Participatory Culture In Todays World

As we have all probably noticed, technology has changed significantly - and quickly - over the last decade or so. When I was in middle school, Snapchat and Instagram had just come out so we were all really just trying to figure it out. By the time I reached high school, I was starting to notice participatory culture (but had no idea there was a name for it). The first "trend" that made me notice it was the Mannequin Challenge in 2016. The video below is one that we did in my school, which was a very small town in the middle of nowhere it seemed, and yet we still participated in this trend that was done all over the world. I apologize in advance for the quality, it was 2016.

Michael Wesch discusses this phenomenon in his keynote lecture called, "An Anthropological Introduction to Youtube", where media is now reaching people all over the world in a multitude of different ways. The media is not only reaching all of these people, but people are participating in these trends. In the last couple years, TikTok has become the leading source of trends that are being replicated constantly on many different media platforms such as Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), and Facebook. Wesch discusses in his lecture that about a quarter of the videos on YouTube feature someone who is in the age range of 12-17 - and this lecture was done 16 years ago, so I can imagine that number is much larger now if we're looking at other platforms as well.

We've known for some time that students are absorbing this content that is being posted as well as participating in it. This can have a lot of benefits, as well as drawbacks in our current society. When we look at it from a teaching perspective, I think it's important to understand that technology is not goin away anytime soon and, in fact, it's only going to grow, so our responsibility is to learn to use it and also teach students how to use it in a safe way.

This era of participatory culture can be utilized in the classroom in a way that is more engaging to students, as this is often something they are doing on their own time that we can bring in and connect with them. The downside is that participatory culture can include dangerous activities, and students need to understand that while technology and trends can be fun, they have to still be aware of those dangerous activities.

On that topic, we discussed in class that "92% of US toddlers have a digital footprint and 32% of children have a digital footprint before they are even born". This is something that has been a topic of conversation a lot recently online due to the amount of family vloggers that we have been seeing. While these can be fun and interesting to watch, we have to remember that anyone can use the internet and have access to this content whenever they want. So while a lot of people watch this content because toddlers and cute and entertaining, other people may be watching for more malicious reasons. This topic is something that I think should be really prevalent in schools because students need to understand - even from a young age - that they should be aware and conscious of what they are posting online and who may have access to that.

Despite all the negatives, I do agree that this technology can be utilized in the classroom positively, so I want to ask anyone reading - have you benefitted from participatory culture in the classroom, and how?