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Friday, April 27, 2012

Hinckley Assembly Hall

11am to noon

Harnessing the Good in Social Media and Technology

There is much in social media that is good, but there are also traps and dangers. “The

computer, television, satellite, microchip, and even the telephone all can bless and

enhance our lives, or can make them miserable” (Elder M. Russell Ballard). How can

we be savvy and informed about these dangers? How do we distinguish between what’s

appropriate and what’s not? What can we do to protect ourselves and our family

member?

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The internet and media technology have completely transformed our lives and the way we

communicate with others. In our society, the media is the primary tool used to sell products,

solicit votes, as well as share ideas and values. As Elder Ballard said, it can bless and enhance

our lives, or can make them miserable. I would suggest that whether or not media is a blessing

or a curse in our lives in large part depends on our approach to it. Do we passively absorb the

influence of the media in our lives and allow it to have control of what we think and do, or are

we actively engaged in determining what influence the media will have and how we can harness

it for good.

I would like to first focus on the dangers of the passive approach to media – particularly the

dangers of media exposure for our daughters and sons.

Joan Jacobs Brumberg, a professor at Cornell University examined the diaries of young

American girls from the 1830s to the 1990s in her book The Body Project. Brumberg

documented changes over time in the way teen girls talked about themselves in their diaries.

During this period, the traditional emphasis on “good works” found in the diary discussions of

girls in the 1830s, was replaced over time with an increasing obsession with “good looks.”

According to Brumberg – in the 1800s, character was more important than beauty and girls wrote

in their diaries about developing self-control, giving service to others, and their belief in God. In

contrast today, girls fill their journals with body angst. Young girls are overly concerned with

the shape and appearance of their bodies as a primary expression of their individual identity.

Girls today make the body into an all-consuming project in ways young women in the past did

not.

The media and especially commercial ads play directly to the negative body image of young girls.

This marketing strategy results in enormous revenues for manufacturers of skin and hair products,

as well as diet foods. Brumberg further demonstrates that at the same time the body has become

an all-consuming project for young girls, the mother-daughter connection has also loosened.

Girls receive less mentoring and nurturing from mothers and other women role models today

relative to girls in the past. During the Victorian era, religious and community organizations

such as the Girls’ Friendly Societies sought to “uphold the Christian standard of honor and

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morality, and to encourage purity of life, dutifulness to parents, faithfulness to employers, and

thrift.” Girls were kept busy with various home, community and service projects under the

tutelage of adult female mentors. This provided a protective umbrella that helped girls develop a

sense of belonging. The attention the girls received from women leaders helped them feel

special, valued, and safe. The focus was on developing inner character and beauty, as opposed to

the focus today on their outward appearance.

Brumberg argues that young girls today are less protected and less nurtured than they were a

century ago. As the mother-daughter connection has loosened, doctors and marketers have taken

over important educational functions that were once the special domain of female relatives and

mentors. Movies and advertising have created a new, more exacting ideal of physical perfection,

at the same time that exposing the body has also become more fashionable. Today we live in a

consumer culture that seduces young women into thinking that the body and sexual expression

are their most important projects. In the 1800s, beauty was thought to derive primarily from

internal qualities such as moral character, spirituality, and health. However, in the first two

decades of the 20th

century, women began to think about beauty and the self in ways that were

more about the body, than about character and values.

More than any previous generation, girls today expect to look perfect – just like the models and

personalities they see every day in retouched, airbrushed, digitally enhanced photographs in

magazines, on television, on the internet, and in movies. This 24/7 media exposure produces

cultural pressures that leave girls anxious about the size and shape of their bodies, as well as

about specific body parts. Girls learn from a very early age that the power of their gender is tied

to what they look like – how “sexy” they are – rather than to character or achievement. Because

of the visual images they have absorbed since they were toddlers, they invariably want to be

thinner, have flawless skin, small hips, and perfect teeth.

