According to Jenkins (2006), contemporary media is a participatory culture and he suggests that in the classroom, teachers must consider the interrelationship between communicative media and the culture/communities that emerge around it. It is clear from the rising rates of smartphone use at younger ages and the way YouTube and TikTok have become young people’s preferred platforms, that students are and will continue to participate in this culture. The culture itself is interesting as it demands engagement, is shaped by that engagement, and is newly synthesized, ultimately reflecting back something new yet familiar to its participants. Wesch hits on this effect in his lecture: users consume content and, in turn, put their own spin on content, creating viral memes that then impact the larger community outside of the space they were created. Soulja Boy is a perfect example of this. Although I had the pleasure of watching that phenomenon (check out the dance tutorial; I cannot stress enough how important it was that this dance was mastered by all attending house parties for an entire summer) take off, many people now know Soulja Boy from his presence in mainstream media without knowing the early impact of the internet in his rise to fame.

All this is to say, digital literacy is now just plain old literacy. Students are consuming and creating content, communicating their own stories and critiques of the world, and it would be a disservice to our students to fail to integrate Internet culture and acumen into their learning. The Tiktoks they are making and responding to will eventually make their way to Jimmy Fallen for godsakes.

Screenshot:  Addison Rae on Jimmy Fallon. NBCU (2021). https://www.buzzfeed.com/natashajokic1/addison-rae-jimmy-fallon-tiktok-backlash

Pretending that social media platforms are insignificant subcultures with no educational value undermines the learning necessary for students to become careful and critical agents in this participatory culture. Not only can we develop a pedagogical approach that adopts the same technological standards used everywhere else, but we can also promote a critical framework for these standards that better prepares students for their future beyond the classroom. The approach is likely two-fold: we encourage students to create using mediums they prefer, honing that skillset, and, by opening up the classroom to the world they are actually living/participating in, we might mitigate some of the risks that are often associated with unsupervised internet access/screentime.

Surely, we wouldn’t give a student a culturally significant novel to glean from but restrict their access to the theoretical and heuristic framework to analyze the text by, right? I feel it is not enough to just be hip, showing cool clips or allowing students to submit TikToks videos as assignments; we must also frame both the tools used and the content made in a critical way.

How do we do this? Strike that balance? I am not entirely sure, but I do know it lies in approach. Perhaps, an earlier introduction to critical theory might help support students to think about social media and the internet in a similar way that they might be expected to consider art, text, history, and philosophy. When students write, we want them to know how and why they are using certain devices, the impact of a device on the whole of their piece, and be able to recognize that device, or its variant, at work in other texts. This is part of literacy as a whole. Similarly, we might be able to identify the larger context and meaning of memes and viral trends, analyze them in relation to culture and society, and help students recognize the impact in other spaces. I don’t want students to read Shakespeare just to repeat plot points back to me. I want them to see the layers of cultural and textual meaning, make links to their own lives, be critical of the period it is written in, and be even more critical of what it tells us about our contemporary period. It seems to me, through his anthropological treatment of online spaces, Wesch is advocating for something similar. He challenges the audience to peel back the meme and meet the communities behind it. He invites us to actively participate in participation culture. I think this translates to the classroom too! Otherwise, we run the risk of widening that gap between the classroom and the “real world” students are part of or want to be part of. We don’t have to be in their heads, but we should be on the same planet at least.