily is a senior in high school and at the moment is enrolled in PSEO classes. Lily explained to me how their relationship with technology has fluctuated greatly throughout her time in highschool. Since middle school Lily has struggled with substance abuse issues and she is now over a year sober and attending a school for other sober students.
One thing that I have learned about Lily is that they are quite good at the “social media shut-down”. This is a skill that many teenagers do not possess, the emotional security it takes to remove oneself from a digital environment. One aspect of social media that they struggle with is how easy it is to see how people are doing without having a conversation with them. Lily reminded me this ability is new, this is not how communication worked until about twenty years ago. Since then there has been a shift in perspective of what should be shared and what probably should not escape your head. Lily shared that as it becomes more complicated what is appropriate to share, it also becomes difficult to avoid certain posts.
According to Lily, they do not have much of a creative outlet digitally. Instead, they prefer to create Tik Tok content to share with a limited number of close friends. This can be problematic due to the sharing of information, but instead Lily emphasized how much the TikTok algorithm is influenced by the content that you are sharing or interacting with. While she interacted more with her private account than her public account, Lily noticed that the content she was seeing on the private account was so much different than that on her public account.
Since they posted very specific content on the private account, the algorithm used this to filter the content they saw. While this method is simply to gain more views and be more profitable, it directly puts teenagers at risk when they are experiencing a mental health crisis. Although feeling as though you aren’t alone can be helpful, being flooded by thousands of others who have similar destructive thoughts that they experience.
To counteract this aspect of the algorithm it can prove helpful to look through videos that are less saturated with harmful content. Sometimes scrolling through a positive hashtag and doing a positive deep dive can change the content that is being shown to you. Especially being a teenager in recovery, Lily sometimes gets overwhelmed by certain digital environments. There are many apps that Lily mentioned have been harmful in the past such as Instagram, Snapchat, Tumblr, and more recently TikTok. Instagram is the app that seemed to have the greatest impact on her ability to engage with social media platforms. Instagram is one of the platforms that I mentioned previously, applications through which others constantly update strangers on the status of their lives. Lily struggled with this the most when they were in a very sad mental state. They would use Instagram to maintain a certain level of connection to people who are no longer a part of Lily’s journey.
The most impressive piece of insight that Lily provided me was how letting go of control can release so much bliss along with it. She shared that during breaks from social media, she still experienced urges to go check up on those who have hurt her. Eventually, she realized that these urges were simply the outcome of her habits. Once Lily was able to break that habit of ineffective behaviors, they were able to release themselves from the trap that is grief.
Throughout my interview and analysis, I have been consistently impressed by the awareness that they hold of their digital presence. As a 17 year old it is incredibly difficult to be fully conscious of how their actions have consequences for other people as well. It was incredible to hear about the excitement Lily has to continue to strengthen her relationship with technology. I was also very amazed by the amount of discipline it takes to maintain the boundaries they have with technology.