Today popular culture and peer groups, rather than parents or other responsible adults, shape the

everyday lives of teenage girls. Today’s busy parents expect their equally busy children to be

autonomous, competent, and sophisticated by the time they are adolescents. According to

Brumberg, this pseudo-sophistication leads adults to abandon the traditional position of setting

limits and forming values. At the same time adults have backed off from traditional supervision

or guidance of adolescent girls, popular culture via the media has become permeated by sexual

imagery so much so that many young women regard their bodies and sexual allure as their

primary qualities.

The influence of media and technology can be equally dangerous for our sons. Although the

media does not sexualize their bodies in the same way it does young girls, boys can also become

entrapped -- increasingly without the mentorship of fathers or adult men in their lives.

Nationally, boys have higher suicide rates, are more likely to drop out of school, and less likely

to go to college relative to girls. For the first time in US history, sons will have less education

than their fathers. Boys develop cognitively later than girls, and increasingly, without strong

male role models, they are disengaging from school, and engaging instead with peer groups and

the media. In particular, boys are not developing reading skills that are critical to academic

success, instead they are developing their video game skills.

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Many young men today live on an extensive media diet of sex and violence. Brain research

indicates that both porn and video games send blood to the brain’s reward center. As the

complexity of video games has developed, video games have become more addictive as game

developers utilize tricks similar to those used by gambling casinos to entrap – such as

incremental rewards. When boys become addicted to video games or porn, they are unmotivated

to be productive in real life. They will play football online, but not in real life. Desensitization

to violence, hyper-masculinity, and aggressive behavior are all part of the cultural messages boys

absorb via the media and technology on a daily basis.

From TV to movies and video games, boys develop unhealthy and unrealistic expectations about

how women should look and be treated. Clearly, popular media is not the forum to teach young

people about how to develop, high-quality, mutually satisfying and emotionally supportive

romantic relationships. Without adult mentoring to help young people actively monitor,

contextualize, and deconstruct messages in the media, they will become trapped in a

technological strangle hold.

Elder Bednar, in a CES fireside address entitled, Things as They Really Are (Liahona, June 2010),

lamented that:

Sadly, some young men and young women in the church today . . . may waste countless

hours, postpone or forfeit vocational or academic achievement, and ultimately sacrifice

cherished human relationships because of mind- and spirit- numbing video and online

games.

So how do we actively approach these new technologies and take control?

For hundreds of years, the printed word has been the primary form of media communication in

our society – and literacy (the ability to read, understand, and communicate in print) has been

highly valued and taught in homes and schools. In just a few short years, society has transitioned

from the printed word being supreme to visual and digital media as the dominant form of

communication. But at the same time, there has not been a corresponding emphasis on media

literacy – that is reading and understanding the meaning of visual images.

Media literacy is the ability to sift through and critically analyze media messages. Media literacy

requires that we not be passive consumers of media and technology, but active, engaged, and

critical observers. It involves asking questions: Who is the message intended for? Who

produces the media and for what purpose? What are the underlying cultural messages being

transmitted? Media literacy starts with managing our media exposure by making choices that

reduce and monitor time spent with television, videos, electronic games, Facebook, and other

electronic media.

A key concept of media literacy is recognizing that all media is socially constructed and can

shape our view of reality. Audiences need to actively negotiate meaning in the media –

including its commercial implications, ideological and value messages, and its social and

political implications.

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Understanding that media is a social construct allows us to stand back and deconstruct media

forms to determine what is useful and what is harmful. For example there are at least three

different levels at which we can critically analyze media messages.

(Example of Clorox ad and Noxzema ad)

Level 1: is a basic description of what is in the ad or what the media is presenting

(seven boys with white socks, one has dingy grey socks – laughing and having fun)

[text reads: Guess Who Forgot the Clorox?; If you want your family to wear their whitest

whites . . . Don’t forget the Clorox bleach]

(girl with new clothes, shopping bags, larger than life tube of Noxema blemish cleanser)

[text reads: A blemish on your credit is something you can deal with. Prevent a high drama

skin situation. Noxema. Pretty. Smart.]

