Childhood and Social Media
Natasha Lyons
Hello! My Name is Natasha and I am a year 13, A-level art student who was exploring the theme of growing up and childhood for my personal project. This is a topic which I gained inspiration from due to the digital futures project and workshop I attended curtesy of Lauren Jenkins, a dancer and artist. I wanted to focus on the elements of nostalgia and allow people to really reflect on good memories of childhood and how the constant evolving of technology has created a clear difference in how generations grow and what memories they gain. The question I aimed to solve was "Does early access to social media change the way children play and grow". This interested me mainly as Lauren's project was exploring social media and technological entrapment. This inspired me to look into the heavy influence that social media can have as you grow up, in comparison to when kids grew up with less technology and used things like toys for entertainment.
The workshop included a task of drawing a favourite object or memory from childhood that is significant to them. Though this I wanted there to be a interactive fun element first before it got to the writing tasks. This made it more fun for the participants involved. Then I asked two key questions to help me answer my main one. They were as follows:
"What elements of your childhood are still a part of your life today?"
"Has growing up with the advances of social media and technology changed your view on these elements. If yes, why, and how?"
Through these I was able to gather a clear insight onto what people think about growing up and how it has been affected by technology as years have passed. When conducting the workshop I had a mixture of age ranges which made my responses varied and interesting as it shows the generational differences which I was delving into.
Overall, I enjoyed the process of running the workshop despite being nervous to an extent and was able to gain some confidence and also run a fun range of activities to engage the participants and collect research.
The workshop included a task of drawing a favourite object or memory from childhood that is significant to them. Though this I wanted there to be a interactive fun element first before it got to the writing tasks. This made it more fun for the participants involved. Then I asked two key questions to help me answer my main one. They were as follows:
"What elements of your childhood are still a part of your life today?"
"Has growing up with the advances of social media and technology changed your view on these elements. If yes, why, and how?"
Through these I was able to gather a clear insight onto what people think about growing up and how it has been affected by technology as years have passed. When conducting the workshop I had a mixture of age ranges which made my responses varied and interesting as it shows the generational differences which I was delving into.
Overall, I enjoyed the process of running the workshop despite being nervous to an extent and was able to gain some confidence and also run a fun range of activities to engage the participants and collect research.
