Kayla and technological determinism

    I decided the perspective of technological determinism in the movie eighth grade watched in class. During the movie Kayla was almost living two lives, one through social media, and one in real life, one can make the argument that Kayla is this shy, quiet, awkward teenager because of her phone, because of the technology. Similarly, to Carr’s article mentioned in Baym’s chapter, he argued that society is stupid because of Google. However, Baym opposes this argument, she explains that this is an old way of thinking, and one should look at determinism in a critical manner to better understand a society, and I agree. I do not think the answer is as simple as Kayla is who she is because of her phone, as Baym explains, technology have certain characteristics that end up being transferred to its users. For example, the phone’s mobility characteristic is transferred onto Kayla, making her believe that she doesn’t need to physically connect to Aiden, since Aiden is available through the phone. To take this a step further, Kayla doesn’t need to kiss Aiden, because she can kiss hi­m through the phone in the comfort of her own bedroom. Baym also argues that due to technology’s compression of time and space, user can lose sense of their own sense of place, for example, when Kayla would spend the entire night on her phone scrolling through social media. She also lost sense of herself and her space when her dad walked in and she through her phone across the room, causing her screen to crack. Another good point by Baym that can help explain Kayla’s situation is as technology enters from the outside into society, one can argue that if user does not know how to use it, they can find themselves being used by it. The Know-how in technology is curtail when it comes to interacting with technology. I would then argue that, Kayla is a shy, quiet, awkward teenager not because of her phone, but maybe because she doesn’t know how to use her phone. 


What do you think? 


- Valerie Mettias

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