Level 2: what is the advertiser’s intention (what is the message the advertiser or media creator is

trying to convey?) – (encourage teen girls to buy and use Noxema blackhead cleanser to handle

acne)

Level 3: what is the underlying social or cultural message conveyed by the ad? (looks are most

important – having new cloths and great skin is more important than staying out of debt; need to

be thin, well dressed, clear skin to be pretty and that is smart).

Rather than passively absorbing media (and the underlying messages and values), we need to

actively deconstruct messages and determine what is behind the “reality” they attempt to convey.

When my children were younger, they attended a primary activity where they watched a video

produced by HBO & Consumer Reports about how commercials are made and the tactics used

by marketers to sell toys, food, etc. to children. After learning how commercials include props

and additional items not included with the original toy, how they splice film together to make it

look like you stay on the pogo stick for long durations, or fly the plane without it crashing, or

how they hand-pick each cornflake to put in the cereal bowl – my kids never looked at

commercials the same again. They would watch a commercial and say “that’s not real” rather

than saying “I want that.” They were developing media literacy.

Because our children are constantly bombarded by media messages –they need media literacy.

They need adult guidance and mentoring to sort through the maze and focus on what is healthy

and positive – versus what is destructive or harmful. Just as we emphasize reading and print

literacy at home, we need to be actively engaged in helping our children develop media literacy.

To do this, we can first set parameters around the quantity and quality of media we consume.

Second we can TALK with our children and promote media literacy. We can give them the tools

they need to deconstruct the media messages around them. Last, we can engage primarily in

media activities that build actual human relationships.

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Wade Jacobsen (a former graduate student) conducted a study of electronic use among first year

BYU students. He found that typical students spent over 50 minutes per day on Facebook, 45

minutes on cell phones texting or calling, and about an hour watching TV or movies. The typical

student reported sending 10 to 20 text messages a day and having 150 to 200 friends on

Facebook. Sixty-two percent also reported that they multi-task – meaning they play video

games or check email on their laptop while “listening” to lectures, studying, or doing homework.

During fall semester, students recorded their media use in a time diary and we related the time

spent using electronic media daily to their end of semester grades. As you can probably guess

there was a negative relationship between electronic use and grades (even after controlling for

other characteristics). The more time spent in electronic use, the lower their end of semester

GPA. So developing the discipline to limit media use (especially when in class, studying, or

doing homework!) will help young people concentrate and succeed academically.

In contrast to academic achievement, we wondered if the time students spent on social media

would displace time spent in actual face-to-face interaction. However, what we found was just

the opposite. Among first-year BYU students we found a positive association between social-

networking, cell phone communication, and time spent in face-to-face interaction; in other words,

social media helped to facilitate rather than replace social interaction. Thus, one way to harness

the good in social media is to use it to build connections and plan activities with friends and

family.

Blogging is another way to use social media to build relationships and human connections. A

BYU study of new mother blogs found that new mothers spend about 3 hours a day on the

computer and that blogging helped improve their well-being because they were able to connect

with the wider parenting community. The primary reason mothers said they blogged was to feel

connected to extended family and friends. Mothers were able to share successful parenting

experiences on their blogs, receive feedback, as well as learn vicariously through reading the

blogs of others.

Utah Valley University recently held a conference on “Mormonism and the Internet” to discuss

how members of the Church are expressing themselves through blogging. The conference noted

that members are forming online communities of like-minded Mormons within the broader

Church. Times and Seasons and By Common Consent are examples of academic blogs, others

are more family focused like Mormon Mommy blogs which recently had a Q&A podcast with

Sister Julie Beck. Other blogs build community among individuals that struggle with particular

challenges, such as infertility, the loss of a child, or other family issues. Thus, sharing ideas via

blogs is another way many are harnessing the good in social media and building relationships.

Elder Ballard, in an address to students at BYU-Hawaii in 2007 entitled, Sharing the Gospel

Using the Internet, (Ensign, July 2008) stated:

The Internet allows everyone to be a publisher, to have his or her voice heard, and it is

revolutionizing society. . . . The emergence of new media is facilitating a worldwide

conversation on almost every subject, including religion, and nearly everyone can

participate. . [Elder Ballard cautioned]. . Make sure that the choices you make in the use

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of new media are choices that expand your mind, increase your opportunities, and feed

your soul.

