Let me take you straight to the scene of this blog’s inception.
Picture this: my stepdaughter’s thirteenth birthday party. Four teenage girls. My lounge room adorned with pink and rose gold decorations. A table full of sweet treats and mocktails shaded by mini umbrellas. A backyard pool glistening in the mid-afternoon sun. A giant inflatable flamingo beckoning to be capsized…. but first…“let’s take a selfie!”
As a high school teacher of twelve years, I have spent a great deal of time observing my students obsessively documenting their faces with their phones. And checking their phones to see who likes the pictures of their faces. I have also spent a great deal of time asking my students to stop documenting their faces and to return to the task at hand. Now I’m not sure when or how, but at some point in time, this obscure teenage addiction has crept from my workplace into my home and was now hijacking my stepdaughter’s party.
I watched for 45 minutes as the girls pouted lips, poked tongues and offered peace-signs, each time checking the picture to gain a consensus of the photo’s success.
“Gross! I look constipated!”
“Move the camera up so you can’t see my double chins!”
“The lighting is way better in my room.”
“Ooh which filter is that? Post it post it!”
“OMG don’t post it!”
By the time the girls entered the pool, they had all agreed that they didn’t want to get their hair wet, and instead huddled around the camera on the pool step to make TikToks.
I’m not sure who was more disappointed, myself or the flamingo. With giggles all round, there was no doubt the girls were enjoying themselves, but I couldn’t help but draw parallels to my own childhood parties and feel uncomfortable. I pictured my thirteen year old self racing around the pool and bomb diving my friends without any regard for how I looked or how I might be perceived. Presumably because there was no risk of someone taking a photo of me and sharing it with the whole school!
The party was a virtual-reality reality-check that the online lives of our teenagers are worlds apart from our own off-line childhoods.
Australian adolescents spend a great deal of time online and are heavy adopters of social networking sites. 96 per cent of 14-17 year olds are using platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, and YouTube (Blomfield Neira & Barber 2014). Further to this, Kelly et al., (2018) found that girls are significantly more engaged with social media than boys, with almost 50% of teenage girls using social media for three hours or more each day.
These figures highlight the need for educators and parents to better understand the digital immersion of the teenage girls in our care, and to support their social media engagement in ways that facilitate their identity exploration and peer connectivity whilst minimising their exposure to risk.
“Her-selfie” seeks to examine the self behind the selfie and provide a positive space to reflect on our role in nurturing the social and emotional development of our girls through the complex and fast-evolving online world.
References:
Blomfield Neira, C., & Barber, B. (2014). Social networking site use: Linked to adolescents’ social self-concept, self-esteem, and depressed mood. Australian Journal of Psychology, 66(1), 56–64. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajpy.12034
Kelly, Y., Zilanawala, A., Booker, C., & Sacker, A. (2018). Social Media Use and Adolescent Mental Health: Findings From the UK Millennium Cohort Study. EClinicalMedicine, 6, 59–68. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eclinm.2018.12.005
Her-selfie 
This was such a relatable read, Michelle. I work with younger children so have not witnessed this in the workplace, but certainly have in the home with my own daughter. We have had many open and honest conversations over the years and I hope I can continue to support her well as she navigates her teen years in a world so different to my own.
From a user-experience point of view, your blog site is very pleasant on my screen. The layout, colour, ratio of text to image (along with the content) all worked together to create an easy and enjoyable reading experience. I look forward to learning from you as you explore the literature in this area.
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Such a pertinent post, Michelle! I have been in the classroom for just over a decade as well, and I sometimes look around in complete bewilderment at the way that day-to-day interactions have changed over that time, and how aspirations are so starkly different to my own at that age. I see the ways it plays out in the English classroom when students are writing poems about TikTok, and during a goal setting activity several wrote ‘famous on TikTok’. I see students using books in the library – to hold their phones while they record a TikTok! It does force me to check myself a little to consider whether I am preparing students to engage safely and positively in their world. I have heard students say the exact things that you have quoted your stepdaughter and her friends saying – and it makes me think too, about what is lost, and what is gained, and what childhood and teenage hood will look like in the future.
This is a really neat blog. Your colour scheme and layout drew me to the text and as I read, I was immersed. The interaction of the different elements throughout the post matched the concepts being explored. PS. I LOVE THE PICTURE OF THE SWAN.
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