Many of the students in our study were members of families that were in constant transit. Consequently, social media was an effective way to keep in touch with distant friends and family. For instance, Marcus used social media to keep up with friends that he left behind in his family’s move to an Austin suburb. Michelle used social media to keep up with her family that lived outside the Austin metro area, including her mother, who was divorced from her father. Inara and Carlos used Facebook to stay connected to family members who lived in Mexico.
About 11 percent of the Freeway student population was English language learners, many of them from immigrant households. For these and other students from immigrant families, social media was a way to stay connected to faraway relatives. Some of the students had vague memories of life in Mexico, for example, and social media allowed them to maintain important familial connections through the sharing of pictures and updates posted on Facebook. One of the benefits of social media is that “out of sight” no longer has to mean “out of mind” due to the ambient awareness aspects of social media.39 In situations like these, Freeway students also served as brokers who helped their parents and guardians navigate the functions of networked technologies to stay connected to family in distant places.
It is common for children to take on a lead role when it comes to the use of new technologies in the home. Researchers have long referred to children as the “technological gurus” in the home. However, children in immigrant households may be called on to display those skills for more family-critical purposes. Latino teens are much more likely than their elders to use the Internet, smartphones, and social media.40 As a result, children in immigrant households emerge as prime candidates for technology-driven forms of engagement with the outside world. For example, their tech expertise can help Spanish-speaking parents navigate English-only online documents or searches for work and social services.41 Also, their tech expertise often compels them to serve as the primary bridge in the efforts of teachers to communicate with parents about their academic progress. In other words, children who broker in the context of immigrant families are doing more than playing the role of the typical household tech guru. They are also functioning as intermediaries between their (Spanish language dominant) household and (English language dominant) local institutions.
There is often substantial diversity—social, educational, language—within immigrant households. For example, not all children experience their family’s immigrant status the same way. Moreover, not all children develop the same kinds of brokering skills or even the need to take on the brokering role. Older siblings are more likely than younger siblings to assist the family in navigating its relationship with outside social institutions, social media, and correspondence with distant relatives.42 Many of the students in our study were older teens. Moreover, their exposure to teen and digital media culture meant that they were more likely than their younger siblings to take on the role of brokering in the household.
Our field observations consistently support the data that suggest that black and Latino youths are active in digital media culture. If we had conducted this study in, say 2000, in a school composed of similar students and households, most of them would not have been regular users of the Internet. Despite the many labels—“disadvantaged,” “at risk,” “low performers,” and “English language learners”—Freeway students maintained a robust and diverse repertoire of social, digital, and mobile media activities that illuminate the shifting contours of the digital divide. Further, our research suggests that teens from resource-constrained environments navigate a world in which access to hardware (a computer or smartphone) has improved, but access to the forms of capital (social and cultural) that support more diverse and sustained forms of participation in the digital world remains elusive. Moreover, even as access to technology continues to expand and new modes of participation emerge to shape digital media culture, significant social and economic inequalities persist.
Black, Latino, and lower income teens use social media more than their white or affluent counterparts. On any given day: they spend more time on social media and also post more content on social media.43 These trends point to a series of enigmas that researchers, including our team, have not fully explored. What are the unintended consequences of black and Latinos teens’ valiant efforts to bridge the digital divide? More specifically, what are the perils and the possibilities associated with their greater participation in a digital world that Facebook once described as “more open and more connected?”
2
The Mobile Paradox
Understanding the Mobile Lives of Latino and Black Youth
S. Craig Watkins
Our very first round of interviews with Freeway students occurred one afternoon shortly after they had been released from school. It was a focus group with about seven students from various backgrounds. Amina was a senior whose family had arrived in Austin via New York and before that via Ethiopia. She was bright and articulate, and had a serious side that reflected the serious circumstances that characterized her turbulent home life. Sergio joined us too. Early in our fieldwork we learned that he was generally ambivalent about school but incredibly engaged, active, and driven in the after-school world Freeway offered.
Selena also attended the session. Throughout the school year Selena swayed back and forth, unsure whether she should continue at Freeway and graduate. Many of her friends had dropped out of school, and she had skipped so many classes that she spent as much time in credit recovery as she did in her regular classes. Kyle, always full of energy, joined us. He enjoyed rapping, skateboarding, and playing video games even though his personal and familial life was in serious flux. After losing practically everything in a devastating fire, Kyle, along with his mother and younger sibling, had recently moved in with relatives. Like the majority of students at Freeway, Kyle had no intentions of going to college. Each Friday his father picked him up after school and the two repaired air conditioners together, the trade Kyle decided to pursue after high school.
Cassandra was present and in her typical pleasant mood. But beneath her amiable exterior was grave concern about the changes that were remaking life at home. Her mother and father had recently lost their jobs, creating a great deal of financial strain on the family. Antonio, Jasmine, and Jada also participated in the group discussion. During part of the school year, Jasmine lived with her grandparents, a loving couple who worked hard to steady her life as she navigated the ups and downs of high school. Jada showed up despite a busy schedule. In addition to working practically every day after school, she also held a spot on the school’s dance squad and was a member of the business council. Her parents and siblings had their own phones and computers, making them one of the most tech rich families in our study.
We opened with an icebreaker, a get-to-know-you session that was loosely structured rather than rigidly scripted. To get things started we distributed construction paper, colored pencils, crayons, markers, and provided these simple instructions.
“What we want you to do is draw whatever technology you use the most, right now.” Someone blurted out, “Does it have to be electrical?”
“No, your favorite, or what you use the most, right now,” a member of our team replied.
Amid the thinking, daydreaming, and drawing one student jokingly suggested a Betamax, which provoked a friendly response from another student, “You took my idea.”
As the pictures began to come into form, a clear pattern emerged: most students elected to draw a mobile device.
Jada drew her phone. “I chose my phone because I listen to all my music on there, I get on the Internet, download apps, do everything with my phone.” She had owned several phones throughout her teen years, but she described her current phone, an Android, as “the highest technology I’ve owned.” When asked to describe her phone in three words, she chose “awesome,”
