I took this picture of my roommate in our apartment the other day. We were both sitting on our separate beds on our separate computers simultaneously doing really nothing. Even though we were three feet away in the same room, instead of talking to each other we were staring at the screens of our computers. My roommate’s computer screen also shows that she is on facebook chat. In this case, her use of the screen is helping her communicate easily with others. Chatting via facebook is one way that people find extremely necessary to communicate through and it would be impossible to do this without a screen, whether it be a computer screen, iPhone, Android, etc. This particular photo would be an example of how screens can sometimes create isolation. More often than not, when I see people walking around campus alone I see them on their cell phones or ipods. I am definitely a victim of that as well. Since we have the option to whip out our “screens” to interact, play a game, listen to music or browse the Web, why wouldn’t we? We are physically alone, but we are using our sources of technology to feel surrounded and interactive. In reality, I’m sure there have been times where I’ve been too glued to my phone and didn’t look up to say hello to someone. With that person criticize me for being isolate on my technology and ignoring them? Or will that person not have seen me either because they too were distracted by a certain screen.
This next picture is of my friend Gina intently watching a Justin Bieber music video. I took this picture a few months ago when my roommates and I had serious Bieber Fever. We would occasionally watch Justin Bieber’s music videos for entertainment. Although Gina could have easily been watching the screen alone in a corner, we were indeed surrounding the screen as a group so it was a somewhat inclusive activity rather than isolation. To go into deeper context, the use of the screen in this case was our way to get closer to a celebrity. Since we can’t be with them in person and have them perform for us, we turn to the use of screens to get a close enough feeling. The sad thing is we didn’t just watch one music video, the time flew as we watched about six Justin Bieber videos. So we watched for about a half hour. Maybe that’s pathetic, but it felt like we were just watching an episode of television, except we were able to control what we wanted to watch, and that’s the bottom line. The role of technology in pop culture today has a lot to do with control.
These two photos are a before and after picture of my friend when she died her hair. She made a split second decision while we were abroad last year to die her golden locks brown. In the first picture, she is using her computer screen to follow directions on how to use the hair dye. She used her computer screen as a reference point during the entire process. Although printed out directions also came with the dye, which is also visible in the picture, for some reason it seemed more trusted to look up how to do it online. This also says something about screens and pop culture: instead of trusting one source, we feel it necessary to use our technology to see what other people have to say. The next picture is when her hair is actually dyed. After using her computer screen to follow instructions, she is now using her screen to communicate to people “Hey! I just dyed my hair! Omg!” In one situation she has used the screen in both an informative and a communicative manner. Did this isolate her? No, not exactly. The screens helped her to feel more comfortable and confident during her hair dying process. It also enabled her to keep all of her friends and family in touch with what she was doing. Not only is a ‘status update’ wildly used in society today, but it was also helpful since we were in Europe and using our computers was the easiest way to communicate with people.
In this last picture, the screen is actually not visible. We were having a party in my apartment a few months ago and an important sports game was playing so everyone crowded around our awkwardly small TV screen. This was the only ‘screen’ in our apartment that was playing the game and therefore it became a priority for people to pay attention to it. Most of the people who were interested in watching the game stood around the television screen for the entire remainder of the game, not really aware of what was going on around them. It didn’t really bother other people at the party because it seemed like a normal occurrence
Screens are everywhere. In our day and age we cannot avoid them. Most of these photos, I took without the intention of pointing out that people pay far too much attention to the screens in our lives. That says something about how accustomed we are today to using these screens in every episode of our life. We look at a screen when we wake up. We pass several screens on our way to class. We use several screens while in class. And in this class, we assess the use of screens themselves. There is no way to avoid them. If someone asked you how much time on average do you spend in front of a screen, you might not give an accurate answer. We spend so much time in front of screens that we couldn’t even calculate it.
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