I was born in 2004, I always thought that made me part of the first generation that grew up with the “modern” internet. Growing up I remember how fun it was to hangout at your friends house, go on his dad’s computer, and just do internet things. Playing flash games, figuring out how to download music, and especially watching any random video we saw on there. I remember seeing Numa Numa, Chocolate Rain, and especially Charlie Bit My Finger. Michael Wesch’s Anthropological Introduction to YouTube was a bit of an eye opener in that regard. I don’t think I saw a YouTube video until I was at least 6 years old, and wouldn’t have spent much time on the internet at all before I was 8. Yet I still knew all of those trends in videos, even though they were older. Also, I’m completely embarrassed to learn that Crank That (Soulja Boy) started as an internet trend, and wasn’t the same as just any other song. Yet, I still remember me and my brothers recreating videos like How to be Ninja just for the fun of it. Watching Michael Wesch’s video made me think about how, years after these videos came out, I still saw them just the same as other people would have when they had came out. Something about these early videos had a real staying power. Something that videos today don’t really seem to have.
Image Taken from Gulf News
If you look at YouTube today, as well as any social media platform, its nothing like it was in these early days. Today’s viral videos come from people playing games, doing reactions, or, in cases like Mr. Beast, spending and giving away insane amounts of money. Michael described early YouTube as “a way to share a piece of yourself with the world”. While it certainly still can be that, we see more and more people just gravitate towards things that they know will get views, get clicks, make money. Even the “vlog style” videos has became insane these days. Every “vlog” channel, who may have started out with videos about things like what they did that week or anything just as simple as that, eventually devolve into videos like “Eating at the worlds spiciest restaurant” or “buying our baby a $30,000 Gucci purse” when their channels become big enough. YouTube has became one of the worst places to show a bit of your authentic self, yet people still want an outlet, somewhere that they can do that. That place seems to have become places like TikTok and Instagram.
These platforms are also crammed with people making copied and unoriginal re-hashes of other peoples content just to “follow the trend” but here I also often see many different people posting original, more authentic feeling content than I ever do on YouTube.
However, those platforms are also strange as they let you consume this “content” at a much more rapid rate. On YouTube you’ll often watch videos 10 minutes or longer (which is already pretty short), but on Instagram videos barely last a minute before you scroll to the next one. This stream of content directly into your brains is a bit worrying, as its pretty darn addictive. Which brings into the real question: what does any of this have to do with us as teachers?
Image Taken from BlueMangoLLC
It seems kids are being given complete unrestricted access to the internet at younger and younger ages as time go by. I have a cousin who’s 2 years old, who can’t talk yet knows exactly how to get to videos of tractors on his mom’s phone. This, of course, means more and more younger and younger children are absorbed into the world of social media, making connections through the phone rather than face to face with other people. I’m sure there are many kids today that can name more Youtubers and Influencers than people they know in real life. Its sad, really. I think as teachers our job is to show students how a healthy relationship with the internet should work.
Putting down our phones in class is a great way to start. Not that a phone is inherently unhealthy in the classroom, but it serves to show kids how they have to balance their screen time with work, and socializing. At the same time, we have to think about how much physically doing classwork has changed. Writing on pen and paper is entirely different from typing, we need to make sure there is a balance there. Michael Welsch actually made an interesting video 16 years ago which he talks about in the Anthology of the internet video. It showed some interesting differences between written word and typing.
In the classroom today, we have to rethink schooling more than ever. In 10 years time the classroom will look a lot different than it does today, even more different than it did when we were in 1st grade. As teachers we need to be able to adapt to the changes, and recognize what we find important in the classroom today, and make sure that those aspects carry over through every change.
Wow, this post is like a blast from the past. You referenced a few videos that I very clearly remember–throw in some Salad Fingers, Charlie goes to Candy Mountain, and you’ve basically covered my youth. I have mixed feelings about children using technology and at what age I feel it is appropriate; yet, I’m also not a parent and am in no position to judge. Additionally, if this is the way of the future, do we not want our children to have a head start on the everchanging world of tech?
I already see such a difference in students’ abilities to spell without using a computer and spell check, and cursive writing has essentially become obsolete. It’s wild to think of what else may become obsolete in our lifetimes.
Whoa, so many good things you discussed. You made me think about how platforms like YouTube, which were originally intended to deliver authentic and meaningful content, transformed and used for people to make money or become famous instead. Another thing that caught my eye was your point on how we used to engage with 10-minute or longer videos, and now, we have platforms like TikTok with really short videos that take up lots of our time. Honestly, we still had this clear distinction between the duration of videos from YouTube and TikTok, but then YouTube made Shorts, and TikTok slowly extended the length of clips. We can see that in certain instances like this, we’ve moved away from the importance of just sharing and connecting.