I found the “Living and Learning with New Media” paper really interesting because of how it attempts to connect literacy with media specifically to our age group. While I was aware that this article was about my generation, it didn’t really register for me until I read the few sentences about the “Harry Potter fandom,” at which point the realization that this article was trying to talk about my age group suddenly hit me. I had to go back and reread it so I could see if their findings related to any of my experiences with “new media”. At the time of this article’s publication, I was a sophomore in high school. I felt that their findings correlated strongly with what I encountered with new media in high school, ranging from parental restrictions on internet activities pertaining to social media to attempting to conceal my internet footprint from my parents to trying to always be online to talk to my friends. The article draws a parallel to my experiences with new media as far back as middle school when I had my Neopets account and made my first email account (the password to which I promptly forgot).

However, my new media practices now feel vastly different from my practices in high school. While this could just be a result of certain technologies becoming obsolete (MySpace), I think that it might also have to do with getting used to the technology available to me. I find this to be most prevalent in my usage of social media. In high school, I was on Facebook 24/7. Now, I’ll go weeks without checking Facebook and not feel some sort of obligation to see what my friends are up to. The same applies to Tumblr; at the end of high school, Tumblr was this fun website on which you could share ideas, drawings, music, etc. Now I don’t even remember the password for my Tumblr account and am far too lazy to reset it. Maybe my initial fervor was because using a website like Facebook or Tumblr was so unique and gave me so much access to the people around me, but now it has become boring and old. I’ve begun to notice that new technology or media will make me scoff. For example, I remember thinking Twitter was one of the most pointless social media sites, and I was convinced all the hype over it wouldn’t last for more than a month or two. Even though I was nowhere close with my prediction of Twitter’s success, I still find it to be a really pointless concept. This relates to other new technology like Tinder, Snapchat, etc. Maybe this is a result of me growing old and becoming more like my parents who find Facebook useless. I feel like I am using more new media than ever before, but I feel like there’s a certain point past which I just don’t seem to jump on the bandwagon with everyone else.

As the first generation that is growing up with this sort of technology around us, do you think we will evolve as technology does? Or will we be stuck in a certain time period like some of our parents and grandparents and distrust or be extremely cautious about any new forms of technology because it differs too greatly from what we are accustomed to?