In addition to sharing ideas in blogs, social media can be harnessed to promote social change.

Some of you may be familiar with websites such as change.org – which allows individuals to

submit petitions for causes they are concerned about. For example in March, Bettina Seigel

started a petition asking USDA to stop the use of the filler “pink slime” in ground beef destined

for school lunches. After reaching over 200,000 signatures on the petition, USDA announced

that starting this fall it will give school districts the choice of beef either with or without the filler.

Others have started petitions that have ended unexpected bank fees, stopped home foreclosures

on the elderly, or addressed international issues. Think about the changes we could bring to our

own communities by using social media to raise awareness of problems and bring people

together to find solutions.

Other websites such as The Tipping Bucket, which was started by college students, allow

individuals to contribute just a dollar or more to fund various social and community projects to

promote change and community development. Social media takes what would normally be small,

invisible actions and broadcasts them to the rest of the world. When pooled with the actions of

thousands of others, suddenly one initiative can have significant impact. Social media is best for

encouraging small steps. It is a perfect tool for mobilizing your friends and colleagues to take

action on a cause you care about.

To use social media to promote change, start by using your time online to stay informed and

connected to organizations you care about; build relationships with legislators or key opinion

leaders; and develop online connections with your friends and other like-minded individuals, so

you can network and leverage your collective power.

For example, you can use Facebook to “like” the fan pages of causes you care about, as well as

the fan pages of your legislators to begin commenting and interacting. When your cause posts

something of interest, you can re-post it on your wall by hitting the “share” button. You can

connect in similar ways on Twitter; create online videos, or create your own blog and email links

to legislators or other opinion leaders. There are a wide variety of online communication tools

that can be used to get involved and take action on causes you care about.

Rather than spending time passively absorbing media messages or gaming in a virtual world, we

can use social media to build relationships and solve problems in the real world; we can harness

the good and make a difference.

Finally, I close with Elder Bednar’s warning:[ Things as They Really Are (Liahona, June 2010)]

I plead with you to beware of the sense-dulling and spiritually destructive influence of

cyberspace technologies that are used to . . . promote degrading and evil purposes.

I am not suggesting all technology is inherently bad; it is not. Nor am I saying we should

not use its many capabilities in appropriate ways to learn, to communicate, to lift and

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brighten lives, and to build and strengthen the Church. . . but I am raising a warning

voice that we should not squander and damage authentic relationships by obsessing over

contrived ones.

For your happiness and protection . . . I offer two questions for consideration in your

personal pondering and prayerful studying:

1. Does the use of various technologies and media invite or impede the constant

companionship of the Holy Ghost in your life?

2. Does the time you spend using various technologies and media enlarge or restrict

your capacity to live, to love, and to serve in meaningful ways?

Let us teach our children media literacy, and use social media to actively engage in a good cause

is my prayer in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

Harnessing the Good in Social Media and

Technology

Renata Forste 2012 Women’s Conference

Young girls today make the body into an all-consuming project in ways young women of the past did not

Traditional emphasis was on “good works,” now it is on

“good looks”

Many young men today live on an extensive media diet of sex and violence

As the complexity of video games has

developed, they have become more addictive

Media Literacy is the ability to access, analyze, evaluate and create media

Who is the message intended for?

What are the underlying cultural messages?

ALL media is socially constructed

Ad in Women’s Day

If you want your family to wear their whitest whites . . . Don’t forget the Clorox Bleach

Prevent a high drama skin situation. Noxzema. Pretty. Smart.

Ad in Seventeen

Buy Me That Too: A Kid's Survival Guide to TV Advertising (Part 1,2) and Buy Me That 3

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7VNFO4ksCE

Set parameters regarding the quantity and quality of media engaged in

TALK with children and promote media literacy

Engage primarily in media that builds human relationships

For your happiness and protection . . . I offer two questions for consideration

Does the use of various technologies and media invite or impede the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost in your life?

Does the time you spend using various

technologies and media enlarge or restrict your capacity to live, to love, and to serve in meaningful ways?