Discussion
Tama Leaver argues that we should absolutely avoid a version of a Digital Duty of Care in Australia (currently in development) which focuses on increased parental surveillance of young people's Internet use.
We already do too much to treat children's lives as something that parents should surveil though a digital dashboard.
Next up at #YoungDigitalCitizens we have Julia Coffey, Amy Dobson, and Kiah Hawker talking about 'Face Value: image culture, bodies, and identity on social media'
Young people's selfie practices are often pathologised. This research looked at what young people are actually doing when they create and edit selfies. it showed that young people analyse images in forensic detail, unpacking not just whether edits have been used for selfies but also have effective that editing has been. Young people tend to see obvious editing as crass, but also see it as vital that selfies show the 'right' image.
As part of the research Coffey et al sat down with young people and watched their process of taking and editing selfies. Researchers initially saw selfie editing as a social experience, but during workshops it became clear that for most young people it's private and 'shame-based' - it was only during group workshops that young people learned more about other people's practices.
You can read more about the research here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/00380261261460809?mi=ehikzz
Amy Dobson is sharing a great quotation from a young person who's gone through a slow process towards 'body neutrality', who talks about their body as being like living in a run-down, over-priced rental property.
In both cases he accepts that the vessel in which he lives isn't perfect, it doesn't look great, but he doesn't have much control over the situation and it's best to accept it and make the best of it.
Kiah Hawker's work focuses on a deep analysis of the technical tools used for selfie editing themselves - how the tech that underpins filters and editing tools is rapidly changing. We're seeing a shift from augmented reality filters to generative AI and more complex machine vision. This is an important shift because it's not longer a filter that sits on top of the image - it's technology that creates something 'new'.
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