Wendy's Digital (IL)Literate Bio

I can remember when my mom brought home our first computer. I was in either the first or second grade, (early 90s) and her boss gave her his old computer. I remember the computer seeming so big and fancy, yet I look back at it now and it was really small and insignificant in comparison to today’s technology.

My mom is the one who taught me to use the computer. She taught me to type and how to use the mouse for different things, specifically how to draw in the paint program. Then, when I was in the fourth grade I received my first laptop for Christmas. It was a refurbished Dell and I was so excited. The computer did not do much except allow me to play games, but it still seemed so advanced in comparison to our old computer.

About a year later we finally got a new desktop and dial-up internet. This was the year that I would first come into contact with IMing and Chat Rooms. A friend of mine had internet for a while and she came over to show me how to use AOL instant messaging and chat rooms. I remember thinking it was so cool how we could make up our names and ages and basically design a completely fictitious character and act like them in the chat room, and other people would believe that person really existed. We would have slumber parties and sit around decided what new character we would make up for our next “chat.” The last time I went into a chat room, however was only a few months after my first experience with them. My friend who had taught me how to use chat rooms decided that she wanted to talk to a guy we met on the phone. She gave him the number to my house and we talked to him over the phone for an hour or so that night. However, he then began to call at 2am in the morning non-stop until we answered and started saying perverted things to us. With the two of us being around the age of 11, we were completely disgusted and when we told my mother what happened she had to block his number. That was the last time I went into a chat room and my first learning experience when it comes to being careful what you say and who you talk to over the internet.

After this traumatizing experience I stayed away from a lot of internet areas. I IMed people, but only those I knew. Also, I am from a small town in Ohio where technology was, and still is not, a major focus of the area. The focus was more on sports, farming and the outdoors. No one was online during the daytime; it was only after their curfew that people would go on to IM each other. This is why I did not have my first experience with social networks until I moved to Florida about 4 years ago. No one could believe that I did not have a Myspace and my friends created one for me. The same happened when I got into college and my new friends wanted me to make a Facebook.

My experience with these have been okay, however, when I analyze the use of these social networks, I can see how they can easily harm someone emotionally. In my experience, there is so much pressure involved with having a Facebook page. Your profile picture must make you look “cute,” you have to have a large number of friends, even if you barely know the majority of your friend list, how many posts you receive on your wall on your birthday is an indicator of how “popular” you are. It is very much like a virtual high school.

Facebook has also become a way of publicly humiliating someone. I recently visited some friends in Ohio and one of my friends was in a fight with a girl she was friends with on Facebook. We were out having a good time until her phone started beeping to tell her she had a Facebook post. It consisted of this girl calling her names and so many people commented on it including a girl who my friend’s boyfriend cheated on her with. I think that today’s social networking, as far as Myspace and Facebook, has been just a new way of making girls feel insecure and lower their self esteem. I do not have much experience with blogging and that may be a better way of expressing yourself but I do not think that Myspace or Facebook are good outlets for expressing yourself.

I am not very digital literate. I have only recently been introduced to social networking and I have very little experience with blogging or Twitter. I think being digitally literate means knowing how to use all of these tools to effectively express yourself, as well as keep yourself safe from people you do not know. I am not quite versed in these aspects of the digital world so I do not see myself as digitally literate.